Tag Archives: choosing character names

A Character Name With an Australian Focus

31 Saturday Oct 2015

Posted by in Naming Assistance

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600px-SandDunesSutherlandShire

Raye is planning to write a book, and is looking for a name for the protagonist. The book will be set in Australia, and the main character will be an Indigenous Australian, so ideally the character’s name would be from an Australian Aboriginal language.

Raye would like the name to have a meaning connected to the story. The character will be symbolically linked with the colour red, with earth, and with stability. She will be the leader of a team.

Raye thinks she will be from New South Wales, perhaps from around the Cronulla area of Sydney, but that isn’t really decided yet. However, the name does not have necessarily have to be from a dialect from that area.

The name also needs to stand out as a girl’s name – the main character is transgender, so her name should hopefully be something that distances her from her birth gender.

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Raye if you had paid me for a name consultation, I would have sent your money back and explained that I am completely unqualified for this task. However as it’s free, I will do my best to come up with some words from Aboriginal languages that might be suitable to use as names (or sound name-like) and hope that it might be of some interest.

Connected to the meaning “red”

Mudjil (from Sydney)
Girri
Karro
Marda
Miku
Taltarni

Connected to the meaning “earth”

Bamal (from Sydney)
Sep
Yarta

Connected to the meaning “stability”

Wilta – means “firm” in the Kaurna language

I don’t think any of these words sound specifically feminine, and I think for a transgender character, the biggest advantage is that they sound as if they could be used for either sex.

My first thought for a name from the Cronulla area is Wanda, as the name of Wanda Beach at Cronulla comes from the local Aboriginal word for “sand hills” (vaguely earthy). However, you might think that this sounds a bit dated, and is not obviously Indigenous, as Wanda is also a European name.

I do think that having a transgender Indigenous person as your main character is fairly brave, as this is a complex issue. However, if you know a lot about this subject, it would be a wonderful opportunity to highlight the cultural nuances that might arise. From looking at the names of real life Aboriginal transgender people, a name like Ruby, Rosie, or Scarlet would probably be more believable.

I can only hope that someone who knows far more than I might see this and advise you!

(Photo shows the sand dunes of Cronulla on the Kurnell Peninsula)

Waltzing With …. Lucinda

11 Sunday Oct 2015

Posted by in Waltzing with ...

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Famous Fictional Namesake
I’ve been away on holiday, hence the lack of posts. Whenever we go somewhere, I always take tons of books with me, in the fond belief that I will have lots of free time. I rarely get much reading done, as holidays take up more of your time and energy than you think they will, but in the spirit of my good intentions I’m covering a name from a modern Australian classic.

Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda won the 1989 Miles Franklin Award and the 1988 Booker Prize. Set in the nineteenth century, Lucinda is a young orphaned heiress who forms an unlikely and intense relationship with an Anglican priest named Oscar.

These eccentric redheaded soulmates are bound together by their mutual passion for gambling. Lucinda is the owner of a glass factory on Sydney’s Darling Harbour, and she and Oscar make a crazy wager that he will transport a glass church by river to the town of Bellingen in New South Wales; Lucinda stakes her entire fortune on the bet.

Peter Carey’s first idea for his heroine’s name was Hermione; however he went off the idea as he realised how difficult Hermione was for him to say. Not fancying the idea of constantly talking about Hermione at book festivals and so on, and thinking how awkward Oscar and Hermione sounded as a title, he cast about for something else. His wife at the time suggested Lucinda, and he immediately liked it, as it felt both modern and Victorian.

Only later did he realise that Lucinda had a connection with light, which fit the themes of the novel. Lucinda is obsessed with glass, while Oscar has a deadly fear of water, which makes his transporting of the glass church upriver a nightmare on many levels. The novel brings together the imagery of glass and water very beautifully: as Lucinda knows, both are liquids. There is a great shimmer of light on this novel which constantly plays with the idea of chance.

Oscar and Lucinda was made into a film in 1997, with Cate Blanchett and Ralph Fiennes in the title roles. The film is beautiful, and Blanchett suitably luminous as Lucinda, but readers (especially ones trying to cheat their way through book club) should be aware that the novel’s ending has been altered for the film.

Name Information
Lucinda is an elaboration of the Roman name Lucia, the feminine form of Lucius, meaning “light”. The name appears to have been the invention of Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes, in his masterwork Don Quixote. In a farcical subplot, Lucinda is in love with one man, but forced to marry another; she manages to escape her husband and be with her true love.

Cervantes may have gotten the name from another 17th Spanish writer, the poet Lope de Vega. Lope de Vega used the name Camila Lucinda as a pseudonym for some of his most romantic and passionate poems – a near anagram of Micaela de Luján, an actress who was de Vega’s mistress. Their relationship began in 1599, and his first poems written to “Luzinda” were published in 1602.

Although Cervantes had been an admirer of de Vega, they became rivals enough that Don Quixote contains verses which satirise de Vega. It is even possible that the foolishly romantic Don Quixote himself is a sly allusion to ardent ladies man Lope de Vega. Could it be that Cervantes “stole” the name Lucinda for his novel as a sarcastic in-joke?

Don Quixote was published in two volumes, in 1605 and 1615, and these were translated into English in 1612 and 1620. The name Lucinda begins to appear in 17th century records after the publication of Don Quixote, both in Spain and English-speaking countries.

Lucinda became something of a literary favourite. English poet Henry Glapthorne wrote a series of romantic poems addressed to “Lucinda” in 1639. French playwright Moliere included a character named Lucinde in his 1666 farce, The Doctor in Spite of Himself, and English playwright Samuel Foote’s 1782 farce The Englishman in Paris had a Lucinda. German poet Karl von Schegel published an autobiographical romance named Lucinde in 1799 – considered scandalously erotic in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but tame by today’s standards.

In all these works Lucinda is attractive, and involved in romantic situations that generally work out to her advantage. In von Schegel’s work, Lucinda stands for the ideal woman who is passionate and intellectual in equal measure. Even in Glapthorne’s poems, where the relationship between he and Lucinda doesn’t last, it seems to be by her own choice that she leaves.

Martin Boyd’s classic Australian novel Lucinda Brayford is rather less upbeat. Set mainly in the first half of the 20th century, Lucinda is a beautiful woman of the Melbourne upper class who marries a dashing English aristocrat and moves to Britain. Disillusionment swiftly follows. (Peter Carey has been quick to correct reviewers who imagine he had in mind any connection with Lucinda Brayford when writing Oscar and Lucinda).

In contemporary fiction, Lucinda is often used in fairy tale and fantasy works: she is the well-meaning fairy godmother in Ella Enchanted, the good little witch in Sofia the First, a stepsister of Cinderella in Into the Woods, an elderly lady who finds her own personal fairyland in The Spiderwick Chronicles, and the heroine of the young adult fantasy romance series Fallen by Lauren Kate. Princess Lucinda is both a Groovy Girls doll and a powerfully magical comic book character.

Lucinda first charted in the 1960s, debuting at #342, and peaked in the late 2000s at #126. It is currently around the middle of the 100s, making it an attractive choice for someone wanting a name that has never been popular, but isn’t too far off popularity either.

Lucinda is more popular in Australia than anywhere else. In the United States, Lucinda was in the Top 1000 until the late 1980s, and peaked at #153 in 1881. Last year, 143 baby girls were named Lucinda in the US, and numbers seem to be still falling. In the UK in 2014, 29 baby girls were named Lucinda, with numbers in decline after a peak in the 200s during the late 1990s.

Famous Australian namesakes include ballerina Lucinda Dunn, principal dancer at the Australian Ballet for 23 years; sailor Lucinda “Lu” Whitty, who won silver at the 2012 Olympics; equestrian eventer Lucinda Fredericks, who also competed at the 2012 Olympics; actress Lucinda Cowden, who was on Neighbours; Lucinda “Cindy” McLeish, Liberal politician in the Victorian parliament; and Lucinda “Lucy” Turnbull, former Lord Mayor of Sydney, and wife of the current Prime Minister.

There is also a small coastal town in Queensland called Lucinda, named after a paddle steamer. The Lucinda was named after Lady (Jeannie) Lucinda Musgrave, daughter of prominent American lawyer and law reformer David Dudley Field II, and the wife of Sir Anthony Musgrave, a governor of Queensland. The little town of Lucindale in South Australia is also named after her, as Sir Anthony was previously a governor of that state.

Lucinda is a pretty and elegant literary name linked to love and romance, and with a fairy tale feel to it. In Australia it is an underused modern classic, often thought of here as having a rather upper class image. Among its attractions are nickname options, such as Lucy, Lucie, Lu, and Lulu, with Lux and Lucky as fun possibilities. While Cindy might recently have been thought of as too dated, I’m seeing an increasing number of babies named or nicknamed Cindy, so this cute retro name may be coming back into style.

POLL RESULT
Lucinda received an outstanding approval rating of 96%, making it one of the highest-rated names of 2015. 40% of people loved the name Lucinda, and nobody hated it.

My Top Five Name Blog-Related Peeves

14 Sunday Oct 2012

Posted by in Naming Issues

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This week was Pet Peeves Week (which I think only exists on the Internet), and several bloggers took the opportunity to get a few of life’s little annoyances off their chest, including Ebony at Babynameobsessed.

Many name bloggers say that they started out with some naming peeves, but that continual blogging about names tended to dilute or even reverse their irritation, leaving them with a great sense of well-being and peace. Maybe a couple of years ago they couldn’t stand matchy twin names, boyish names on girls, or attention-seeking celebrity baby names, but now they think Doris and Boris as twins is cool, Frederick is actually kind of spunky on a girl, and some minor celeb calling their kid Gusty Glock requires only an amused and tolerant chuckle in response.

To an extent I can relate, but to an even bigger extent I can’t, because while blogging about names may have finished off some of my pet peeves, it has given me a whole new bunch to get annoyed by. After some twenty months of blogging, I have got quite a few things that now grate on my nerves beyond all endurance. I’ve cut it down to only the top five though, in order not to grate on yours too much.

1. Reborners who call their reborn dolls “babies”

In case you don’t know, reborn dolls are baby dolls which are incredibly lifelike in appearance – so much so that they can be mistaken for an actual baby (and have been). Reborners are hobbyists who make and/or collect reborn dolls. I don’t any problems with reborn dolls, or those who make or own them. However, I do have a problem with calling them babies. Reborn dolls are not babies. They are dolls.

Each day I ask Google to trawl through the Internet for me and bring me information tagged with the word baby, and each day I get a stack of threads from reborn dolls forums or entries from reborning blogs.

People call other things their “baby”, and it doesn’t seem to bother me. If someone writes, I’ve been riding my baby all day, I somehow immediately understand they are referring to a motorcycle, and if someone says, My poor baby had to be locked outside, I get an automatic picture in my mind that it’s a dog they’re talking about. I skim past and go on to the next item.

But when I read, I sold my first baby on eBay!, My baby’s leg fell off and I can’t reattach it, or I just rooted my baby’s head (if not Australian, check slang guide as to why that’s so disturbing), I practically have a heart attack. Even knowing they mean a doll, I can’t stop the racing heartbeat, sweaty palms, nausea, and instinctive need to phone the police I’d feel if it was a real baby I was reading about.

I’ve asked Google to eliminate the words doll and reborn from the search, but of course, they don’t call their dolls “dolls”, they call them “babies”. Unless a baby poos, wees, needs to be fed, and wakes you up in the night, it’s not a baby, it’s a doll. Call it by its correct name.

2. Celebrity pregnancy stories in the media that go nowhere

When a story appears in the press announcing that a celebrity (or celebrity’s partner) is pregnant, I add them to my watchlist and ask Google to e-mail me when the baby is announced. Then months and months go by, and no baby story appears. Half the time I have to stalk them on Twitter to find out what the baby was called, and often I end up in a dead end.

I can’t see the point of teasing us with a celebrity pregnancy if we don’t get to find out if the baby is born and what its name is. I don’t know why they do this, but it’s very annoying. Follow through on celebrity pregnancies, newspapers!

3. The notion that baby names need to be short and simple, otherwise they will be too hard for children to spell when they reach school-age

This advice is constantly handed out, by parents on forums and even on professional baby name sites. It has to be the most depressing advice ever. Your poor baby isn’t even born yet, and already you are being told it will probably be too stupid to reach normal literacy levels by the age of five, and you’d better dumb its name right down.

I notice with further despondency that names for boys seem to be especially prone to this line of thought. Apparently girls can handle having a long name like Anastasia or Penelope, but a boy named Demetrius or Sebastian won’t be able to cope, and it’s better to call him something like Max or Liam.

We’re always being told that boys tend to lag behind girls in communications skills, and urged to make more effort to get our sons interested in reading and writing. Children tend to perform to expectation, and I can’t help but wonder if setting low goals for them while they’re still in the womb is the way to improve things.

Short names are great. Short names can be spunky and cool. If you choose a short, simple name for your baby, fantastic – as long as you do so because you love the name, and not because you think that’s all your idiot child can manage.

4. The father-son rule in Australian Rules Football

The AFL has a rule that the son of a senior player can be immediately recruited to the same club his father played for. The good news is that when a star player has a baby boy, it’s cause for enormous celebration and congratulations. The bad news is that when he has a baby girl, it is, at best, a big “meh”.

So often the names of footballer’s babies are not announced in the press, and when that happens, I know in my bones he had a daughter. Sadly, this always turns out to be true. If the media isn’t too interested, fans can be positively vicious to a newborn daughter of a man without sons.

Often the kindest comment you will read in fan forums is Better luck next time. I have read, not once or twice, but again and again, What a waste of good sperm, Throw it away and try again, If it has a [profane word for female genitalia] we don’t give a [profane], and the chilling, Maybe we can still breed from it.

I have found myself in tears of rage at these revolting comments; I can’t imagine what the parents’ reactions would be, and I hope they never read them. There may be many benefits to the father-son rule; frankly I don’t really care as the results of it are so sickening. Celebrating boys shouldn’t have to mean ignoring and denigrating girls.

5. Writers who pick bad names for their characters

Not everyone on a name website is looking for a name for their child – many are just interested in names and language in general, and there are lots of budding authors who want advice on picking character names.

Unfortunately, most of the time the way they pick character names is terrible. One of the most common clangers they make is to ask for a name “that means something”. I’m writing a story about a ballerina, and I need a name that means “dancer”. So her parents deliberately gave her a name meaning dancer, to make her become a dancer, and then it happened? If it worked that way, we’d all be calling our kids High Court Judge or Lottery Winner.

Another no-no is a character name which gives away what’s going to happen. I’m writing a fantasy story about a boy who ends up being able to control fire, what’s a name that means “fire” or “flame”? It’s not going to come as a huge shock to the reader if the character is basically called Mister Fireball, and then, amazingly, he turns out to be able to spit fireballs at will. It would seem pretty unlikely that a parent would give their kid a name with a particular meaning, and then by some astounding turn of fate, their name is what they become. Seriously, how many boys named Aidan do you know who possess a mystical power over fire?

My biggest peeve is probably when the character’s name is an obvious description of their personality, usually with protagonists given names meaning “kind”, “innocent”, “brave” and so on, while the bad guys end up with names meaning “cruel”, “evil”, or “slimy”. What parent would give their child a name which means “evil”? They would have to be so sick that if the person did end by going a bit wrong, you could only sympathise with them and put it down to the burden of being named Devious. If the heroine is called Pure Sweetangel, and her childhood pal is called Creepy Nastypants, any normal reader is going to be expecting that Creepy will turn out a bit of a rotter.

That’s the problem with naming characters – they shouldn’t look like an author named them, they should look as if their parents named them. Because that’s how people get named – by their parents. In other words, if your heroine is a sweet, simple girl, but her parents are pretentious jerks, then she won’t have a sweet simple name, but a pretentious jerky one. If she doesn’t, then you’ve got to explain why not (sweet simple godmother picked the name, family name handed down to every third daughter that’s left-handed, whatever).

Name your character the way a person is named, and then your character will seem like a person, not a character. Because no good reader wants to read a book peopled by characters. And you should only be writing for good readers. Bad readers have enough authors writing for them already.