Pollage

[icepixie]

A poll! Brought about by my inability to come up with a good name for a character in something I'm writing. I think I like science fiction and fantasy because usually you can make up your own frickin' names, instead of thinking of a good one (or finding a good one on a list somewhere) and then going, "Ack, one of my friends/relatives/pets/stuffed animals is named that, and it would be weird!"

Maybe that's just me. Hence, poll.

[Poll #827840]

Comments

[spockette.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't tend to name a character after somebody I knew unless there was a very good reason. When writing the character, I would end up picturing the person whom I named the character after instead of the character.

[missizzy]

Everyone in my original Two Monarchs series gets their name from somewhere on the internet, be it a friend, a vague acquantiance, a writer I admire, or the name attached to the mailing-list message that came into my Inbox just when I was deciding that I needed this character named *right now.* ;-) Though unusual names I usually do variances on. Read it and you'll spot your own name.

[wildtiger7.livejournal.com]

I don't usually use the names of people I know in stuff I write, just because it rarely occurs to me to do so. I enjoy making up my own random names (I should never be allowed to name children. Ever.).

[alto2.livejournal.com]

I'm not really sure how to answer your poll because I'm not clear on the name context. Are we talking full name? I would never do that as much because of privacy issues as anything else. But I see no reason to avoid naming a character Sarah, for instance (my best friend's name). For one thing, I like the name a lot, and have for longer than I've known her, and for another, it's not like using the name has to mean that the character is anything like her--after all, there are plenty of other people in the world named Sarah ;) If I knew she was likely to read it, I might ask if she had any objection, and probably explain that the character would or wouldn't be like her in certain ways but that it's no kind of comment on her, but I wouldn't lose sleep over it, or anything.

Mostly, though, my characters tend to tell me what they want to be called. And lemme tell ya, sometimes they pick doozies. I've got a Jerome in the novella I'm working on. I kept trying to come up with something better, but Jerome just wouldn't go away, so...Jerome it is. I've learned better than to fight too much with my characters--they tend to be both insistent and smarter than me.

[elflore.livejournal.com]

I totally use names of people I know in my writing. Torrance, for instance, is based on my old friend Dave Torrance. Who is in fact an authentic Scotsman, though he'd lost his accent long before I met him and never would let me hear what it had sounded like. *snerk*

[rowdycamels.livejournal.com]

Heh. When I was in Kluge's class, I accidentally gave one of my characters the same name as one of the guys in my class. (Hey, Kluge's fault for insisting on hollering at us by last names only.) Worst part: the character was... a dog. Oops...