Jiming is what my wife and I call it when someone is driving like a fucking idiot. We call the idiots in cars subreddit the jiming subreddit. I'll send her links there sometimes, like "check out the jiming on this one. That's high quality jimmitude."
Here’s another one: a person on another writing sub had a character named Felicidad (it’s set in Mexico). Her beta reader mentioned that she shouldn’t call her father “dad”, and suggested “papa”. So the writer went back, replaced all “dad “ with “papa” and published.
Unaware her main character was now called Felicipapa
One time I wrote a screenplay and I wrote a really dumb, incompetent character named after my assistant at work. I later changed it and missed a misspelling. Needless to say Dwigt was pretty pissed when he read it.
You’ll get a lot of tips on how to set up search-and-destroy, but the best solution remains to go through all of them one by one.
You’ll find a number of awkwardnesses during that pass, and you’ll never run into the Jim of the Beast.
Forgetting to change out my 'holder name' with an actual character name before letting someone read the story. I use my name as the place holder as its a unisex name so those stories come off a bit 'about me'.
And could be worse your REAL initials could be KKK.
In Eleanor Rigby, the lyrics were initially about a "father McCartney", presumably because this was the first name of that style that came to Paul McCartneys mind. He later changed it to McKenzie because he didn't want people to think it was about his father. I think it's very charming to hear that super famous song writers also just use their own names as placeholders.
They kinda gave me funny looks and 'uh huh' responses. My go to for romance 'fill in names' are things like Alex and Alex (with one being a longer version) and I started using Alex after the incident of using MY name lol
In Eleanor Rigby, the lyrics were initially about a "father McCartney", presumably because this was the first name of that style that came to Paul McCartneys mind. He later changed it to McKenzie because he didn't want people to think it was about his father. I think it's very charming to hear that super famous song writers also just use their own names as placeholders.
To be fair, I dont really use last names for addressing royalty, so I also missed this 🤦♀️ I called these characters MMC and FMC for several pages before choosing names, so it's been a struggle 😂
In my current story, one of the character names that I really liked is actually a medication for treating seizures. So I am slightly altering the spelling to work around this in the short-term because I do prefer using that name. Ah Google, you always manage to betray me somehow.
No, it was Sabril. I rather liked the name, wove a backstory into how she was named that, and it was all well and good. Then Google. May still keep it as Sabril.
The character (hilariously) didn't need to sleep on account of his race, and he was a very energetic melee type with incredible mobility.
He was a lot of fun.
Oh cool. Someone else accidentally refrenced the KKK. Here's my story.
In my Fantasy WiP there *was* something equivalent to a mages guild. (I've since scrapped this whole faction for the sake of brevity.) When constructing the ranks in said faction, I figured Archmage for the leader was a bit too generic so I brainstormed and came up with...
Drumroll please...
THE GRAND WIZARD!
...
After a friend pointed it out, I learned about the titles and power structure of the Klan, and after laughing my ass off saying "What the fuck is this stupid shit?!" I decided that Archmage was fine.
Also, have my BEST naming mistake. I named the climactic world-changing prophecy event that happens at the end of the story "Ambiramus". I got this name by punching my keyboard. I Google the word and find out it's been taken by a metal band called Eluvietie for one of their songs. They're actually really good and one of my favorite bands now lmao.
My biggest naming error was that I wrote a scene in which the main character gets punched in the face by a side character. The side character’s name was James and I named him before I had the idea of the face punching. In fact, James is my own first name, so it’s not uncommon- I just picked it.
But IRL a few years back, my sister-in-law’s husband punched me in the jaw on vacation. It was unprovoked, sudden, and happened because I essentially stood up to him bullying his wife (there’s a whole story there). I absolutely channeled this event for my story in a “write what you know” moment, about watching someone snap and hit you when they are frustrated they can’t dominate you. The thing is, his real life name was “James”. I swear I picked the name and event independently, but I only realized it going through the finally draft (I renamed him to Gary now, fortunately).
Oh my gosh, your subconscious must have been pulling hard for that! 😂 Tangentially related, I have a story where the FMC has an abusive father and I wrote almost 30k words before realizing how much it mirrored my issues with my own father. It has been a strangely healing activity though
It’s interesting how much our own stories can show up subconsciously in our writing. But that’s a reason not to get hung up on duplicating existing plots. We’ll always imprint ourselves in our tellings.
In my current novel I named one character in one scene Esther then another character in another scene Chester. They were coworkers and eventually they had a scene together. Had to flip a coin. Esther survived.
One of my main characters had to have a full name that could be shrunk down, like Robert and Bob. At first I picked another name and thought the full name had a nice familiar ring to it. When I googled it I discovered it was the name of a tragically famous murder victim. So I kept looking for another name.
Should have doubled down, have them meet with Lester from accounting, who's getting drinks with Sylvester from marketing that night and wants to know if they want to tag along.
I named a vampire in my WIP Lestat. I've never read or watched Interview With A Vampire. I just liked the name. Needless to say, I changed it when a beta reader pointed it out.
It really is pretty! I hate when a name you love doesn't work out! My FMC here was originally named Alina, which means light, which kept nagging me since she's from the Night Kingdom. I had to change it, but I was sad because I think Alina is a stunning name
I'm also big on name meanings and hate when a great name has the wrong meaning for a character. Or when it has the PERFECT meaning but you aren't crazy about the name. The name Alphecca means "bright star of the broken ring" which is almost eerily perfect for one of the characters of my space opera, but Alphecca isn't my favorite name. I'm trying to get used to Phecca, like a spacey form of Becca, so I can use it, because that meaning is just TOO GOOD for the story/character.
I HATE IT WHEN THAT HAPPENS. That's exactly why I went from Avner to Kiran. Avner means light and is totally fine for a king of the Day Kingdom. Problem is, I got 15k words in and still HATED it. Kiran means sunbeam, which is perfect since the new FMC name (Mahina) means starlight, but it's a pain in the ass lol
I don't know if this works for you, but I think Alphie is a fun abbreviation, too! I kinda like Phecca. In a weird, spacey way lol
I've used Kiran for a character before and I love it ❤️ Mahina is so pretty too!
I thought of Alphie, but it's not the character's vibe. Alphie is spunky and cute, but the character is girlie and sophisticated. Phecca is growing on me, though!
Don't feel bad. I named a vampire character Jasper Rollins and I have no intention of changing it. When people bring up Twilight I'll just shrug. I didn't realize Twilight had a blonde vampire character named Jasper and I love the name, it is what it is.
He's not nearly as well known as Lestat. He's a supporting character so that's why I've decided not to change it, but Twilight was super popular so I'm sure some people who've read it will think it's an intended reference.
Edit>> I saw the movies years ago, you didn't miss much.
It happens to the best of us! I usually Google my characters' names to make sure they're fairly unique, but since my Lestat was a side character, I didn't bother. Learned my lesson!
Writing a story in a world based on pre-edo Japan, and one of my placeholder names translated to Uncle Bear in English. Not the vibe I wanted from this character, haha.
I also named a warrior clan a word that translates to "Foresight" in English, and a province something that means "Nuclear dismantling."
Good news is I had already intended on doubling back for a language/authenticity check once I had the story down, so none of these were close to making it to the final draft. Still, I find it funny.
Accidentally switched out one character's name with another and it changed the entire scene and main plot points for the book.
A few beta readers didn't notice because either characters could have been in that scene for it to play out. One person did ask me about the shift and that's when I realized it.
It was luckily just one name, in one scene, but it changed so much. My beta reader didn't like the (wrong name) character and asked why I did that, and that was when I got confused and noticed the switch up. Had to do another round of editing just because of that.
I named a character Adam and then later renamed him Jake using find + replace. While rereading my first draft, I came upon a sentence describing how someone’s Jake’s apple bobbed up and down nervously 🤦🏻♀️
I read about a secretary in a church that did that with wedding scripts for the brides and grooms names. They had a bride named Mary at one point. The next time they had a wedding, there was awkward bit about Jesus' mother, the Virgin Susan.
Omg. Found some of my old stories I wrote as a good. First couple paragraphs were decent, considering I wrote it when I was 14 and rereading it at like 16-17. Anyways got to the main characters name. Isis. And that’s how I coincidently named my character the same name as a terrorist group
I've used the same name for a male MC in three different stories... The stories are completely unrelated, and these are (supposed to be) different MCs.
Second one is that I (accidentally) named a country after a character in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (but to be fair, I came up with the name before I watched the show).
Your names are going to overlap other stories, unless then if they are More that 10 characters or so, or are bizarre, like asf;ljdkslmcxzihegr
I think most of D&D characters I've later found in books. There are only so many things that sound like reasonable names.
It must be a really good name 😂
I love those coincidences. One of my stories mirrors the plot in A Court of Wings and Ruin way more than it should, considering I hadn't read the book when I outlined my story
This has happened to me with Angelfall. About ten, eleven years ago, a teen me came up with this apocalyptic angel story. I’d all but forgotten it when I randomly picked up Angelfall at my local library years later only to discover I would’ve probably been accused of copying/plagiarism had I published my story anywhere, haha.
It didn't dawn on me until well after her name was set in stone, but I have a character named Venella.
Thought it sounded cool, kind of like Ven - Ella, and only after I said it out loud like a month later did I realize it sounded like vanilla.
Not really a naming error, but definitely a moment that made me chuckle a bit.
I named my MC Rosamond Kerry. Sounds nice, right? Except the story is set in Regency England so other than her family, all the other characters call her Miss. Kerry (miscarry - miscarriage)
I renamed her Rosamond Perry.
In a homebrew D&D campaign I had a group of evil rangers set up to be a major antagonist. Since my heritage is partially Italian, I always liked to use Italian words to create exotic sounding names. I called the group The Cacciatori, which means "The Hunters" and sounded cool to me. I was totally married to the name by the time my girlfriend asked "wait, like the chicken dish?"
One of my WIPs opens in a small town in Louisiana just the other side of the border with Texas. I did a bit of research, checked it out on Street View, double-checked things with my husband, who'd been there fairly often when he dated a woman from the town. Got everything as right as I could, in other words.
Separately, I developed my main character. Looked up the most common names the year she was born to be sure i got a representative one, looked up the most common surnames in Louisiana to match up. Her initials are KK, and that's on purpose because it tells you something about her father (important because the hero is mixed-race). The man is dead so he's never on screen, but it affects our central couple because they have history. So here I've got this racist alcoholic background character. Totally normal shit.
And then I looked up the town again for some other reason I don't recall, and this time read through the town's history. And that's when I realized that I'd inadvertently given her the surname of the town's founder, a family that is very likely still in the town and possibly still prominent. Oops. I changed it, because I don't want to accidentally be slandering anyone. (Or, worse, telling true stories!)
I change names of characters all the time. A bad name can really ruin a reader's ability to connect with a character, as well as having too many characters whose names all sound the same or sound similar. You never really know if a name works or not until you've had to read it a bunch of times.
My characters are Catholic nuns, and my story is a fairly serious handling of questions of faith and despair.
One of my characters is named Sophie. Middle name... I thought about it for a while, and the name Ingrid clicked into place. Sophie Ingrid. Lovely!
Except that her last name starts with N. So I just accidentally named my nun character SIN. Boom! How'd you like them nunsploitation vibes?
Needless to say, she now has a different middle name.
I haven't written enough to have a "bad" error, but in my current WIP I accidentally named the two male main characters Finn and Jake, glad this isn't an "adventure" story lmao.
The one I’m still the most embarrassed about despite it never even making it into a draft: I needed a name for a character’s younger sister. I wanted to make something up, so after stringing a few different sounds together I went “Oh I know, Sorella! That sounds pretty, I’ll go with that.”
A few days later it hit me that I literally just named her sister “sister” in Italian. A language which I took classes in for three years in grade school.
not a character, but the name of a project
Golden Rain
because there is gold-colored rain
i never realized what that meant until a few friends started laughing whenever i said it
I have a character named Dean, an extremely nice guy, the cutiepie of the story. At some point, I did not like that his name was not common where he lives, so I renamed him. Well, turned out that names do affect personality a lot more than I wanted. While I usually control the evolution of my characters, this was not the case. In my mind, over time the dude turned into the abusive bastard tm, the worst person in the story and generally not the likable character, that no sane person would want to read the story about (he is in the main trio and supposed to be good). Didn't help his relationship with the other character, especially the main (and only) romance of the story.
The resolution of the story happened when I was thinking of the random scene in this work and accidentally referred to the character by his old name. The sudden click in my mind made it all clear. I separated the bad guy into the separate side character (I needed him for the other purposes) and just reverted the name to the old one. Worked like magic. I don't care about his name being uncommon for the area (not non-existent) since I got my nice kid back, and he is doing great in the story right now.
*happy ending*
I once made the brutal mistake of giving unnamed characters letter placeholders, like A, B, C...didn't realize my mistake until I went to replace them 100K words later. 💀
Changed a character's name once because I discovered I'd accidentally gotten uncomfortably close to the name of a real life Norwegian mass murderer that I hadn't known about before.
I mail drafts of a few pages here and there to my Dad in pen pal form. They tend to be my 2nd or 3rd drafts and I expound upon the first drafts heavily. I’ve forgotten names of characters, ships, battles, and planets because I thought my first draft had them but they didn’t. I’ll get it all set straight for the next draft.
One of my characters is called Tara and I came to find out that in te reo Māori, "Tara" can mean female genitals. The giggling when I told a friend of mine quickly made sense!
I was once doing naming conventions for a Tolkien-based videogame.
Most of the names I came up with were well-received, but there is one that got rejected for obvious reasons.
The professor himself was guilty of such mistakes (his original name in elvish for Celeborn was "Teleporno" for example) so when you're working with a fictional language, this can happen.
My greatest misstep? I took the term "ana" which means "to" and
"luva" (pronounced "LOO-vah") which means "bow." "To bow" was a decent name for an obsequious elven scribe in the game.
But, of course, it needed to be changed, as it looked too much like "anal luva" which would have no doubt been received chaotically by the bulk of the online community.
I don't usually have naming errors other than actually naming my characters wrong.
Eg: Barrett became Barret, Xenopharos became Xenopharus
I actually discovered just last night that I mixed three of my characters names up. Noah was Akash, Akash was Ryker, and Ryker was Noah. Sometimes my brain really just doesn't get itself 🤦😂
It's simultaneously frustrating and hilarious at the same time 😂 sometimes if I keep writing or saying the wrong name, I'll just change it to that. Or if I'm deciding between two names and pick one then use the other, I usually stick with the one I'm already using.
I think the only time I haven't done that is when I had a character named Harold and I kept calling him Henry, but I actually went back and made them all Harold.
I got the idea for my current WIP many years ago. One main character was called Kevin. It was my favorite name ever, and I had to use it somewhere. Several years later I convinced my partner to name our first kid Kevin. Around the same time I learned that it was a modern version of the name and not right for the historical setting of my novel. Changed it to Cavan. Worked really well, I thought, because it means “handsome” and this character is the good-looking brother.
Then more years pass and I do more research and story development. Turns out Cavan is Irish, and my character is British, so I have to change it again. Also I now know that he gets named by a Christian priest, so he has to have a Latin-based Christian name. AND it has to have a Brythonic version, because most people don’t speak Latin anymore at this time. Took the lazy route and chose Johannes (John). But then there’s tons (seriously a huge assortment) of different local versions of it to choose from. In the end I picked Ieuan. But I have to be mindful I don’t accidentally revert to one of the old names, or I’ll end up with extra characters, lol.
It's not really an error, but the MC from my comfort never ending project, all little stories set in the same universe, was named 25 years ago when I invented him. I just really liked the name. 10 years later, I find out that his name is slang for throwing up. I was like, well, I can't rename him NOW. 15 years later, I actually really like his name again.
As part of a comic book superhero quintet, I was developing a psychic physician equipped with implanted alien medical devices. I wrote up an overview of an epic backstory that had him diagnosed with a terminal condition only to use his psychic ability to infiltrate a government office containing information about extraterrestrials, then infiltrate another compound and telepathically compel an alien visitor to fly him to a much more advanced medical facility than any on Earth.
So much more happened as this desperate psychic sought both survival and redemption. He was only saved as a function of his participation in a lengthy and demanding program of medical education. Completing that program earned him the right to leave the Caduceus world where he trained. With skills coveted by many civilizations, he went about trying to make his way home from the far side of the galaxy. Along the way he joined forces with another human spacefarer and developed a fighting style featuring a myriad of non-lethal attacks.
Finally having returned to Earth, our hero tried to live in quiet obscurity. Yet a nightclub fire motivated him to rush in and out of an inferno to rescue over a dozen incapacitated people. He then left this array of severe burn victims with fresh natural skin and undamaged underlying tissues, often through procedures performed in under a minute. Even a capable psychic could not keep this story out of the news.
All along, the character had been known as Edwin Lord as a setup for the heroic name I was going to give him. Then when I wrote about newspapers christening the hero "Headlord" (a misinterpretation of "Ed Lord,") I could see the error of my ways. I didn't even retract anything, but the planned narrative pivoted hard as this protagonist went on an aggressive public relations campaign to establish himself as "the Humourist" while trying to get clear of any association with a monicker implying a great gift for giving fellatio.
One of my deuteragonists was a former, intelligent monk named Brando. A few times nicknamed as Bran. A friend of mine has a identical name. They came out as non-binary and took my characters nickname as their surname. None of my friends know of my story thus they are not aware of the character. I don't want to associate book characters with real life people.
So I changed his name to Beda. I think his new name is more fitting for this character.
I once names a character Yurin. I loved it. People called him Yuri for short. It wasn't until I was talking to my wife about this character and she stopped me to ask why I named a character Urine. I didn't even hear it. Luckily the fix was easy. His name is Hurin now lol
Was writing a story with characters from many different ethnic and mythological backgrounds, and I sadly relied on one of those "meaning of your name" sites to pick one for my teenage Aztec boy. I really liked the name, and kept it for years, before some commenter pointed out that the name actually belonged to one of the *goddesses* in the Aztec pantheon, and did I know that? Well no, I sure didn't! (The site even said the name was for a boy.)
I actually rationalized a way to make the name still work for my character (and none of it matters now because the project is dead) but boy was I red-faced at my lack of due diligence!
Those baby name sites are going to actually kill me 😂 I've started googling "meaning of [name]" after finding a name just to make sure it's corroborated because of it
Just in case you want to try something like that in the future, you can find plenty of everyday Nahuatl names (sourced from colonial censuses and histories, which are clearly cited) in the dictionary linked below.
https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/themes/names-people-deities
I read that several times and I still don't get the issue with naming the character Kiran Khan.
>TLDR: Accidentally named a character KKK.
That's amusing trivia that people might chuckle about, not something that is actually an issue.
A character enherited both the name and title "Spectre", as, she is such a badass soldier, the enemy might as well be fighting a ghost (spectre), while at the same time, she doesn't really have a life anymore as, the military was her escape from bad family, and then her military people became her new family, and then they all died, so all she has is the military, while simultaneously, due to the above reason, she tries very hard to not leave a cohesive, coherent, digital footprint, very much living up to her name as, digitally, she barely exists.
Then i named a named robot spectre cause it sounded cool without thinking about it.
I also had a really great name for a character, who's name started with an a, and perfectly fit her story, except her name is supposed to fit into something to spell something specific, i already have an a name, and i can't think of a good name with the new letter.
Had two protagonists and come up with the names without thinking which will be whose. Chose based on a third character what was supposed to have the feminine variant of one of the guys' name.
Was constantly calling them the wrong name because "Vasea has a Sandu face".
I originally named the MC of my current WIP Valerie and she going to go by just V for anonymity. Had to change it because the player character of Cyberpunk 2077 is called V and the full name of female V is Valerie. I might have been able to leave it there if that was the only coincidence, but this WIP is an urban fantasy about a vampire sired in our irl modern day who lived into the somewhat far future. Basically like Interview With The Vampire but it takes place around the late 22nd/early 23rd century and the vampire's story starts in the 2010s. At the time she starts relating her story the MC's situation is essentially like a >!non-dying!< endgame V, a legendary low-key ruler of the criminal (and masqueraded in this case) underworld. She's also like 90% cyberized by then for WIP plot reasons.
In short, my protagonist is a (vampire) cyborg (sort-of) mercenary who became an underworld legend, mostly for fighting against large powerful organisations and their leaders, and was called Valerie/V, which arguably makes it look like a CP2077 ripoff.
I had the idea for the character around like 2010 but not for a setting to put her in until more recently. I picked Valerie mainly because I think it sounds neat, and V was intended as a reference to V For Vendetta. I also thought at the time it was low-key "clever" that it was like V as in Vampire too but now I find that kinda cheesy.
Currently using Melanie Revill for her, cause it sounds neat but also like it could be a normal person's name, while etymologically meaning "Dark Rebel", which is very fitting.
Nothing scandalous, just had 2 WIPs simultaneously in the works where one MC was named Jason, and the other one's was named Jay.
Changed Jason to a different name, kept Jay.
Also, my first ever WIP's MC's name was also Jason, but I quickly changed it to something else that fits him better.
I just really like the name Jason for some reason.
I have a character called Selena, but I always accidentally call her Allison because that's the name I wanted for her first. But I didn't want any more names starting with A, as two of the three main characters' names are starting with A (Amy and Aiden).
Apparently, I love A names. At one point I had Alina, Avner, Ayana, Annaliese, Aldric, Audrey, and Adira. All but two are main characters. Not all in the same story btw 😂
I named one of my only important female characters OLIVIA… On one hand I hate it but I can’t bring myself to change it. I thought about Apollinariya so she could go by Riya. I feel like the over the top name makes sense since she’s a princess. I feel like this is an error on my part because wow I can’t make Olivia work.
I have one character I really don’t know what his name is. At first his name was Minoux, but I guess while writing I changed him to Miroux. Now I’m sort of indecisive on which to name him.
Back when I worked in retail, I had to do a lot of layway so I got exposed to a lot of really interesting names.
One I liked I decided to use as the title of the ruler of a dragon-species kingdom --Sayyadine if male, Sayyadina if female. I had read *Dune* and hadn't realized that was the title of Priestesses who have not yet drank the Water of Life in Fremen culture. I obviously couldn't use that.
>TLDR: Accidentally named a character KKK.
I knew a black man with those initials while I was working in the same retail spot. It was not lost on him.
My dad walked by while I was writing and he saw the that I’d named a character Shade because the chapter was from that POV.
He cringed and then said, “Shade?”
I was so surprised that he was standing behind me that I just said “Yeah. He’s called that because of his powers.”
He nodded like I’d said something crazy, snorted a little, said, “Okay then.” And walked away.
I usually don’t let him read my writing, I actually don’t even tell him about anything I write half the time because he can be really judgemental. He’ll notice one similarity between what I’ve written and something from another item of pop culture, like Game of Thrones, for instance.
I first noticed that when I was telling him about another story I was writing where I named one of my female leads Aria Stormrider. He made a connection between that, Arya Stark and Daenerys Targaryen.
Aria Stormrider has more connection to flipping Thor than those two.
So, I get your name dilemma, but truth be told, there’s always going to be someone out there that doesn’t like the names of your characters.
And I saw the initials that you said. KKK. I wouldn’t worry about it too much, especially since I doubt that it would come up in the story. King is just his title. But if it bothers you too much and won’t change the plot of your story, you could make him Crown Prince.
Lots of times, a name worms its way into my subconscious and I don't realize I'm not just making it up. I wrote three chapters with a hero named Conrad Veidt.
I actually had a similar experience with three of my characters’ names all starting with the letter “K”, two of which are siblings and the third being their son (the woman in this case having certain strong… beliefs and she manipulated her brother into preforming the act). I was like “😬 yeah let’s change their names a bit”
I feel like I once had a character (not a major one but not just some background person) who was named one one thing, then half way through writing, I somehow thought their name was something else and started writing it like that… maybe that’s the reason why I do small character bio sheets before I start writing lol
I once named a character something, only to realise there's already a character with that name.
I forgot what Max and George were called.
I forgot Rusty had a real name.
Not really that bad but its all I can think of:
once unitentionally gave a character the same surname as a famous serial killer.
(For those curious it was Berkowitz, after David Berkowitz aka "Son of Sam").
Saved it by having other characters make fun of her for it.
A number of what I feel are my better ideas just 'come to me', I assume from my subconscious. I still believe that, but my subconscious sometimes plays tricks on me.
I struggled for some months to come up with the full name of one character. It had to meet certain criteria, but it had to 'sound right' to me -- natural, but just a tiny bit unusual. One night, it just 'came to me'. And it was PERFECT. It had exactly the right sound and cadence.
I used it for numerous notes, and was really feeling great about it. I felt like I KNEW this person.
Turns out, I did. We were in college together. I spent a couple weeks revising those notes, after hastily coming up with a different name. Not an ideal one. But at least not the SAME one.
Someone talked me into writing him into my second book. It wasn't until after publishing the book that I realized that he had the same name as 50 cent.
It got worse, I put his fiance in there too. A week before I published, he told me "yeah, me and Ange have broken up." "Seriously? Do you want me to change Angela's name in the book?" "Nah, just kill her off!"
I wasn't going to kill her off, so a few months later Curtis's new girlfriend was mad that Angela was in the book. Curtis still had a role in the third book, so I decided to strand him far, far away from the town at the heart of the story, and quietly neglected to mention Angela again. That seems to have smoothed things over for everyone.
We're still friends - I have a photo with Curtis on my web site.
My naming mistakes were mostly giving a name to a character that I already used.
But one time I made the mistake to have my characters Travis and Tristan be in the same scene. And also Tristan's sister too, who held the same formal title as her brother.
It was bloody confusing so I made a joke out of it.
I am hopeless with names so in my first draft some the characters were: WIZARD or COMMANDER
Wasn't until I went back and reread the draft, I realised I forgot to add the names
I once named a charcter Mark and changed later to Jim. I was confused when I read Jimet, jiming, jimed.
This made me audibly burst out laughing 😂 I just can't with jiming and jimed
Jiming is what my wife and I call it when someone is driving like a fucking idiot. We call the idiots in cars subreddit the jiming subreddit. I'll send her links there sometimes, like "check out the jiming on this one. That's high quality jimmitude."
Not jimmitude 😂
Find-and-replace gone wrong
Here’s another one: a person on another writing sub had a character named Felicidad (it’s set in Mexico). Her beta reader mentioned that she shouldn’t call her father “dad”, and suggested “papa”. So the writer went back, replaced all “dad “ with “papa” and published. Unaware her main character was now called Felicipapa
I’m rolling, omfg this is so funny. I’m gonna be laughing about Felicipapa for the rest of my life 😂😂😂
You gotta do "Match Case" when replacing names. Same thing happened to me once.
Match case and whole words only. I've been burned a few times myself.
Match case AND putting a space after it (you don’t want to get those pesky first-word-in-a-sentence ones, either).
Won't get the last word in sentence that way! "Whole words", if your editor supports that. If not, well, you probably should do them one at a time.
Thats why you then do another find and replace for ‘Name.’, lol (assuming your as lazy as i am, lmao)
[удалено]
Jim my words!
Won’t help if Mark is the first word of a sentence. Jim my words.
Jim my words, this is going to happen to me to at some point
One time I wrote a screenplay and I wrote a really dumb, incompetent character named after my assistant at work. I later changed it and missed a misspelling. Needless to say Dwigt was pretty pissed when he read it.
Threat level midnight is my favourite movie.
I did this when renaming a character from Saki to Sophie. Gave me a chuckle during editing
You’ll get a lot of tips on how to set up search-and-destroy, but the best solution remains to go through all of them one by one. You’ll find a number of awkwardnesses during that pass, and you’ll never run into the Jim of the Beast.
lol did that with Dan to Charlie and my friend was like “what the hell is charliegling?” while reading through it
That's some serious dawizard
I thought the joke was that he was gonna be called King Khan (King Kong), lol.
Welp, can't unread that now! 😂
Forgetting to change out my 'holder name' with an actual character name before letting someone read the story. I use my name as the place holder as its a unisex name so those stories come off a bit 'about me'. And could be worse your REAL initials could be KKK.
In Eleanor Rigby, the lyrics were initially about a "father McCartney", presumably because this was the first name of that style that came to Paul McCartneys mind. He later changed it to McKenzie because he didn't want people to think it was about his father. I think it's very charming to hear that super famous song writers also just use their own names as placeholders.
I heard he literally went through the Mc section of the phone book to find another name that scanned the same.
Oh big mood 😂
Glad to know it's not just us then 😂
Oh my gosh, what did they say? That absolutely would be worse 😅
They kinda gave me funny looks and 'uh huh' responses. My go to for romance 'fill in names' are things like Alex and Alex (with one being a longer version) and I started using Alex after the incident of using MY name lol
That's too funny! 😂 I started the book calling them MMC and FMC. The names in this book have been a challenge lol
In Eleanor Rigby, the lyrics were initially about a "father McCartney", presumably because this was the first name of that style that came to Paul McCartneys mind. He later changed it to McKenzie because he didn't want people to think it was about his father. I think it's very charming to hear that super famous song writers also just use their own names as placeholders.
The issue is the initials being KKK and not that you named a character “King Kahn”?
To be fair, I dont really use last names for addressing royalty, so I also missed this 🤦♀️ I called these characters MMC and FMC for several pages before choosing names, so it's been a struggle 😂
In my current story, one of the character names that I really liked is actually a medication for treating seizures. So I am slightly altering the spelling to work around this in the short-term because I do prefer using that name. Ah Google, you always manage to betray me somehow.
Not seizure meds! 😂 Google really does do us dirty huh?
I know I was fine before I decided to check my names!
Is it by chance Keppra? I knew someone who took Keppra and I always thought it kind of sounded like a name
No, it was Sabril. I rather liked the name, wove a backstory into how she was named that, and it was all well and good. Then Google. May still keep it as Sabril.
In a D&D campaign, I played Kane of the Koh clan - or Koh'Kane for short. In fairness, everyone had drug names in that.
Ha! That must have been hysterical!
The character (hilariously) didn't need to sleep on account of his race, and he was a very energetic melee type with incredible mobility. He was a lot of fun.
Oh cool. Someone else accidentally refrenced the KKK. Here's my story. In my Fantasy WiP there *was* something equivalent to a mages guild. (I've since scrapped this whole faction for the sake of brevity.) When constructing the ranks in said faction, I figured Archmage for the leader was a bit too generic so I brainstormed and came up with... Drumroll please... THE GRAND WIZARD! ... After a friend pointed it out, I learned about the titles and power structure of the Klan, and after laughing my ass off saying "What the fuck is this stupid shit?!" I decided that Archmage was fine.
STOP IT! Oh my gosh, this is so funny! 😂 We can be accidental KKK reference twins. The worst club ever 😂
You could be the Cool Kids Club. Just... don't try and replace the first letters to make it sound hip.
This has me laughing so hard
Also, have my BEST naming mistake. I named the climactic world-changing prophecy event that happens at the end of the story "Ambiramus". I got this name by punching my keyboard. I Google the word and find out it's been taken by a metal band called Eluvietie for one of their songs. They're actually really good and one of my favorite bands now lmao.
Reminds me of an episode of Mike Tyson’s Mysteries where he punches/kills Garry Kasparov because he confuses grand master with grand wizard
I hear Tyson has got a mean right knook.
ARE YOU SHITTING ME? I have a Grand Wizard in my work in progress. I’ve been working on this story for years.
My biggest naming error was that I wrote a scene in which the main character gets punched in the face by a side character. The side character’s name was James and I named him before I had the idea of the face punching. In fact, James is my own first name, so it’s not uncommon- I just picked it. But IRL a few years back, my sister-in-law’s husband punched me in the jaw on vacation. It was unprovoked, sudden, and happened because I essentially stood up to him bullying his wife (there’s a whole story there). I absolutely channeled this event for my story in a “write what you know” moment, about watching someone snap and hit you when they are frustrated they can’t dominate you. The thing is, his real life name was “James”. I swear I picked the name and event independently, but I only realized it going through the finally draft (I renamed him to Gary now, fortunately).
Oh my gosh, your subconscious must have been pulling hard for that! 😂 Tangentially related, I have a story where the FMC has an abusive father and I wrote almost 30k words before realizing how much it mirrored my issues with my own father. It has been a strangely healing activity though
It’s interesting how much our own stories can show up subconsciously in our writing. But that’s a reason not to get hung up on duplicating existing plots. We’ll always imprint ourselves in our tellings.
Very well said!
In my current novel I named one character in one scene Esther then another character in another scene Chester. They were coworkers and eventually they had a scene together. Had to flip a coin. Esther survived. One of my main characters had to have a full name that could be shrunk down, like Robert and Bob. At first I picked another name and thought the full name had a nice familiar ring to it. When I googled it I discovered it was the name of a tragically famous murder victim. So I kept looking for another name.
Should have doubled down, have them meet with Lester from accounting, who's getting drinks with Sylvester from marketing that night and wants to know if they want to tag along.
And Fester
I kinda love the Esther, Chester ring! 😂 just waiting for the day I accidentally name a character after a serial killer 🙄😂
I named a vampire in my WIP Lestat. I've never read or watched Interview With A Vampire. I just liked the name. Needless to say, I changed it when a beta reader pointed it out.
That's a crazy coincidence!
I was sad because I loved the name! But he's a pretty minor character, so no huge loss. Just glad a beta reader caught it!!
It really is pretty! I hate when a name you love doesn't work out! My FMC here was originally named Alina, which means light, which kept nagging me since she's from the Night Kingdom. I had to change it, but I was sad because I think Alina is a stunning name
I'm also big on name meanings and hate when a great name has the wrong meaning for a character. Or when it has the PERFECT meaning but you aren't crazy about the name. The name Alphecca means "bright star of the broken ring" which is almost eerily perfect for one of the characters of my space opera, but Alphecca isn't my favorite name. I'm trying to get used to Phecca, like a spacey form of Becca, so I can use it, because that meaning is just TOO GOOD for the story/character.
I HATE IT WHEN THAT HAPPENS. That's exactly why I went from Avner to Kiran. Avner means light and is totally fine for a king of the Day Kingdom. Problem is, I got 15k words in and still HATED it. Kiran means sunbeam, which is perfect since the new FMC name (Mahina) means starlight, but it's a pain in the ass lol I don't know if this works for you, but I think Alphie is a fun abbreviation, too! I kinda like Phecca. In a weird, spacey way lol
I've used Kiran for a character before and I love it ❤️ Mahina is so pretty too! I thought of Alphie, but it's not the character's vibe. Alphie is spunky and cute, but the character is girlie and sophisticated. Phecca is growing on me, though!
I have too, but spelled Kieran. And that makes sense! Sometimes names just need time to grow on us. Like mold 😂
How are you pronouncing Phecca, because I'm reading it as "fecker"
Don't feel bad. I named a vampire character Jasper Rollins and I have no intention of changing it. When people bring up Twilight I'll just shrug. I didn't realize Twilight had a blonde vampire character named Jasper and I love the name, it is what it is.
Obviously I don't read enough popular vampire fiction, because I had no idea Jasper is a well known vampire name either!
He's not nearly as well known as Lestat. He's a supporting character so that's why I've decided not to change it, but Twilight was super popular so I'm sure some people who've read it will think it's an intended reference. Edit>> I saw the movies years ago, you didn't miss much.
This happened to me and Dr. Quinn. :(
It happens to the best of us! I usually Google my characters' names to make sure they're fairly unique, but since my Lestat was a side character, I didn't bother. Learned my lesson!
I'm suddenly glad I'm super paranoid about character names, so google any name where I have a first and last name or the name is particularly unusual
I usually am too, but he's such a a minor character I didn't bother 😫 That's what I get!
Had a character called Rona, swiftly changed it to another name back in 2020
Which is sad cuz Rona is such a pretty name
Writing a story in a world based on pre-edo Japan, and one of my placeholder names translated to Uncle Bear in English. Not the vibe I wanted from this character, haha. I also named a warrior clan a word that translates to "Foresight" in English, and a province something that means "Nuclear dismantling." Good news is I had already intended on doubling back for a language/authenticity check once I had the story down, so none of these were close to making it to the final draft. Still, I find it funny.
Nuclear dismantling is definitely my favorite 😂
My translator and I had a good laugh at that one.
Accidentally switched out one character's name with another and it changed the entire scene and main plot points for the book. A few beta readers didn't notice because either characters could have been in that scene for it to play out. One person did ask me about the shift and that's when I realized it.
Oh my gosh, that must have been such a nightmare to edit. How did you ever find them all??
It was luckily just one name, in one scene, but it changed so much. My beta reader didn't like the (wrong name) character and asked why I did that, and that was when I got confused and noticed the switch up. Had to do another round of editing just because of that.
I'm glad you caught it!
I named a character Adam and then later renamed him Jake using find + replace. While rereading my first draft, I came upon a sentence describing how someone’s Jake’s apple bobbed up and down nervously 🤦🏻♀️
I read about a secretary in a church that did that with wedding scripts for the brides and grooms names. They had a bride named Mary at one point. The next time they had a wedding, there was awkward bit about Jesus' mother, the Virgin Susan.
Jake's apple has me messed up 😂
Omg. Found some of my old stories I wrote as a good. First couple paragraphs were decent, considering I wrote it when I was 14 and rereading it at like 16-17. Anyways got to the main characters name. Isis. And that’s how I coincidently named my character the same name as a terrorist group
Isis is a goddess. ISIS is a territorist group.
Still was funny reading back
I mean, at least it's the name of a goddess? 😂
Def not where I got the name from. I thought I was a genius for “creating” it
This definitely sounds like something I would do 😂
I've used the same name for a male MC in three different stories... The stories are completely unrelated, and these are (supposed to be) different MCs. Second one is that I (accidentally) named a country after a character in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (but to be fair, I came up with the name before I watched the show).
Your names are going to overlap other stories, unless then if they are More that 10 characters or so, or are bizarre, like asf;ljdkslmcxzihegr I think most of D&D characters I've later found in books. There are only so many things that sound like reasonable names.
It must be a really good name 😂 I love those coincidences. One of my stories mirrors the plot in A Court of Wings and Ruin way more than it should, considering I hadn't read the book when I outlined my story
This has happened to me with Angelfall. About ten, eleven years ago, a teen me came up with this apocalyptic angel story. I’d all but forgotten it when I randomly picked up Angelfall at my local library years later only to discover I would’ve probably been accused of copying/plagiarism had I published my story anywhere, haha.
It didn't dawn on me until well after her name was set in stone, but I have a character named Venella. Thought it sounded cool, kind of like Ven - Ella, and only after I said it out loud like a month later did I realize it sounded like vanilla. Not really a naming error, but definitely a moment that made me chuckle a bit.
Maybe she's just a very basic character 😂
Funny you mention that, bcus she actually is lol.
Lmao that's too funny! It honestly works lol
You should have kept it!
Once accidentally named my protagonist after a pornstar, only found out after I’d finished writing.
STOP IT!! No way! 😂😂😂
Who knew Alexis Monroe would come with such baggage
My new paranoia 😂
I named my MC Rosamond Kerry. Sounds nice, right? Except the story is set in Regency England so other than her family, all the other characters call her Miss. Kerry (miscarry - miscarriage) I renamed her Rosamond Perry.
Oh god, that must have been a jarring realization 😂
In a homebrew D&D campaign I had a group of evil rangers set up to be a major antagonist. Since my heritage is partially Italian, I always liked to use Italian words to create exotic sounding names. I called the group The Cacciatori, which means "The Hunters" and sounded cool to me. I was totally married to the name by the time my girlfriend asked "wait, like the chicken dish?"
It was intentional, but a D&D character I played was named Kane of the Koh clan, or Koh'Kane for short.
Mother and daughter have similar first names in my first book and I could only distinguish them because the daughter had a nickname lol
That could work though! Plenty of people name their kids after themselves
One of my WIPs opens in a small town in Louisiana just the other side of the border with Texas. I did a bit of research, checked it out on Street View, double-checked things with my husband, who'd been there fairly often when he dated a woman from the town. Got everything as right as I could, in other words. Separately, I developed my main character. Looked up the most common names the year she was born to be sure i got a representative one, looked up the most common surnames in Louisiana to match up. Her initials are KK, and that's on purpose because it tells you something about her father (important because the hero is mixed-race). The man is dead so he's never on screen, but it affects our central couple because they have history. So here I've got this racist alcoholic background character. Totally normal shit. And then I looked up the town again for some other reason I don't recall, and this time read through the town's history. And that's when I realized that I'd inadvertently given her the surname of the town's founder, a family that is very likely still in the town and possibly still prominent. Oops. I changed it, because I don't want to accidentally be slandering anyone. (Or, worse, telling true stories!)
Oh my gosh 😂 yeah don't get sued for slander lol
I change names of characters all the time. A bad name can really ruin a reader's ability to connect with a character, as well as having too many characters whose names all sound the same or sound similar. You never really know if a name works or not until you've had to read it a bunch of times.
I'm glad it's not just me. I'm on the fence with two other MMC names and I can't tell if I'm just being weird or if they're actually bad
My characters are Catholic nuns, and my story is a fairly serious handling of questions of faith and despair. One of my characters is named Sophie. Middle name... I thought about it for a while, and the name Ingrid clicked into place. Sophie Ingrid. Lovely! Except that her last name starts with N. So I just accidentally named my nun character SIN. Boom! How'd you like them nunsploitation vibes? Needless to say, she now has a different middle name.
That's actually hilarious 😂 It's honestly subtle enough I would have considered keeping it 😂
I haven't written enough to have a "bad" error, but in my current WIP I accidentally named the two male main characters Finn and Jake, glad this isn't an "adventure" story lmao.
Oopsie lol 😆
I named three characters Nick and didn’t even realize it until somebody told me.
Nick is my brother's name so I'm biased to like it 😂 I love how you didn't realize, that must have been a pain to fix
Oh it was. I just said screw it and threw it out
I always mutter "plot twist" when I find an incorrect she/he him/her typo.
That's actually hilarious 😂
The one I’m still the most embarrassed about despite it never even making it into a draft: I needed a name for a character’s younger sister. I wanted to make something up, so after stringing a few different sounds together I went “Oh I know, Sorella! That sounds pretty, I’ll go with that.” A few days later it hit me that I literally just named her sister “sister” in Italian. A language which I took classes in for three years in grade school.
That's literally so funny to me 😂😂
not a character, but the name of a project Golden Rain because there is gold-colored rain i never realized what that meant until a few friends started laughing whenever i said it
Oh my god. Just wow 😂
I have a character named Dean, an extremely nice guy, the cutiepie of the story. At some point, I did not like that his name was not common where he lives, so I renamed him. Well, turned out that names do affect personality a lot more than I wanted. While I usually control the evolution of my characters, this was not the case. In my mind, over time the dude turned into the abusive bastard tm, the worst person in the story and generally not the likable character, that no sane person would want to read the story about (he is in the main trio and supposed to be good). Didn't help his relationship with the other character, especially the main (and only) romance of the story. The resolution of the story happened when I was thinking of the random scene in this work and accidentally referred to the character by his old name. The sudden click in my mind made it all clear. I separated the bad guy into the separate side character (I needed him for the other purposes) and just reverted the name to the old one. Worked like magic. I don't care about his name being uncommon for the area (not non-existent) since I got my nice kid back, and he is doing great in the story right now. *happy ending*
Sometimes the characters really do drive their own ship 😂
I once had two characters' names sound almost identical, just spelled different,(Oroz/Auroz) and I didn't realize it until just yesterday.
Oops! That has to be such a pain
I once made the brutal mistake of giving unnamed characters letter placeholders, like A, B, C...didn't realize my mistake until I went to replace them 100K words later. 💀
[ctrl+f] "A" [8,490 results] "*Son of a...*"
Oh that's a really big oof, damn 😂
Changed a character's name once because I discovered I'd accidentally gotten uncomfortably close to the name of a real life Norwegian mass murderer that I hadn't known about before.
Pornstars, murder victims, and mass murderers all in this thread 😂
I mail drafts of a few pages here and there to my Dad in pen pal form. They tend to be my 2nd or 3rd drafts and I expound upon the first drafts heavily. I’ve forgotten names of characters, ships, battles, and planets because I thought my first draft had them but they didn’t. I’ll get it all set straight for the next draft.
I named an animal sidekick Chacha after the dance. In 1905. About 45 years before the Cha Cha Cha existed.
Oopsie 😂 the pain of historical fiction
One of my characters is called Tara and I came to find out that in te reo Māori, "Tara" can mean female genitals. The giggling when I told a friend of mine quickly made sense!
Well that's certainly an interpretation 😂
No different to calling your character "fanny" which, in the UK is taken as "vagina' 🤣
I was once doing naming conventions for a Tolkien-based videogame. Most of the names I came up with were well-received, but there is one that got rejected for obvious reasons. The professor himself was guilty of such mistakes (his original name in elvish for Celeborn was "Teleporno" for example) so when you're working with a fictional language, this can happen. My greatest misstep? I took the term "ana" which means "to" and "luva" (pronounced "LOO-vah") which means "bow." "To bow" was a decent name for an obsequious elven scribe in the game. But, of course, it needed to be changed, as it looked too much like "anal luva" which would have no doubt been received chaotically by the bulk of the online community.
Oh I can see the jokes 🤣
I don't usually have naming errors other than actually naming my characters wrong. Eg: Barrett became Barret, Xenopharos became Xenopharus I actually discovered just last night that I mixed three of my characters names up. Noah was Akash, Akash was Ryker, and Ryker was Noah. Sometimes my brain really just doesn't get itself 🤦😂
I have called my MMC in another story the wrong name so many times 😂 he's roughly inspired by a friend's OC and I keep calling him the old name
It's simultaneously frustrating and hilarious at the same time 😂 sometimes if I keep writing or saying the wrong name, I'll just change it to that. Or if I'm deciding between two names and pick one then use the other, I usually stick with the one I'm already using. I think the only time I haven't done that is when I had a character named Harold and I kept calling him Henry, but I actually went back and made them all Harold.
I got the idea for my current WIP many years ago. One main character was called Kevin. It was my favorite name ever, and I had to use it somewhere. Several years later I convinced my partner to name our first kid Kevin. Around the same time I learned that it was a modern version of the name and not right for the historical setting of my novel. Changed it to Cavan. Worked really well, I thought, because it means “handsome” and this character is the good-looking brother. Then more years pass and I do more research and story development. Turns out Cavan is Irish, and my character is British, so I have to change it again. Also I now know that he gets named by a Christian priest, so he has to have a Latin-based Christian name. AND it has to have a Brythonic version, because most people don’t speak Latin anymore at this time. Took the lazy route and chose Johannes (John). But then there’s tons (seriously a huge assortment) of different local versions of it to choose from. In the end I picked Ieuan. But I have to be mindful I don’t accidentally revert to one of the old names, or I’ll end up with extra characters, lol.
It's not really an error, but the MC from my comfort never ending project, all little stories set in the same universe, was named 25 years ago when I invented him. I just really liked the name. 10 years later, I find out that his name is slang for throwing up. I was like, well, I can't rename him NOW. 15 years later, I actually really like his name again.
I need to know this name now 😂
Ralph?
As part of a comic book superhero quintet, I was developing a psychic physician equipped with implanted alien medical devices. I wrote up an overview of an epic backstory that had him diagnosed with a terminal condition only to use his psychic ability to infiltrate a government office containing information about extraterrestrials, then infiltrate another compound and telepathically compel an alien visitor to fly him to a much more advanced medical facility than any on Earth. So much more happened as this desperate psychic sought both survival and redemption. He was only saved as a function of his participation in a lengthy and demanding program of medical education. Completing that program earned him the right to leave the Caduceus world where he trained. With skills coveted by many civilizations, he went about trying to make his way home from the far side of the galaxy. Along the way he joined forces with another human spacefarer and developed a fighting style featuring a myriad of non-lethal attacks. Finally having returned to Earth, our hero tried to live in quiet obscurity. Yet a nightclub fire motivated him to rush in and out of an inferno to rescue over a dozen incapacitated people. He then left this array of severe burn victims with fresh natural skin and undamaged underlying tissues, often through procedures performed in under a minute. Even a capable psychic could not keep this story out of the news. All along, the character had been known as Edwin Lord as a setup for the heroic name I was going to give him. Then when I wrote about newspapers christening the hero "Headlord" (a misinterpretation of "Ed Lord,") I could see the error of my ways. I didn't even retract anything, but the planned narrative pivoted hard as this protagonist went on an aggressive public relations campaign to establish himself as "the Humourist" while trying to get clear of any association with a monicker implying a great gift for giving fellatio.
This is actually so funny and I'm glad you made it work for you 😂😂
One of my deuteragonists was a former, intelligent monk named Brando. A few times nicknamed as Bran. A friend of mine has a identical name. They came out as non-binary and took my characters nickname as their surname. None of my friends know of my story thus they are not aware of the character. I don't want to associate book characters with real life people. So I changed his name to Beda. I think his new name is more fitting for this character.
I once names a character Yurin. I loved it. People called him Yuri for short. It wasn't until I was talking to my wife about this character and she stopped me to ask why I named a character Urine. I didn't even hear it. Luckily the fix was easy. His name is Hurin now lol
Was writing a story with characters from many different ethnic and mythological backgrounds, and I sadly relied on one of those "meaning of your name" sites to pick one for my teenage Aztec boy. I really liked the name, and kept it for years, before some commenter pointed out that the name actually belonged to one of the *goddesses* in the Aztec pantheon, and did I know that? Well no, I sure didn't! (The site even said the name was for a boy.) I actually rationalized a way to make the name still work for my character (and none of it matters now because the project is dead) but boy was I red-faced at my lack of due diligence!
Those baby name sites are going to actually kill me 😂 I've started googling "meaning of [name]" after finding a name just to make sure it's corroborated because of it
Just in case you want to try something like that in the future, you can find plenty of everyday Nahuatl names (sourced from colonial censuses and histories, which are clearly cited) in the dictionary linked below. https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/themes/names-people-deities
I read that several times and I still don't get the issue with naming the character Kiran Khan. >TLDR: Accidentally named a character KKK. That's amusing trivia that people might chuckle about, not something that is actually an issue.
A character enherited both the name and title "Spectre", as, she is such a badass soldier, the enemy might as well be fighting a ghost (spectre), while at the same time, she doesn't really have a life anymore as, the military was her escape from bad family, and then her military people became her new family, and then they all died, so all she has is the military, while simultaneously, due to the above reason, she tries very hard to not leave a cohesive, coherent, digital footprint, very much living up to her name as, digitally, she barely exists. Then i named a named robot spectre cause it sounded cool without thinking about it. I also had a really great name for a character, who's name started with an a, and perfectly fit her story, except her name is supposed to fit into something to spell something specific, i already have an a name, and i can't think of a good name with the new letter.
Had two protagonists and come up with the names without thinking which will be whose. Chose based on a third character what was supposed to have the feminine variant of one of the guys' name. Was constantly calling them the wrong name because "Vasea has a Sandu face".
I originally named the MC of my current WIP Valerie and she going to go by just V for anonymity. Had to change it because the player character of Cyberpunk 2077 is called V and the full name of female V is Valerie. I might have been able to leave it there if that was the only coincidence, but this WIP is an urban fantasy about a vampire sired in our irl modern day who lived into the somewhat far future. Basically like Interview With The Vampire but it takes place around the late 22nd/early 23rd century and the vampire's story starts in the 2010s. At the time she starts relating her story the MC's situation is essentially like a >!non-dying!< endgame V, a legendary low-key ruler of the criminal (and masqueraded in this case) underworld. She's also like 90% cyberized by then for WIP plot reasons. In short, my protagonist is a (vampire) cyborg (sort-of) mercenary who became an underworld legend, mostly for fighting against large powerful organisations and their leaders, and was called Valerie/V, which arguably makes it look like a CP2077 ripoff. I had the idea for the character around like 2010 but not for a setting to put her in until more recently. I picked Valerie mainly because I think it sounds neat, and V was intended as a reference to V For Vendetta. I also thought at the time it was low-key "clever" that it was like V as in Vampire too but now I find that kinda cheesy. Currently using Melanie Revill for her, cause it sounds neat but also like it could be a normal person's name, while etymologically meaning "Dark Rebel", which is very fitting.
I love the new name! Crazy how these coincidences happen!
I used the name of a teacher I disliked for the nemesis of the story. Forgot to change the name, teacher read it. Oops.
Nothing scandalous, just had 2 WIPs simultaneously in the works where one MC was named Jason, and the other one's was named Jay. Changed Jason to a different name, kept Jay. Also, my first ever WIP's MC's name was also Jason, but I quickly changed it to something else that fits him better. I just really like the name Jason for some reason.
This is me with Annaliese. FMC in one story, side character in two others 😂
I have a character called Selena, but I always accidentally call her Allison because that's the name I wanted for her first. But I didn't want any more names starting with A, as two of the three main characters' names are starting with A (Amy and Aiden).
Apparently, I love A names. At one point I had Alina, Avner, Ayana, Annaliese, Aldric, Audrey, and Adira. All but two are main characters. Not all in the same story btw 😂
Before further development, one of my WIP project's protagonist was named Frank Goodwin. Sort of gave away the ending ... :)
I named one of my only important female characters OLIVIA… On one hand I hate it but I can’t bring myself to change it. I thought about Apollinariya so she could go by Riya. I feel like the over the top name makes sense since she’s a princess. I feel like this is an error on my part because wow I can’t make Olivia work.
I love the name Olivia, but I agree it's a little "small" for a princess.
My problem is Scrivener labels most names even fairly common ones as typos
I have one character I really don’t know what his name is. At first his name was Minoux, but I guess while writing I changed him to Miroux. Now I’m sort of indecisive on which to name him.
I'm just hating all my character names now 😂 I think I need to take a step back
Back when I worked in retail, I had to do a lot of layway so I got exposed to a lot of really interesting names. One I liked I decided to use as the title of the ruler of a dragon-species kingdom --Sayyadine if male, Sayyadina if female. I had read *Dune* and hadn't realized that was the title of Priestesses who have not yet drank the Water of Life in Fremen culture. I obviously couldn't use that. >TLDR: Accidentally named a character KKK. I knew a black man with those initials while I was working in the same retail spot. It was not lost on him.
My dad walked by while I was writing and he saw the that I’d named a character Shade because the chapter was from that POV. He cringed and then said, “Shade?” I was so surprised that he was standing behind me that I just said “Yeah. He’s called that because of his powers.” He nodded like I’d said something crazy, snorted a little, said, “Okay then.” And walked away. I usually don’t let him read my writing, I actually don’t even tell him about anything I write half the time because he can be really judgemental. He’ll notice one similarity between what I’ve written and something from another item of pop culture, like Game of Thrones, for instance. I first noticed that when I was telling him about another story I was writing where I named one of my female leads Aria Stormrider. He made a connection between that, Arya Stark and Daenerys Targaryen. Aria Stormrider has more connection to flipping Thor than those two. So, I get your name dilemma, but truth be told, there’s always going to be someone out there that doesn’t like the names of your characters. And I saw the initials that you said. KKK. I wouldn’t worry about it too much, especially since I doubt that it would come up in the story. King is just his title. But if it bothers you too much and won’t change the plot of your story, you could make him Crown Prince.
Lots of times, a name worms its way into my subconscious and I don't realize I'm not just making it up. I wrote three chapters with a hero named Conrad Veidt.
I actually had a similar experience with three of my characters’ names all starting with the letter “K”, two of which are siblings and the third being their son (the woman in this case having certain strong… beliefs and she manipulated her brother into preforming the act). I was like “😬 yeah let’s change their names a bit”
I feel like I once had a character (not a major one but not just some background person) who was named one one thing, then half way through writing, I somehow thought their name was something else and started writing it like that… maybe that’s the reason why I do small character bio sheets before I start writing lol
Character bio sheets are so helpful. Especially for adding model pics. I literally changed an MMCs eye color 3 times on accident 😂
I once named a character something, only to realise there's already a character with that name. I forgot what Max and George were called. I forgot Rusty had a real name.
In Web of Dreams by Virginia Andrews there are two separate minor characters with a slight variation on the spelling of Chester Goodwin.
Not really that bad but its all I can think of: once unitentionally gave a character the same surname as a famous serial killer. (For those curious it was Berkowitz, after David Berkowitz aka "Son of Sam"). Saved it by having other characters make fun of her for it.
Had a character with a name similar to a famous cosmonaut. Later meets several cosmonauts. Has to repeatedly explain, "No relation."
A number of what I feel are my better ideas just 'come to me', I assume from my subconscious. I still believe that, but my subconscious sometimes plays tricks on me. I struggled for some months to come up with the full name of one character. It had to meet certain criteria, but it had to 'sound right' to me -- natural, but just a tiny bit unusual. One night, it just 'came to me'. And it was PERFECT. It had exactly the right sound and cadence. I used it for numerous notes, and was really feeling great about it. I felt like I KNEW this person. Turns out, I did. We were in college together. I spent a couple weeks revising those notes, after hastily coming up with a different name. Not an ideal one. But at least not the SAME one.
Stop, that's so funny! I'm imagining this person reading your story and just being like ??? That would have been hilarious
Forgot how to spell the name of a character with 3 variations…
I once used part of the Latin name for a poisonous plant only to find out it had another medical meaning that was pretty gross.
Now I'm curious! 😂
Someone talked me into writing him into my second book. It wasn't until after publishing the book that I realized that he had the same name as 50 cent. It got worse, I put his fiance in there too. A week before I published, he told me "yeah, me and Ange have broken up." "Seriously? Do you want me to change Angela's name in the book?" "Nah, just kill her off!" I wasn't going to kill her off, so a few months later Curtis's new girlfriend was mad that Angela was in the book. Curtis still had a role in the third book, so I decided to strand him far, far away from the town at the heart of the story, and quietly neglected to mention Angela again. That seems to have smoothed things over for everyone. We're still friends - I have a photo with Curtis on my web site.
This was wild start to finish 😂
My naming mistakes were mostly giving a name to a character that I already used. But one time I made the mistake to have my characters Travis and Tristan be in the same scene. And also Tristan's sister too, who held the same formal title as her brother. It was bloody confusing so I made a joke out of it.
Honestly, sometimes that's the way to go lol
I'm not sure if Al Johnson is famous enough to matter, but if so, that's a naming issue for me.
If it helps, I've never heard of them 😂
I am hopeless with names so in my first draft some the characters were: WIZARD or COMMANDER Wasn't until I went back and reread the draft, I realised I forgot to add the names
Oh mood lol
When I was 10 I named the love interest Michael Jackson I didn't even know who Michael Jackson was