What's in a Name

People often ask me how I name my characters. Do I put names in a hat and draw? Do I research the name’s meaning? Do I just pull them out of the air?

No, no, and no. When it comes to naming my hero and heroine, and oftentimes, my secondary characters, I put a great deal of thought into it. I don’t have any children, but I imagine I put just as much thought and effort into naming my characters as I would have my children. In many ways, my characters are like my children. I give birth to them, nurture them, and watch them grow and develop, then set them free to make their way in the big, dangerous world we live in.

So, for starters, I keep a running list of names that I hear or see that I think would make great character names. When an idea for a story forms, I think about the characters, who they are, where they’ve been, and what name suits their personalities, or vice versa, what name is completely opposite from their personalities.

In my second novel, Rescuing Lacey, my heroine is a tough-as-nails photojournalist who doesn’t take any guff. In her case, the perfect name was one that didn’t suit her at all. Something frilly and girlie, like … well ... Lacey:

The name Lacey Sommers, and all it implied, didn’t fit the woman standing in front of him. There was certainly nothing frilly about her. Tall, tanned, and muscular, she couldn’t be accused of being girlie, but neither was she the care-worn, jaded photographer he’d envisioned. A knot of desire formed in his stomach.

As for my hero’s name in the same book, I wanted something masculine, something that would sound sexy when whispered in a moment of passion, yet also have an important ring to it, thus, William Lucas Hancock, or Luke for short. Luke works well for the beach-bum wilderness guide Lacey thinks he is, but William Lucas Hancock works equally as well for the Ph.D. environmentalist.

Dreams of Perfection, Book #1 in the Dreams Come True series, is about a successful romance

writer whose real-life boyfriends never live up to her own perfect heroes. She experiences a Pygmalion romance when her latest hero comes to life.  The heroine’s quirky mother is a Jane Austen scholar who names her children after her favorite Austen characters:

And thanks to her mother’s chosen obsession, er, profession, Darcy and her siblings bore some combination of the names of her mother’s favorite Austen characters: Darcy Elizabeth, Anne Elinor, and Frederick Brandon.

They were easy to name — I simply pulled out my Jane Austen bible (that’s the Jane Austen Anthology for any Jane Austen newbies) and put her characters’ names together in new combinations until I was satisfied.

The men in the book took more time to name. I relied on my list of names, and added several more, looking for the right combination of first, middle, and last names that would fit my character’s roles and personalities. For Darcy’s best friend, I wanted a warm, comfortable name, one that said nice guy. Josh Ryan (Joshua Michael Ryan) was born. For the hero-come-to-life, I needed a name that sounded like a dashing romance novel hero, thus Blake Garrett, trauma surgeon, um … came to life.

Finally, for a novella I have in the works, Romancing Dr. Love, my heroine is a brainy psychology professor, who has based her entire career on the hypothesis that love is simply a chemical reaction. But she finds she must defend her science when she meets her antithesis in the form of a handsome, romantic literature professor. 

For her I needed something both fitting and ironic. I chose Samantha as her first name, shortening it to Sam, since she’s grown up with more masculine thought-processes when it comes to love. But don’t let that fool you, she’s all woman underneath. The last name, of course is the irony. The doctor who boils love down to nothing more than a chemical reaction fittingly bears that word for her last name. I’m still working on the hero’s name, but you can be sure it will be something sexy and romantic.

So that’s it. That’s the process for naming my characters. If you’re an author, how do you name your characters? If you’re a reader, what makes you love a character