if you’re trying to come up with a good name for your character, you know what the easiest and most intelligent way to do so is? pick up a book with babynames or search for websites dedicated to names on the internet. there you’ll have access to thousands and thousands of names sorted by origin, country, culture or whatever, and the best thing? you have polls from many years past where you can even search for names that were popular in the year your character was born.
i’m sick of clichéd names. just because americans still name their children jack and john doesn’t mean all germans name their kids hans or johann. my grandfather could’ve been a hans. that name’s antique. and i’m pretty sure other country’s people are sick of all the ivans and juans and jean-pauls out there as well.
and to the guy (or gal?) writing the castle tie-in novels: a german male stripper called “horst meuller”? really? i don’t care about the meuller/müller-thing, but “horst”, just so the name sounds german? it’s so old-fashioned that guy would’ve probably had a terrible childhood (and i don’t think the 100-year-rule will ever apply to this one.)
and speaking of “sounding german”: i understand writers might tend to think they need to call their characters something that immediately tells readers/listeners/watchers where they’re from. but you know what? you can also just tell them. which you do most of the time anyway. and that leads us to a whole new world of great names you can dig into and pull the bestest out of.
also: accents. not all people from a specific country have those clichéd accents. some, especially those living in another country for quite some time, actually adapt to sound somewhat more local. just sayin’.
Sam
harakiri
