Let me help you out.
Your story has a dozen characters, an interesting setting, a complex and engaging plot. You’ve got it all. But you may have broken the most important character naming rule and left your readers confused and frustrated.
Rule Number One: Letter Number One
Orson Scott Card penned not only great books, but also great rules for writing. One of the first rules you should implement in naming your characters focuses on readability.
Card says:
First rule: No two characters in the same story can have their key name (i.e., the one most commonly referred to) start with the same letter or the same sound).
What does this mean?
Easy. Don’t have two characters with similar names like Mike, Matt, or Mitch. When we meet people with these names, we have all kinds of different ways to differ them. When reading, we only have the narration in the reader’s head and the words on the page.
I once considered writing a story about two brothers with similar names like this. I thought that their distinct personalities would make it easy for the reader to understand which character did what. In the end, it was pointless and unnecessary.
When a reader is blowing through your incredible book, most words are truly skimmed over. In this skimming, similar names can cause the reader to trip up. They have to go back a paragraph to re-read the section and understand if Matt said this or Mike did that.
The English language has a whole bunch of names, sounds, and letter pairings. Just follow this simple rule and you avoid making a simple, amateur mistake.
The Exceptions to the Rule
Woah, woah, woah. Mr Card, the esteemed author of Ender’s Game breaks this rule himself!
Peter Wiggin is the brother of titular character Ender Wiggin. Petra Arkanian is another character that plays an important role in the story.
Peter? Petra?
How come Card gets to do this, but suggests that others don’t? In fact, he makes it rule number one!
In this case, Peter and Petra play very different roles in the story. More importantly, in Ender’s Game, they never cross paths. There is no scene where Peter and Petra interact (this does not apply in later books of the series). The reader is never hopping between both names and risking that confusion.
Peter spends the entire story on Earth. He creates an identity online and works on manipulating the political system of the world with his sister Valentine. Petra is in battle school with Ender, leading armies and navigating the drama of the school.
While the names are similar, the reader would be quite amiss to read a scene involving Petra and realistically imagine Peter in her shoes.
Rule Number Two: Represent Cultures Accurately
There could be a lot said about this idea of representing cultures in regards to characters, plots, histories, and representation in literature. In this case of character names, Card recommends that writers follow the rules of cultures.
Different cultures have different names. Simple as that. Having a character from a less-represented culture named “John” is inauthentic and can harm the reading experience. More importantly, it fails to represent that culture of the character in the most basic way.
Those characters of other cultures should have names that represent those cultures. A character with Jewish ancestry should be named differently than a character of Egyptian ancestry. This is also an easy way as a writer to use elements of these cultures within our stories. Conflict can arise from misunderstandings between cultural backgrounds. Satisfying character evolution and resolutions can come from these conflicts.
Exceptions to the Rule
Of course, this is not a requirement in your story. In fact, it can feel inauthentic if it is shoehorned in. Also, if you don’t plan on using this character with true elements of their culture represented, then consider whether or not this character should exist in this form.
Sometimes, representing Rule Number Two can even cause you to break Rule Number One. I am working on one story that includes a tribe of people who worship a god who’s name begins with the letter K. Part of their culture is that all of their names also begin with the letter K.
How do you successfully accomplish this? A few ways:
- Refer to these multitude of K-names by incorporating their title or some alternate name into their world. The village Elder may be named Kelthorn and our main character may be named Keeli, but this problem can be mostly avoided if everyone refers to the Elder as “Elder”
- Do not introduce any other characters in your story with the letter K
- Introduce your main character as a fairly easy name “Keeli”, but side characters as more exotic names like “Kelthorn”
While this approach breaks the first rule, it establishes a few things to the reader. If you read a name that begins with the letter K, then you know where this part of the story takes place. The name you read the most is one that is easy to pronounce and remember. Lastly, it provides a reason that these names begin with the same letter. It’s a part of a culture that the reader will learn about through the story. These small touches to your world make it feel much deeper.