Imaginative Character Names
What do you do with all that junk email that pours in day after day? You’re not wasting your spam, are you?!
Next time, before you hit that delete button, take a glance and who those cosmetic pharmacy emails are from, and you might find some inventive new character names. Many authors espouse such traditional sources as baby name lists and high school year books. Bor-ing.
Where else but your junk mail folder will you find such gems as Isidora Halley, Augustine Castro, Fancisca K. Davison, and Clifford Castaneda?
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
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How funny! A month after I wrote this blog post, another author published a similar article. I guess great minds think alike. Here's the more recent article:
This article first appeared in the February 2007 issue of Silken Sands, the newsletter of the Gulf Coast Chapter Romance Writers. Article may be used by other RWA® chapters with proper credit to author and chapter.
What's SPAM Got To Do With It?
(Naming Your Characters)
by Nita Shoemaker
We all hate it -- SPAM! Every day you log onto your email and see dozens of messages from people who are a) trying to sell you something, or b) trying to invade your computer with a virus. What's a person to do?
Once I reconciled myself to the fact that there was no escape from SPAM -- not even with sophisticated blocking programs that cost a small fortune -- I wondered if I could put SPAM to good use.
I noticed that the senders usually had inventive names -- like Abigail Ramirez. Sounded like an English-Spanish heroine who was waiting to be rescued from a tower in Cadiz by our handsome hero. Well, maybe not, but then and there, it dawned on me that SPAM didn't have to be a bad thing. I could find something useful to do with it -- I could use it to name my characters.
I opened a notepad and copied those pesky first and last names. When the list reached three hundred or so, I started limiting myself to only copying names one day a week. This gives me plenty of ideas when I'm looking for a distinctive name for a character. Sometimes I use both names; sometimes I mix them up.
But wait a minute! Is this legal? Can I really use a spammer's email pseudonym to name a character? I didn't consult a lawyer but I figured what the spammers were doing was about as legal as me taking names and creating characters. After all, if they didn't want to lend their names to bold heroines and hunky heroes, they wouldn't be sending me all that SPAM, would they?
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