Naming names

Day 3

I'm enjoying this, and the blog is encouraging me against an early switch-off of the  glowing valves and tubes at the back of the computer.  Sometimes writers can be in too much of a hurry to call it a day so that they can go off and relax in loose garments.

So, day three and the sublimely irritating issue of names of characters.  This is a bed of nettles.  I don't give a damn what their names are just so long as I can get on with the story.  It's really not important to me.

Except that it has to be right.  Dammit.

It's no good having a character called Tom or Dick if he keeps saying Harryish things.  And it's no good suggesting a brain surgeon called Daisy, even if in real life I actually know one who is.  But to be frank (oh, frank, right) I'm not going to get it all worked out upfront because I'd spend the next three months writing down a grim and tedious list of names, and consulting hideous dog-eared baby-name books to see that X is Hebrew for "A Great Showing In The East" or Y is a Celtic name for a "Little White Hawk With One Brown Feather".  And that would be another three months spent Running Away From Writing (otherwise know as RAFW).  This names problem is actually number 72 in the list of 999 reasons for RAFW, which comes just after (71) Hoovering Your Study and just before (73) Finding Pictures Of Your Proposed Location On The Internet.

There are all sorts of things that can make a name plain wrong for a character.  Some names are just locked into certain strata of the social classes.  American readers might not believe this, but it's sadly very true of the British caste system.  You'll be hard pressed to find a plumber called Tarquin or China, but there are more than one or two working for the Foreign Office right now.  On the other hand having a Wayne as high-court judge just won't cut it.  (It might have changed now but when I was doing relief supply teaching in the early 90s anything in front of you called Wayne, Clint, Cody or Stetson yes! I taught a kid so tagged! meant that High Noon would always be arriving well before ten o'clock in the school day.)

And that's another thing.  Names are time-loaded and often evoke a particular decade.  I went to school with a nice girl called Gay.  I've no idea what she calls herself these days.

So I'm not wasting time on getting it right upfront.  Right now the characters are getting lumbered with the slight deformity or nose-wart of names they will surely not want to keep.  There's the wonderful technology of search and replace to make Peter a Peregrine later in the process.  Experience tells me that by the time I've completed a first draft I'll know exactly what their names are, by the way they gulp their lager or spit in the collecting tins of street beggars.

And no, Madam, my daily word-count does not include this blog!  Today boasts a cheerful 2284.