Minis #3: The Conundrums of Naming Characters

I dub thee: Harper and Fanny and Adie and Eliza

The Minis is a series for paid subscribers: espresso-shot posts about writing, reading or the book industry. Readers are welcome to suggest topics for this series.

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A jar of pickled peppers. Photo by Ruslan Khmelevsky via Pexels.

Many thanks to Chris Morgan for suggesting a “Mini” on character names.

The dubious amount of time writers spend on baby-naming sites has become a motif when we talk about our process online. I even joked about it on Threads recently: “I spent seven hours working on a new book today and only one of those seven was spent choosing the name of the dog.” Not my best work but perfectly true.

Was an hour on a dog’s name worthwhile? Only because of the six I’d spent on the story itself. I wonder how long Beatrix Potter took to come up with Peter Rabbit for her Tale of Peter Rabbit, self-published in 1901. Given that she had a rabbit called Peter when she was a child, probably not long. She kept it straightforward and personal — maybe there’s a lesson for us when it comes to naming characters for children. Simple and self-explanatory. Many highly successful characters and series continue to bear this out: The Bad Guys (Wolf, Mr Piranha, Mr Snake, Mr Shark), The Real Pigeons (Rock, Frillback, Tumbler, Homey), Captain Underpants, Billie B Brown.