Quirky Perceptions

Look, I’m not saying I am three beers in and struggling with this, but I am right now trying to decide if the names of my central characters should or shouldn’t be a direct reference to their central nature. For anyone familiar with history or generally with mythology would get any reference fairly easily and oh my, isn’t it fantastic that I hinted to the central nature of my character.

But is that really useful? Is it realistic? Is realism something I want to aim for?

This is what I’m musing over at the moment. Hinting at someones true nature is fun, but is it good writing? And its genuinely question I’m struggling with.

When I was young, I loved it when a character had a name that aligned with their destiny or their powers, it was very fun to discover, but as I got older its started to feel more and more like an obvious spoilers at best or, god forbid, pretentious at worst.

An example; in a story where we are searching for “The One”. We have three characters, Jim, Natasha, and Adam. Gee, I wonder if it could be Adam, the first man. And sure, its fun if its not the case, a red herring is another great narrative tool , but choosing one or the other does give certain narrative expectations.

Another thing to consider would be what associations we have with a certain name. Often if we need a mundane simple character, we name them Steve, or if we need someone to be a bitch, we name them Karen, or should we need a terrorist, we name him Muhammad. Its a sort of cultural shorthand, that name A equals attributes B, C, D.

But this cultural shorthand is far from universal and in most cases will have very limited longevity. Karen as an example is hardly more than 5 years old at this point and will become stale eventually.

So the more I delve into it, the harder it becomes to select a name that does and does not have meaning attached that is acceptable. And honestly, I’m curious what you think.

Anyway, one my characters right now is Arthur Cane. I’ll leave it up to your imagination what his deal is. You can add your thoughts below, both on the topic and on Arthur Canes true nature.

Thanks for reading. Inconsistent post to come eventually.

(c) Torben Jensen