Welcome to Tuesday Book Chat. This is where we encourage book lovers to answer our bookish question of the week.
Today’s question is:
Do you ever find yourself taken out of a novel because of a character’s name?
We look forward to hearing your thoughts. Please join in the conversation by commenting on this post or on the blog post shared in our Australasian Christian Writers Facebook Group.
Let’s chat!
Narelle here (filling in for Jenny). I will be tempted to DNF (did not finish) a book if the main characters have names that are distracting me from the story. I’m not a fan of romances that have the hero and heroine with similar sounding names, or names that start with the same letter (the downside of speed reading). Unless there’s a good reason for the name choices. Liwen Y. Ho’s hilarious romcom, Love at Second Sight, is full of cute puns. The hero, who is a movie star, is Brad Bitt. The character name is memorable for a bunch of reasons, and the alliteration in his name works. I also like to able to hear the name in my mind, even if the pronunciation with an Aussie accent is wrong, lol. I like it when authors include how to say unusual names as part of the story.
Your turn.
I look forward to reading your comments here or at the FB group. Remember all comments go into the monthly drawer for a gift voucher.
I don’t put a book down because of characters’ names, but I do get irritated when there are similar-sounding names or ones that start with the same letter. I don’t get why authors do it because it just makes me confused about which character is in the scene I’m reading. I’ll imagine it’s one character, realise it’s the other one then have to go back and re-read the scene.
Hi Suzie, I don’t know why they do it, either. Sometimes (in the case of Liwen’s books) it’s done for a specific reason and it works. Her Spark Brothers series has the hero and heroine in book 1 with names starting with A, book 2 their names start with B etc. They’re different sounding names that didn’t trip me up in the story. It’s frustrating when we have to reread scenes – that’s when I’m likely to DNF the book if I’m not invested in the story. Thanks for commenting. 😊
Names I can’t pronounce or work out frustrate me I will try to sound them out (like taught to when learning to read) but at times have no idea and often create my own name. I too like when the author says how its pronounced. I always remember a book by Susan Page Davis, the girls name was a German name and very early one when she was introduced to someone she said how it was pronounced with a sounds like which really helped. But there are others I have no idea.
Its only happened once but seeing my own name in a book made me look unlike many I don’t want to be a character in a book. The same happened when a character had the same name as one of dad’s sisters who died at 15 and it would have been the name of my older sister is she had lived. After the initial shock it was fun seeing this lady as she was a fiesty older lady. But books where the names area all unusual tend to take longer to read. (If the name of a hero was the name of my bully I wouldn’t be able to read the book but thankfully his last name is Polish)
Hi Jenny, I can’t remember reading a book with Narelle as a character name. It’s interesting how we can have strong real life positive and negative associations with names. Jaycee Weaver explained how to pronounce an unusual name in one of her books – of course, when I later mentioned the book at StoryChats I couldn’t remember the right pronunciation, lol. 😊
and Americans pronounce differently to us (Like Tara here its a hard A and america its more like an e )
I think I have seen a Narelle but not with your last name too. There are lots of Jenny’s or Jennifers but only one was Jenny Blake.
American pronunciations are tricky because of regional differences in their accent. Jenny/Jennifer is a popular name in books and real life.
Very rarely. If there are too many POVs, I can get tripped up whose head I’m in, but names don’t normally bother me.
Hi Dienece, I really struggle with head hopping between POV’s within scenes. Years ago, when head hopping was kind of normal in the romance genre, it didn’t bother me. I don’t mind multiple points of view in a story if each character has a distinct voice and I can recognise the POV without being pulled out of the story to check the names. Thanks for commenting. 😊
At least those of you writing contemporary stories have a lot of freedom in the names you choose. I write historically accurate Roman-era when there were very rigid naming conventions and your name had lots of information about your social position embedded in it. To help readers understand why the names are what they are in my stories, I have a little introduction to Roman naming rules before the cast of characters in these adventures. If you want to understand a little of the restrictions on authors writing in this time period, here’s the excerpt explaining some of the rules I have to follow.
Here’s the most challenging of all: If they were all the first-born sons, the names of grandfather, father, son, and grandson would all be identical. So, sometimes to make my life easier, I kill off the first-born son before the story starts.
The rules for naming a Roman citizen were well defined, leaving little
room for creativity but revealing a lot about the person and their relations.
The Roman familia is the Roman family unit consisting of the
paterfamilias, his married and unmarried children regardless of age, his
son’s children, and his slaves. Wives and freed slaves (freedmen) are
sometimes included in the familia.
Romans took names and what they said about family connections very
seriously. The three-part name (like Manius Flavius Sabinus) meant you
were a Roman citizen of the clan Flavius and family Sabinus. Using a three-
part name if you weren’t a citizen was actually a crime. Which name of the
three you called someone depended on the closeness of your relationship.
There were only twenty male first names in common use, and one-in-five
Romans was named Gaius. Only close friends and immediate family called
you by your first name. Others used your last name, both your second and
third names when being formal, and sometimes your first and third names.
When a male slave was freed by a citizen so he became a citizen, too, he
took the first and second names of his former owner with his slave name
added as his third name. Women were named the feminine form of their
father’s clan and family names. Married women kept their maiden names
because they stayed part of their father’s familia, not their husband’s.
Hi Carol, yes, historical is very different to contemporary. I enjoy reading historical fiction and learning about these types of things. Thanks for sharing some of the complex rules for character names during Roman times. 😊