Out of ideas

It would be nice if some authors really did have a good old think when naming their characters.

Here, by my foot, as I type, is a terribly thrilling thriller named Land of the Living, by Nicci French. I think it came free with a magazine – I do hope so, as I have absolutely no memory of buying it and I like to think I have some control of the Book Mountain [Your husband says not - Ed]. I have not read beyond the first chapter, despite being quite keen on thrilly books, for one sole sad and saggy little reason. My suspension of disbelief got snapped way early. On the very first page, in fact. Because of the lead character’s name.

The book starts in the first person. A woman is recovering consciousness, and trying to remember where she is and who she is. She slowly recalls that her first name is Abbie. Then:

The other name was harder…. I remembered a class register. Auster, Bishop, Brown, Byrne, Cassini, Cole, Daley, Devereaux, Eve, Finch, Fry. No, stop. Go back. Finch. No. Devereaux. Yes, that was it. A rhyme came to me. A rhyme from long, long ago. Not Deverox like box. Nor Deveroo like shoe. But Devereaux like show. Abbie Devereaux.

And at that point I chucked the book back on the floor and went back to The Diary of a Provincial Lady.

Now, the class register is cute. I don’t mind that. And Abbie Devereaux is a perfectly good name for a heroine. No. What bugged the absolute britches off me was the little rhyme to tell us, the clottish readers, how to pronounce Devereaux. For all I know, a person recovering consciousness might indeed recall some patronising little piece of toshery they used to piss their class-mates right off with. But I have a hard-to-pronounce surname, and I have on several occasions, slow and bewildered, recovered consciousness and wondered what the buggery hell my name was. I have not once pondered to myself on its pronounciation, despite the fact only about 17% of my acquaintance ever get it right and my school-fellows used to have a very unkind nickname for me to reflect my obsession with getting them to say it correctly. Because, if you are sounding off class registers in your head, or whatever else, to try and see which name dings you over the crumpet with possessive intent, you do not need to work out how to pronounce it. It has just SOUNDED in your head. It is, ergo, pronounced.

And I really, really hate being patronised as to how to pronounce names of non-Anglo-Saxon origin. We, the reader, are not all illiterate xenophobes, readers tend not to be for some inexplicable reason, and if we were, we’d hardly be gunning for a lassie called Devereaux, would we? And patronised on this issue by an author called Nicci, no less. I grew up in Italy, as far as I’m concerned she’s pronounced ‘Nietzsche’ and if she doesn’t like it she can damn well wang a K in there.

So, names. As TS Eliot so exceedingly famously remarked, ‘The naming of cats is a difficult matter.’ Personally, I find naming characters rather more fun than actually writing the novel, but it is clear to me that quite a few novelists find it beyond tedious and would give them all serial numbers if their agents would only let them. Hence that hoary old advice in many, many ‘How to write novels’ books to look probable names up in the telephone directory. I say, please don’t. I feel so sad when faced with page after page of William Browns chasing John Smiths and getting off with Susan Joneses. I mean yes, obviously, most people ARE called Susan Jones. But, even in real life, not everyone is. In my immense smugness, I have compiled some points and/or pieces of advice which are possibly more useful [Smug little... oh. You've said already].

1. Do not fall into the opposite trap of the telephone directory (the anti-directory), and have all your characters called Finarfin Bolderdash and Arabella Ramsbottom-Smythe. Unless you are taking the piss, of course. In which case, knock yourself out.
2. No pronounciation guides. Certainly not on the first page. Certainly not wafting about in the narrator’s consciousness on her own damn name. If you must inform us, have someone take the mick. For a good example of how to do this, see Reginald Hill’s Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel (pronounced, of course, Dee-yell, as the Z is actually a yogh).
3. Doing a Dickens and making the name fit the character (Cheeryble Brothers, Gradgrind, Wackford Squeers, M’Choakumchild) is very jolly, but really looked a little demented by the time Anthony Trollope (Dr Pessimist Anticant, anyone?) was doing it. Mind you, he wasn’t quite so damn funny as Dickens. It can still be amusing to do this subtly, for one or two characters. I have a character called Ian Happy, for example. And a Superintendent called Martin Able. The big irritant in my hero’s working life is called Mark Price. None of them names that’ll make you bat an eyelid, but. Heh heh heh.
4. Try to have a reason for and history behind each name. Even the William Browns of this world were named that for a reason – it wasn’t chosen by computer, à la The Dispossessed. [But SF&F names are another post for another day, OK? Or we'll be here until midnight]. My hero, Jiro Watanabe Smith, is so named because his idiot teenage mother thought it would be romantic to name him after his (swiftly sent back home) teenage Japanese father. Jiro is her (and his father’s) first son, Jiro is a traditional Japanese name for a second son. His issues with his unusual heritage, and difficulties being accepted by both the British and the Japanese communities, are pretty much signalled right there in the spectacularly inappropriate name. Not that I will explain this in the novel, oh no. But Jiro knows, and I know he knows.
5. Buy a good dictionary of first names. By ‘good’, I mean for God’s sake eschew all pastel coloured ones with darling infants on the front cover. Also, avoid any that are less than half an inch thick. Make sure there are long, comprehensive entries for each name, listing culture of origin, history, etymology, variants, and possibly even famous bearers. Most ‘baby name’ books have the etymologies wrong, are nauseatingly sentimental, and have no proper context for any given name. Hence recent outburst of dark-haired people called Rory, or, God have mercy, Ruaridh, I suppose. Seriously, if you name a character, say, Glyndwr Jones, and have him trotting about Wales in the 18th century, you’ll feel a right tit when someone points out Glyndwr only came into use as a first name in the early 20th century. As they invariably will. The Penguin Dictionary of First Names is pretty good. It’s the one I am slowly battering to papery oblivion.
6. If you know nothing, or, worse, very little, about the culture you are depicting, don’t go there. A novel set in small-town America, in which every woman is called Darlene and every man Chuck or Hank, will make you look like a twit. Ditto and more so a story I saw once (luckily in manuscript), set in Calcutta, in which the men were called Sanjay and Asok and the women Zainab and Fatima. In the same family. Because all Indian Hindus name their sons from Sanskrit and their daughters from the Koran.
7. Try to keep the names age-appropriate. Some authors really have a tin ear for naming fashions. I really have read books set today in which everyone, whether eight or eighty, has been called Pat and Jean and Alfred and Horace. And one or two in which everyone has been Jack and Chloe and Luke and Kayleigh. The Penguin Dictionary has lists at the back for which names were most popular for the past ten decades. That kind of thing is really quite useful.
8. And, finally, nothing hacks me personally off more than getting about a third of the way into a modern novel and realising all the men are still referred to as ‘Smith’ and ‘Petersen’ and ‘Farquhar’ and all the women as ‘Susie’ and ‘Lilian’ and ‘Maisie’, regardless of how well we know the character and the character’s status in relation to the point-of-view character. What the hell is this, Jane Austen? Even Dickens, that arch, oh, so arch, Victorian didn’t do anything quite so galumphingly crass.