Tuesday, May 17, 2011

What's in a name?

I think one of the most fun things about writing is naming things. We get to name our characters, the streets they live on, their family members and their pets.
While I have a niece and nephew I don't have my own kids so I really enjoy naming my characters.

Have you ever had this happen?

A few years ago I participated in my first NaNoWriMo. My MC was named Chloe. I didn't really talk about my story because I'm one of those protective people when it comes to my writing. Anyway seven months after NaNoWriMo wrapped up my niece was born. Her name is Chloe. I never talked about my story with my sister so I always thought this was a cool coincidence. I haven't done anything else with this story but I like to think if I worked on it again I would keep the name of the mc the same.


In my current wip, which I've been working on for a couple years now, my mc is named Hannah. Recently my dad got remarried to a woman who has a daughter named Hannia. Now Hannah and Hannia don't sound exactly the same but it was a little weird for me to write the name of my new step sister and have it be so close to my mc's name.

Has this happened to you? You settle on the perfect name for your MC only to have a family member come along with the same name? What do you do?

5 comments:

Alicia Gregoire said...

OMG, that's so weird!

I haven't had that problem, but I can't write a character that shares a name with someone I know.

NiaRaie said...

Yes! Or when you really like a character name but it turns out to be the name of a Person you're not fond of, and it becomes hard to separate the two? Yep, that's me.

Unknown said...

I haven't ha this happen but last year, after a long debate on changing a character's name, a girl got hired in that had the same name I'd just settled on. It's weird to hear people talking to or about her now. She's the polar opposite of my character. I thought about changing it again but it fits my character so well...

Christina Lee said...

OMG-no, not yet! you've got to embrace the coincidence!

Julie Flanders said...

I've never had this happen, but I can't believe what a coincidence it is! I think I would keep the Chloe name, that's really cool.

Isn't it fun to name characters? I love when a name just pops in your head and it seems perfect for the character. I sometimes have a terrible time coming up with last names for my characters, the first names are a lot more fun!