Harnessing the Power of Names

In fiction, well-chosen names can hook the reader's interest, telegraph information, and set a tone--all in a capitalized word or two. No one names her people and places with more skill and humor than J.K.Rowling. Her hero and his allies are ordinary people with ordinary names: Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger. (Yes, Hermione’s a complicated name, at least for American readers, but then Hermione’s a complicated girl!)

Contrast the names of the hopelessly incompetent: Cornelius Fudge, as effective at fighting evil as a piece of soft candy. Dudley, Petunia, and Vernon Dursley--I don't know why certain words just sound stupid, but Dursley is surely one of them! They live in Little Whinging (that's a soft g, from whinge, Britspeak for complain).  Nearly Headless Nick, who couldn't even manage to lose his entire head.

Rowling often uses names to suggest evil or danger, sometimes deliberating misleading us to create suspense.  Lord Voldemort, The Name That Must Not Be Said,  means "flight of death" in French, though you don't have to know French to recognize the suggestion of death. Severus Snape of Slytherin positively hisses. The Dementors threaten insanity. Draco Malfoy's name, with its hard consonants and its every syllable accented, sounds like the curses he hurls, while his flunkies, Crabbe and Goyle, are merely pests. Bellatrix is a beautiful but diabolical woman (“bella” can mean “beautiful” or “warlike”—or in this case, both) who is always threatening “trix”). Lupin's name suggests "lupus," Latin for wolf.

On the lighter side, Professor Sprout teaches herbology, and Professor Flitwick teaches charms. Rita Skeeter is as pesky as a mosquito. Gilderoy Lockhart bears a marquee name, perfect for the diva he is.

I especially love the names that mimic traditional English places, like The Leaky Cauldron Pub and Flourish and Blots stationers; the puns, like Diagon Alley, and the parodies of two-part academic titles, some with double entendres like Broken Balls: When Fortunes Turn Foul.

Cat Weatherill, another British writer for children, also tells us something about her characters through their poetic names. Barkbelly is a wooden boy; Snowbone his friend who often protects herself with aloofness. Moontar is a sailor on a flying ship (“tar” is a nautical term for sailor). In Pumbleditch, a rural town where life is simple, the boys have names like Moth, Dipper, Log, Fish, Brick, and Sock. The girls are Candy Pie, Sweet Pea, and Freckle. But special characters have special names: The lovely high-wire circus artist who hypnotizes her audience is named Gossamer, and the master of the circus is the exotic Carmenero.

But my favorite laugh-out-loud names comes from a picture book about a family not unlike The Munsters. In  Patricia Polacco’s The Graves Family, Mom is named Shalleaux Graves.

Children's writers are lucky to have an audience that can still appreciate playfulness with names. But even in adult writing, the more subtle connotations of names, or just their sounds, can be useful: think Scarlett O'Hara, Steven Daedalus, Holden Caulfield, Scout Finch (= to hunt for a bird), Huckleberry Finn, Lolita, Garp. Sometimes a character by any other name would not be the same character.

Even unimportant names--of items, streets, songs, food, books--can add interesting flecks to the fabric we weave as we write a story or elucidate a point. In his essay "Trickster in a Suit of Lights," Michael Chabon, one of our most brilliant contemporary writers, drops names like casually scattered jewels along the path of his sentences:

"Entertainment has a bad name....It gives off a whiff of Coppertone and dripping Creamsicle, the fake-butter miasma of a movie-house lobby, of karaoke and Jagermeister, Jerry Bruckheimer movies, a Street Fighter machine grunting solipsistically in the corner of an ice-rink arcade." Chabon could certainly have been more succinct--"Entertainment is just cheap thrills"--but it wouldn't have been nearly as interesting or evocative.  See below for an example from fiction.