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003: First Name Basis

When I was younger, I wanted to be Steve. Not a specific Steve, just a Steve. It seemed a much cooler name than the one that I have, and, in my dreams, I was Steve. Too many years of pulp novels infected my youth and my heroes were always steely-eyed with unshaven jaws chiseled out of stone. They always managed to have their shirts torn off and were never deterred by pain. You know, "Steve."

"Mark" was always the side-kick, the short guy with glasses who knew how to do bypass complex security systems with eighteen keystrokes and could decipher ancient hieroglyphs in about fifteen minutes. They always had hair that never behaved and perpetually had at least one button that never quite stayed clasped. They moped while Steve got the girl.

Pulp heroes always have monosyllabic names, filled with hard consonants which cause the villains to spray spittle as they chew on their nemesis' name. John Carter. Dirk Pitt. Nick Fury. Doc Savage. John McClane. Clark Kent. Lamont Cranston.

Ah, that last one is an alias. See? No one would suspect that he was The Shadow. Not with a name like that.

This is how a life of pulp novels will leave its mark on a young psyche. I'm okay with my Christian name now, ever since I discovered that Mark is a variation of Mars, God of War, while Steve can be traced back to some poor bastard of a first century martyr who was stoned to death. I've never asked my parents why they chose Mark, figuring that any ulterior motive on their part has passed its expiration date by now and I'm making my own destiny with the name. And I'm not about to have a mid-life crisis and join the armed forces to realize the inherent violence of my namesake.

Our characters, however, can be molded by their names. We don't have to wait twenty years for them to grow into the history of their nomens; we get to build that legacy into them the instant we cull them from the herd. Names are important. You're going to be spending a lot of time with these people running around your head; you may even talk to them in the bathroom when you think no one else is around.

"A" names are red shirts for me. I find myself defaulting to "Arthur" when I'm on the spot for a name. Why I don't go with "Adam" I'm not sure. It may be too obvious. Characters with "A" names don't last long. My wife teaches junior high school and I hear her and her fellow teachers discussing names. There are certain names which they all agree would be horrible to name their children. They have up to a hundred kids that they teach every year, and time and again they've discovered that kids with specific names just never add up to much. Too many bad seeds by the same name can spoil it forever.

You can get about a hundred hits on Google with "baby names" and most of them use the same data. They aren't worth much of your time. This random name generator uses census data as its database. You can adjust the obscurity level of the choices and, with the flip of a button, can get a list of a hundred names. It is certainly easier than paging through the phone book. And more exotic.

Go. Find names for your characters. Find your new pseudonym. I'll be right behind you.

Posted by Teppo at October 21, 2002 04:53 PM

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