Naming Conventions

Image: AI generated image of a billboard displaying the word 'Name.'

As a storyteller, naming characters is one of the most difficult tasks that I face. It is like picking a name for your kid (or maybe your dog.) You don't want to be stuck with something that does not fit, but when you pick the name, you do not know enough about that character to be sure you are capturing the character's essence. That is because names have power.

I have learned that you can never use the name of someone you know (or a family member) without that person thinking you named the character after them. So, if you give a serial killer the same name as your little brother, you will probably experience friction at the next family get together. (Writer's note: even if the aforementioned little brother does not care, Mom will.)

Names are imbued with meaning. I love the website 20000-Names.com because it provides lists of proper names from around the world with their cultural meanings. I now know that the Lithuanian boy's name Algis is a diminutive of Algimas and means 'wealthy.' I haven't used any Lithuanian names in my fiction, but you get the point. We do not tend to think as much about the meaning behind the names in our own language. If I name a character Cooper, I'm not thinking about the other meanings of the word cooper; I may not even know them all.

Some of my favorite character names: Ogre, from The Ogre Prince, a young adult fantasy. Ogre is a fourteen-year-old orphan who gets caught up in a hunt for a real Ogre. 'Mose' Mosely is an enforcer for the Cleveland mob in Retribution. Nicknames are fun because they tend to be bestowed upon a person by the people around them, so the nickname reflects something about their character or way of being. Walter Krang is a concentration camp guard in Forgiveness. The disruptive nature of his last name is a marker for how he lives in the world.

Place names are equally important. They convey history and values. If you know any American history, names like Gettysburg or the Alamo or the Washington Mall are loaded with meaning. This week, the Trump administration announced that they are returning the names of seven military bases--which had at one time been named for Confederate generals but had those names changed by the Pentagon Military Base Naming Commission--to their original names. The administration found different soldiers with the same names as the Confederate names to 'name' the bases after.

I call BS. How much time did they spend searching military records to find soldiers with the same names? Even Trump understands that he cannot name a base after a traitor to the United States of America, so instead they play word games like thirteen-year-old boys. Donald Trump said that he is superstitious, and we won a lot of battles out of those forts and that was why he was changing the name back.

I'm not sure what's worse: a Commander-in-Chief who makes decisions based on superstition or one who is openly racist. And am I the only one who understands if he is superstitious, then he has to return them to the original (racist) name, not a facsimile of it? No baseball fan ever won the world series by wearing the same color socks every game; it's the same pair of socks every game.

I cannot abide cruelty.

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