Friday, June 8, 2018

More on Character Names

I am still questioning myself how I chose the names I chose for the characters in my diary novel. But each of them seems simple and common compared to what I read in this article.


Yeah, I don't seem to hear Katie anymore. Now it's Cady. Years before the movie Mean Girls, I encountered someone I believed to be name Katie (from the sound of how she said her name), only to find it was actually Cady. Cady, to me, looks more like a phonetic spelling of the the way some people pronounce Katie. At the same time, though, I did encounter someone named Katie, short for Kathryn.

And I would not use too many bizarre names in my books, given how much I hated my own name, never seeing it on souvenirs and growing up among a plethora of Jennifers, Karens, Lisas, Michelles, Stephanies, and the like. This was something I noted in my memoir. 

As I said, I'm still asking myself why I chose Martin as the name of the protagonist of my diary novel, but then again, I did not choose anything to bizarre. Same with some of the others in my book, such as Roderick, Everett, Jana and Janelle (twins).

2 comments:

  1. So long as you are happy with the names, I don't think it matters where they came from.

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  2. I agree with Elephant's Child. If you are happy with the names, then they are the right ones. I have an odd name, too, and I know that it's hard for people to pronounce so I try to create names that make sense that way, even if they are different.

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