Hi, Jo Beverley here, pulling together an AAW. If you dont know, AAW is Ask A Wench, and the question this time is:
How do you come up with names for characters and places that feel
right for the place and period? What about titles, familiar names, and nicknames?
My answers would be similar to the other Wenches, but I'll add a bit at the end.
Anne I don't have any single way to choose names or titles. Sometimes they just come to me, sometimes I note a good name down in a little notebook when I come across it. For instance, Hewitt Featherby, the butler in my current series, was the name of an ancestor of a friend of mine. I heard it years ago, thought it was a great name, and then when my butler character popped up, I knew it was his name.
Ensuring that the title isn't current was a lesson learned early. In my second book, Tallie's Knight, I named the hero Lord Carrington -- but my English editor pointed out it was a current title and a former government minister, so I had tocome up with a new title. There is a champagne style in Australia called Carrington Blush (it's pink) so I moved to a different wine -- d'Arenberg (fabulous wine), only it sounded too German, so I changed it to d'Arenville, which I hoped sounded suitably Norman English. Mostly, however, I will trawl The Peerage site and will choose a name from there, or a title that's no longer in use.
Nicola. Choosing names can be a very knotty problem. When it comes to locations for my stories I've found I feel more comfortable inventing place names. So I will choose a real town or village to be the inspiration and then make up a name for it.
Fortune's Folly, in my Brides of Fortune series, was a town based on Harrogate in Yorkshire. In my current WIP I am writing about a real house called Littlecote but I am calling it Middlecote. That said, House of Shadows features Ashdown Park and I kept that name the same. That seemed to confuse a lot of
people who know the place, since some of the details are real and other are fictional.
For people it's even more tricky, I find. Sometimes I can be writing a book and feel that the main characters' names are wrong but I'm not sure what the right names are. I struggle on but it makes writing the book more difficult if the hero simply isn't a Gerald. Eventually the right names do pop up but it can take time. At other times they are obvious from the start. I always check them against my book of English Christian names, though, to make sure they were in use at the time. You can get away with surnames used as first names if they could convincingly be described as a family name but I could never name a heroine of a historical story Lacey, for example. That said, sometimes I have thought a name was anachronistic but when I checked it was older than I had thought.
On titles, I would never call a character after an existing peerage. That just feels wrong to me. But it's worth remembering that many titles are associated with place names and so the Earl of Sparrowhawk is going to sound wrong. I have fallen foul of this rule myself, though, because I like names such as Kestrel and Merlin!
Mary Jo Names are an ever-fertile source of interest! I use most of the same name books that Pat does, plus maps. I'm also one of those writers who really can't get moving with a book until I know the name of the protagonists. In my first historical, Dearly Beloved, I thrashed about until I realized the hero's name
was Gervase---a name I'd never really thought much about. But suddenly and inarguably, he was Gervase, and the book started rolling. I came up with the name Allison for the heroine in The Rake fairly easily, but it wasn't until I started typing that I realized she spelled it Alyson. Odd, that. As I write each book, I jot down names and descriptions of places and characters as I go along, but I have a tendency to stall whenever I have to come up with the name of a minor character like a butler. I have to think about it!
And I have a tendency to like certain names and have been known to repeat them. For example, the hero of my upcoming book, Once a Soldier, is Will Masterson. I also used Randall as the surname for another of my heroes in the Lost Lords series. Both men were already established with those names when I when I realized I'd used both Randall and Masterson in one of my contemporaries. Ooops!
Andrea/Cara: Names are hugely important to my stories—the Muse won’t talk to my characters unless she knows their names . . . oh, and did I mention that she refuses to recognize them as friends unless the names resonate with her? (Being a very proper lady, with strict drawing room manners, she never talks to strangers.) Sigh. The things we go through to please the Muse.
But in all seriousness, I feel names do shape a character. A Henry will be a very different sort of fellow from a Jack or a Gryffydd. I really enjoy leafing through some old English books on heraldry and family coats of arms that I’ve collected over the years at tag sales. I find a wealth of both first names and
surnames, as well as titles. (Though like other Wenches have mentioned, it’s best to avoid real ones—naming a character the Duke of Wellington or the Duchess of Devonshire is likely to be disconcerting to readers and pull them out of a story.) I think it’s important to have first names fit the historical period. In a Regency-set story, it’s probably best to avoid Dylan or Lauren.
It’s sometimes interesting to play with either last names as first names, or find an old variation of Scottish or Welsh name that might help give a background story to a hero or heroine. I also confess to having a little fun taking names from the buildings of my alma mater. There are a lot of wonderful old Gothic and Georgian structures with English names that fit the Regency very well. For example, the hero of “A Diamond In the Rough” is Adrian, Viscount Marquand . . . yes, there is a Marquand Chapel on campus! And Adrian is a very honorable, trustworthy fellow (though he does have some surprises up his sleeve.)
Now from me, Jo. I need the "right" name, or the character won't gel, and sometimes I have to flail around to get it. As first names were often not used by aristocratic men, sometimes I don 't know! I sometimes get asked for the first name of the duke of Ithorn, (from The Secret Duke) but as he was born the duke and is generally called Thorn familiarly, it never came up. I don't know. Braydon, the hero of my current book, The Viscount Needs a Wife, is Lord Dauntry, but prefers to go by Braydon. He's been known since boyhood as Beau Braydon, but as I wrote the book it became clear he didn't want anyone to know his given names. They have to come out in the marriage service.
In the back of the book is the beginning of the next book, with a heroine called Lady Barbara Boxstall, known as Babs. Alas, she's now Lady Ariana. Barbara/Babs felt right at first as it felt like a combative name, and she is. But she became too much so, so I gave her a softer name, and she lost her serrated edge. That's the thing about names!
After many books. nomes can become difficult, as I've used my favourites!
For titles, I usually look for place names in England , especially villages, and then play with them. As for places, I mostly make them up unless they play a major part in the story. It's hard to know what a place was like hundreds of years ago, especially if one visits. Major roads go through old parts of town, and sometimes in the process of preservation, buildings and features are moved! If it's important I can usually find old maps.
As a reader, do you care about whether character names suit the period?
Do you have favourites or ones you dislike?
Jo