Do you check your character names?

[Mayzshon]

While I've googled character names after the fact. In fact after reading your post, I just went a googled a couple of them.
But I don't worry about whether or not they share a name with a real person. Heck, I have the same name as another author on Amazon, so I can't very well expect more from my characters.

[VydorScope]

Well shoot, I never thought of that! The main character in volume 2 of my series is named "James," do you think I should check with Google or is that okay?

I do not, for the reasons mentioned above. I would try to avoid any really famous names like "Harry Potter" or "Sherlock Holmes" and one of my pre-readers suggested I change one of my villains names which was "Yorik."

For KEY characters / titles/ etc that are made up I will Google to see if it comes close to anything, just to avoid name association.

[Mayzshon]

Heh, I've actually named a character Yorick. Though it was on purpose,his fate lends itself to a joke involving a Shakespearean quote.

[rsand27]

Never really looked to see if the names matched real people. I have looked up first names in the baby name books to see what they mean. I was surprised actually by my first book, because I looked the names up after it was long finished and they matched the characters well.

In my second book I deliberately used famous names of powerful men for the first and middle name of the main character: Augustus the first emperor of Rome, and James, the British king. His last name is Tabernacle, which I didn't look up and just used it because I thought it was funny sounding which might make it memorable. I usually just pick first names that I personally like and would name my own kids if I had any.

[efindel]

Nope. After growing up with a "Jim Smith", and going to a school that had two "Travis Johnson"s, I knew that two people having the same name isn't that rare at all. Plus, even if I did do a search, there's no guarantee that not finding a match online means the name is "clear" -- a lot of people still aren't online, or go by nicknames or aliases online.

[HistoryWes]

I always check my names. In Blood Trade, the name I had chosen for my main bad guy turned out to be the name of a character in a movie that I had never seen-- and both characters were cops. I changed it. Sometimes I will use historic names if I have a character with a notable trait or profession. For instance, if I have a minor character who is a biologist, I might give him the same last name as a famous biologist from the 1800s.

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by efindel

Nope. After growing up with a "Jim Smith", and going to a school that had two "Travis Johnson"s, I knew that two people having the same name isn't that rare at all. Plus, even if I did do a search, there's no guarantee that not finding a match online means the name is "clear" -- a lot of people still aren't online, or go by nicknames or aliases online.

If you use common names in your book, like John, Mike, etc then there is no point in checking. If you use "alien" names, or other "unique" names you might want to check. You might come up with a cool name for the hero of your story, and choose something like Drizzt Do'Urden and well... Google it.

If you and I both have a Mike Johnson in our stories no one will care, but if we both have Drizzt Do'Urden that would raise some eyebrows I bet.

[EileenG]

I check my names, to see if they belong to someone famous, or are already characters in well-known books.

SF is easier, you can make up names, and as long as they are easy to read and pronounce, you can get away with it. But with historicals, you need to be very careful that someone of that name wasn't active in that period, because people who read historicals will know that stuff.

[EileenG]

Nothing to do with writing really, but fun. Take your made-up SF name, put it into google, let it auto-correct, and see who it brings up. I found some really sexy Spanish hunks that way. With no inhibitions about nudity either.

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by EileenG

Nothing to do with writing really, but fun. Take your made-up SF name, put it into google, let it auto-correct, and see who it brings up. I found some really sexy Spanish hunks that way. With no inhibitions about nudity either.

I think I will pass on that suggestion...

[EileenG]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

I think I will pass on that suggestion...

You don't know what you're missing.

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by EileenG

You don't know what you're missing.

Prefer to keep it that way...

[nigel p bird]

As a rule, it's not something I do. It did occur to me once, though, when I wrote a piece about a character called Smokey Arbroath. It's the reversal of a dried-fish name in Scotland and it seemed a bit obvious.

I was surprised that it hadn't been used and was more surprised when I had to cut him from the story altogether at the re-writing stage. That'll teach me to be prepared.

[efindel]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

If you use common names in your book, like John, Mike, etc then there is no point in checking. If you use "alien" names, or other "unique" names you might want to check. You might come up with a cool name for the hero of your story, and choose something like Drizzt Do'Urden and well... Google it.

If you and I both have a Mike Johnson in our stories no one will care, but if we both have Drizzt Do'Urden that would raise some eyebrows I bet.

The chance of a "naming collision" (to use a computer term) when using made-up names is, however, much lower than with real names. Further, if you're writing in a genre, you should be doing your research about that genre -- which would mean being familiar with the major characters of the genre.

Being familiar with the major characters does more than simply let you avoid naming collisions -- it lets you choose names to bring up associations in your readers' heads. For example, in his "Lord Darcy" stories, Randall Garrett named a character who was a wizard "Sir Lyon Gandolphus Grey", knowing full well that readers would recognize the reference... and that that reference would set up certain expectations about the character.

Another instance is in Rick Cook's "Wizardry" series, where an evil sorcerer is named "Toth-Set-Ra". To anyone familiar with Conan, that reference sets up a number of things about the character.

Depending on the genre you're writing in, even "common names" can be things you might want to avoid. If you're writing a spy novel, you might want to avoid naming your protagonist "James" or any variant thereof, for example. If you're familiar with the genre, you'll know that... and if you're not, you probably shouldn't be writing a novel in the genre.

Even with familiarity and Google, though, you can still wind up with someone else giving a character a similar name. To give a real-world example, Jim Butcher's "Dresden Files" series wound up with a lot of comparisons to Harry Potter, because they're both wizards named Harry. When Butcher began writing the series, though, the first Harry Potter book hadn't been published yet, so even a Google search for "wizard harry" wouldn't have saved him from the comparisons.

[VydorScope]

Actually I do have a James in one of my books... who is in intelligence. "James" by itself does not trip anyone's alarms, cause its too common. Now if I called him James Bong or something that would be different Of course if that is your intention, as was Gandolphus, then that is a different creature entirely.