The Game of the Name

By 

Alan Nolan

One of my favourite things about writing and illustrating books is that, as well as coming up with stories and plots, writing snappy dialogue and inventing quirky characters, I actually get to give my characters names.

                                  

I’ve always appreciated a good character name, and I’ve always loved how the best ones seem to sum up and encapsulate the character of the, um, character.

Charles Dickens did this best with character names like Bumble, the large, uniformed, officious beadle from Oliver Twist, the evil teacher Wackford Squeers from Nicholas Nickleby, and that miserly, tight-fisted hand at the grindstone himself, Ebenezer Scrooge. The essence of each character is there in the name.

The novelist John Irving has the same gift for interesting and spot-on character names: Homer Wells and Fuzzy Stone from The Cider House Rules, T.S. Garp from The World According to Garp (The T.S. stands for Technical Sergeant, his father’s rank in the US Army), Bogus Trumper from The Water Method Man, and the perfectly monikered Owen Meany from A Prayer for Owen Meany (Owen is a small chap with a shrill voice who ALWAYS SPEAKS IN UPPER CASE CAPITAL LETTERS).

When I’m naming characters, I try to pull off the same trick: to give them a name that captures their disposition, their nature, their temperament, their physical stature – to condense their very soul into two or three words. Or at least to saddle them with a name that gives me a laugh.

The main character in my book Death By Chocolate is Marcel Petit-Pois, a bumbling idiot of a Swiss detective who couldn’t solve a crime to save his life. His name was suggested by Agatha Christie’s Poirot, and as Petit-Pois is an outsize fool who believes he is clever, I named him after the French for ‘little pea’. His clever and inventive chimp sidekick Tesla is named after the inventor Nikola Tesla. I also thought Tesla was a perfect name for a girl!

The two detectives in Destination: Homicide are Nixon and Ribbs. Ricky Nixon is a gung-ho, right wing guns enthusiast, so what better name to give him than the one he shares with the disgraced US Republican president, Richard Nixon. Eddie Ribbs is a porky policeman, named after one of my favourite restaurants (Eddie Rockets), as well as one of my favourite barbecue foods. I had great fun naming superheroes in this one (forty two, altogether!), the most amusing for me being a villain with the charming title of The Poxx.

Marion ‘Mick’ Mulligan in …And The Blood Flowed Green was named after movie cowboy John Wayne’s real name, Marion Morrison. As the book is a bit of a Space Western I thought a cowboy’s name would suit him, and I was delighted to find out that John Wayne, the hardest man on the silver screen during the 60s and 70s was originally called Marion. Just like the kid in the old song A Boy Named Sue, both John ‘Marion’ Wayne and Marion ‘Mick’ Mulligan ‘Had to fight their whole life through’.

Little Tom in The Big Break Detectives Casebook shares a first name (and a scarf) with the inimitable Tom Baker, my favourite Doctor Who. I wanted Little Tom to be kooky like Tom Baker’s Doctor, and also to have vast pockets stuffed with jelly babies, yoyos, balls of string and other sundry bits and bobs that may come in handy when solving mysteries.

Sometimes I give characters names that resonate with me on a personal level. In my latest book, Fintan’s Fifteen, Fintan Lonergan is named after a girl I went to college with (the Lonergan part, not the Fintan!) who was a very positive person with a lot of get-up-and-go, just like Fintan in the story. Ollie the dog is named after my brother’s dog, who sadly died last year. (My brother has requested that the second book in the Fintan series feature a doggie girlfriend for Ollie called Red, after my brother’s current hound.) The narrator, Ray ‘Rusty’ Arantes, is named after Pelé, the great Brazilian footballer, whose family name was Arantes, and Katie ‘Dinger’ Bell is named after my niece, Katie, and the Bell family who used to live down the road from us – the head of the household was known to one and all as Dinger.

In recent years I have taken to carrying around a small notebook with me to note down story ideas as they occur to me, snatches of conversation that tickle me, and list and lists (and lists) of potential character names. So, if I ever meet you and you have an interesting name, beware – you may just end up in my next book!

Alan will be appearing on Sat 13th Sept @10.30am for his Superhero Show - Comic Book Fun for All the Family. Book now!