I recently skimmed an article on a study about children
with unusual or unpopular names. And it got me thinking about a lot of things.
My first thought was the fight we had with Dad when our
youngest brother was born. I can’t remember the name he wanted to give Dan, but
I do remember telling Dad, “He’s going to get teased enough as it is because of
our last name!”
By the way, our maiden name is Westover. We got teased a lot
for that.
That may be the only time teenagers have ever backed up
their stepmother, but I’m sure Dan is glad we prevailed!
The article I scanned also mentioned the more recent
penchant for parents to “creatively” spell their children’s names, which got me
thinking about the “creative” spelling of our names.
I know that our mother got our oldest sister’s full first
name off the headlines when she was born. Dictionary, otherwise known as Jacki,
was born in March of ’61. Guess who was in the headlines back then. Our big
sister always preferred Jackie over the longer version, but eventually, she
dropped that “e,” making her name Jacki.
As kids, she was Jackie, and that is a common spelling. She
never had problems with her name. I also never really had any problems when I
stuck with Bonnie, but there were clear issues with my middle name, and that
blasted “e” our father decided to exclude from my birth certificate.
Konnie and Bryon had significant issues.
As you can see from all our posts, her name is Konnie, not
Connie. But while people sometimes misspelled her name, no one ever tried to
tell her she was spelling it wrong; at least not that I can remember.
Bryon on the other hand did experience an issue with the spelling
of his name. When he was in fifth grade and Konnie and I were in sixth grade we
went to a school where the fifth and sixth grades were combined in the mornings
and split in the afternoon, and well the fifth-grade teacher kept insisting on
calling him “Byron.” When we told her that his name is pronounced Brian, she
told us he was spelling his name wrong.
We tried to tell her he wasn’t, but she wouldn’t listen, if
his name is Brian, it should be spelled B-r-i-a-n not B-r-y-o-n. Please note that the “r” is before the “y” in his name, so she mispronounced his name, but
she wouldn’t listen to that argument either.
We gave up until we had a chance to tell our mother what was
going on.
She resorted to taking all three of our birth certificates
to the school the first chance she got and cussing the principal and that
teacher out.
By the way, none of our names are spelled wrong. All three
of us were named after family friends. Our first names are spelled just like
who we were named after. The only “creative” spelling is when Dad dropped that dang “e”
from both mine and Konnie’s middle names.
Nowadays, the creative spelling you come across can be so
bad, that it is sometimes hard to figure out how it is supposed to be pronounced.
Not too long ago I embraced this trend by giving a character
in one of my WIPs a creatively spelled name, but I also gave her a simple,
conventionally spelled, nickname.
I do have a point in my story where the hero wonders what her
full first name is because on the first day of school that year (her first in
that district), all the teachers stumbled over her name and then asked her how to
pronounce it. In each instance, she responded, “Just call me Wren.”
Anyway, what I got from my cursory glance at the article was
that kids with unusual or unpopular names are less likely to be successful and
more likely to be teased and or shunned.
And yes, I can see anyone named something like Adolf being
shunned, but mostly kids just teased, and I don’t see how that teasing
adversely affected me.
Though I assure you, I will always insist that parents think
of their children, and how they may get teased when naming them.
Anyway, have you used “creative” spelling in your character
names, or given your characters unpopular names?
What are some of your strategies for naming characters? Do
you set different rules for different stories?
In one of mine, all the girls in the female lead’s family
are named after flowers, so I had to give them flower names. In another story, I
set up rules about the last names of a colony of aliens.
Happy writing everyone.
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