If You Ever Struggle Over Naming Characters...

Maybe it's because I'm a writer or maybe just because I'm an oddball, but I've always had a strange, mystical fascination with names. I play a name game where I combine names of people who, if married, would have unique monikers (i.e. if Brady Quinn married Tom Brady, he'd be Brady Brady) (gender never matters, it's the name). I love the "are you serious?" names (once had a student named Rusty Nail in class) and I truly believe that many people who have the same names have something in common (not making examples for that one public due to possible retaliation).

So imagine how fun this article was for me this morning! Really...your name can determine your criminal potential. Who knew?


Boys With Unpopular Names More Likely To Break Law

I can't help but wonder what Rusty is up to these days. And I'm so glad I named my son Jason!

A Fun Character Naming Resource

I know, I should be writing. Don't worry, I have been. I'm home for the day for an appointment, and have spent a good hour on the story. About to wrap up the end of the first scene in chapter 1...and I realized I don't have a solid character name for my hero. I do have a "working" name that came out during on of the heroine's dialogues with a secondary character, but I'm one of those who absolutely must know the character's name before I can write it.

Mind you, I won't get started with the hero until the last line of chapter one, when the heroine time-travels back to his bed (oooooh...spoiler alert :)) but I need to know it because she's going to be thinking of him in the next two scenes.

So how fun is it when I checked out some babyname places online and found this one? It's from the Social Security Administration (maybe this is where my money is going...LOL) where you can plug in any year after 1879 and get a listing of the 50, 100, or even 500 most popular names that year? Extremely cool, especially if you write historicals. My story is set around the 1860s so it won't be spot-on but a good resource nonetheless. You can get both male and female names.

Go on, check it out. Every writer deserves a little play time :) You can choose by year, by decade, by state and you can search individual names to see how popular they were as well. Oh, yeah...don't forget to get back to the writing!

Popular Baby Names by Birth Year at the Social Security Administration website