My own experience with a different surname really drove this point home to me quite dramatically, and here's the story: I grew up with a Russian-sounding surname which no one could pronounce, so I spent the first 25 years of my life spelling it over and over and over again. But then, when I was married to my first husband whose surname was Taylor - hey, presto! I was suddenly very popular and well-liked, and even received compliments such as "nice name!" from a complete stranger when I introduced myself on the phone while at work!
Nowadays, I'm happy with my second husband and his name, Underwood, which I gladly use because it's much easier to spell and pronounce than my maiden name!
With this in mind, I always consider the names of my characters very carefully, and it was an extra challenge because the setting is fantasy – or alternate history at best, so a common name like Bob or Jane just wouldn’t do. We all have a mental image of what a Bob or Jane would look like, just as we connect an image to most other words and names. A name determines our identity, so it's a big deal to create a character and a name to make a whole new identity with whom the reader can identify.
Although there are some great websites that generate
character names of all sorts, I found that they didn’t help me at all, and so I
come up with my character’s names the old-fashioned way: just thinking, jotting them down and tossing
them around in my head. Sometimes I
change a letter or two to see if the name sounds better, and then just thought
about the “feel” of the name – what kind of personality the sound of the name
conjures up in the mind. When I feel
reasonably happy with a new name, I google it to make sure it isn’t already
“taken” by some other author or film-maker, and if it’s reasonably uncommon or
even has no google search results, I’ll take it!
This is the approach I used for ‘personal’ names like Rhuna.
But in world of the Atlan Empire (Atlantean Empire) people had a more
complicated formal name by which they were known (I made that bit up – but how
knows what it was really like in Atlantis?!) such as Keeper of Wisdom. This idea
just came to me one day when I was thinking of how to make Atlan names stand
apart from every other name, and it seemed to fit perfectly. Atlans are given a formal name or title when
they have shown a certain trait or quality.
Hence names like Guardian of
Harmony, Resolver of Disputes and Wanderer
of Plains. But some names are less
precise such as Softness of the Clouds,
Peace of the Valley and Melody of the
Dawn.
Once the characters are created and named, they have a
tendency to take over their own destiny as the story is written. This is because the characters are given
certain basic traits (which often match their names) and as events unfold, I
have to consider how each character would react to this event depending on
their personality. I think it’s
important to keep the characters true to themselves and let them grow and
change as the story unfolds, just as it would be for real-life people who are
constantly growing and changing as they go through life.
Sometimes, certain characters have actually determined the
outcome of a sub-plot due to their own individual view of a matter, and many
times, when I’ve had to consider the next steps in a story and how each
character would be affected, would they feel and react, I’ve been shown several
alternate paths the story could take.
So I really must give some of the credit to the characters who have come
alive on the pages of RHUNA!
