What's in a (hero's) name?

When I was a kid, this was my favorite verse in the Bible:
"And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof."

Oh, man, I wanted that gig! What a trip, to choose just the right word to capture the nature of each animal. Panther. Shark. Wildebeest. Naked Mole Rat. None of this "emu" nonsense. No "least terns." I would have nailed them and done it in English, which Adam probably didn’t use back in the day.

Anyhow, I’ve always believed that to name a child, or a pet, or a car, is to embrace its uniqueness and infuse it with something of ourselves. It’s no accident that my pets have all been named for literary figures. In a small way, I am honoring my favorite authors and characters.

Fact is, names have been important to humans since God delegated the task of choosing them to one of us. In some cultures, people have even used false names and kept secret their true ones, believing that anyone who possessed their identity held power over them. But the real secret to the power of names is this: the creature reveals who it is, and the namer must discover the word or words that evoke its essence.

Authors relearn this every time we start a book and confront the vague entities that waft in to populate our newly created world. We have a few practical guidelines, to be sure. Historical accuracy, more or less. No Beyonce in the Renaissance. A name shouldn’t sound like another character’s name. Don’t start too many names with the same letter. After that, we’re pretty much on our own.

Hanging monikers on secondary characters is purely fun. Sometimes we hat-tip a friend or take revenge on someone who done us wrong. But things get serious and meaningful when the hero and heroine begin to materialize in our imaginations. Only the precise name will do, and in the early going, we usually have no clue what it is.

Relatively speaking, heroines are easy. All names are up for grabs, even really ugly-sounding ones. A heroine can get stuck with a name she hates (Hortensia), or one that is the polar opposite of her true nature (Prudence), or something plain (Jane) that belies the complexity of her character. The mostly female readers of romance novels identify with a heroine’s name challenges.

But when it comes to the hero, only the real name will do. The name that helps readers connect with the mysterious otherness of a powerful, competent, dangerous, and ultimately loving male. This male, because cookie-cutter heroes are a dime a dozen, and nobody’s buying them these days.

For starters, we must toss out half the listings in those "Traditional Male Names" books. Especially if we are wrestling with an alpha hero who refuses to be called Lloyd or Melvin or Bert. What’s more, we can’t give this guy the same name we gave the hero of an earlier book. That would be, like, incestuous. And I for one am up to my eyebrows with names like Wolf, Hawk, Raven, and all their fellow nest eggs or litter-mates.

Most of us wind up making lists of names that "feel" something like the character who is taking shape in our imaginations. We try them out during the fermenting stage, when we start to visualize the hero entering the story and relating to the other characters.

We test the sound of the name. Does it fit his body? His attitude? The way others perceive him? Is it redolent of myths and legends, symbols, heroic deeds? Is it warm, protective, strong without being too edgy? When we hear the name, do we sense the vibration of danger? Comfort? Brilliance? Kindness? Sexual power? Worldliness? Loneliness? Despair?

We try names on our hero. Sometimes one fits straightaway. But more often we watch him sluff off one after the other, which means we don’t really know him at all. The key, we eventually learn, is to let him reveal himself by what he says and does. He will lead us to the name that belongs to him.

And when he claims it, he becomes His Own Self, a completed individual who partners the author (or runs roughshod over her) as the story is written. Yes, the name has that much power. He is not some generic romance hero moving through the plot. He is who he is, and he helps create that plot, and sometimes, the lucky author just has to write down what he’s saying and doing. The same applies to the heroine, to be sure. It’s just that naming her is rarely such an ordeal.

If you’ve stuck with this post so far, you’re probably wondering why I’m blathering on about all this. Call it a case of Good Names Gone Bad. Or me having a Tragic Naming Accident. It can happen.

My hero-in-progress has arrived on the planet from a distant star system. That should make things easy for me. I can make up a name that sounds exactly right for this guy. Well, it can’t sound or look too weird if he runs up against Homeland Security, but there’s some flexibility here.

Even so, it was a long time before I got hold of his name. And it fit the image of the actor set on my computer as wallpaper, not because he is physically a replica of my character, but because he conveys the power and intensity I’m looking for.

Whenever I turned on the computer, I greeted the character by name and sent him down to the Girls in the Basement (my subconscious) to work on the story. And all was well and good, until I mentioned his name to a couple of fellow authors.

"You mean like that repellent little Draco from the Harry Potter books?"

"No!" declared I, plunging immediately into denial. "It’s Draeko. I spell it different. So there!"

But when I heard the same thing from the next author I spoke with about my splendid Draeko ji Kaya, I knew I was doomed. J.K. Rowling had hijacked my hero’s name. Authors can’t ignore the connotations that attach themselves to certain names, and I had not paid enough attention to the Potter series to notice Draco Malfoy.

So now I am bereft. And my alpha alien is wandering aimlessly through the dirty draft of my book, tagged with a temporary marker (jiK) while I seek to learn his true name.

If any of you have an inkling what it might be, please let me know!
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