I’d love to hear other novelists and short story writers discuss their reasons for selecting the names they apply to the figures in their stories.
For that matter, I’d love to hear readers’ reactions. Like what’s your favorite connection there?
I’ve avoided using names of people I’ve known well. Surprisingly, it became a problem especially in my ashram novel where the best Sanskrit names had already been given to my fellow residents. Elsewhere, it eliminates a wide swath of common names, starting with John, James, Robert, Thomas, and William for males. Or Jack, Jimmy, Bobby, Tommy, and Billy, more colorfully.
Had I known they wouldn’t be reading my work anyway, maybe I should have used the names and left people guessing. I’ve tried to be gentle, though, and perhaps that’s a weakness.
Though I’m not one to apply nicknames in everyday life, I have found them useful in my fiction. As examples, I’ll offer “Big Pumpkin” and “Elvis” for the swami in Yoga Bootcamp.
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There’s also the matter of which figures get named and which ones can pass through unnamed. We don’t want to tangle a reader, do we?
A major consideration in revising my output was an attempt to reduce the number of named characters. For a big book, like the five-generation span of What’s Left or the four-year college life of Daffodil Uprising or the burgeoning social life of Kenzie in Pit-a-Pat High Jinks, this was a challenge.
I did find myself shading Greek tradition in What’s Left: repetition of a name within a family is common but would have been utterly confusing here.
As an alternative, I tried to limit some to a single chapter, treating it like a short story; when it was done, so were they.
Jnana's Red Barn 