I find myself in a situation regarding character names that I’m not happy with.
This is for an urban fantasy where the protagonist is named Wayne Ellsworth, for good and sufficient reasons. For equally good and sufficient reason, his girlfriend/fiancee is named Georgia Fenton. These aren’t negotiable.
However, there is a third major character — probably the title character, in fact — who I have reasons to name George, specifically that he’s named that because his original given name is completely unpronounceable, and the person re-naming him was a fan of Warner cartoons, such as the Bugs Bunny one with the Abominable Snowman who wants to make Bugs his pet bunny, “and I will hug him and squeeze him, and I will call him George,” or whatever the exact line is.
I had originally thought that Elmyra Duff, from Tiny Toon Adventures, also called her pets George, but that appears to be incorrect.
So. Is having major unrelated characters named George and Georgia going to be too confusing/distracting? If so, any suggestions on what to call him instead of George? (Georgia, as I said above, isn’t negotiable.)
I think that having a “George” and a “Georgia” in the same story will be very confusing. I made the mistake in my book of naming a character “Tali” at the start, and then about 3/4 the way through the book, I pulled another name from the hat and it was “Tallin.” Well, Tali and Tallin ended up meeting each other and this lead to mass confusion with my critique group. Tallin is now known as “Raullin” and I’m going with that.
As far as suggestions for replacing George’s name with something else…. How about an alternate spelling or cultural twist on the name. Maybe, Jorge? That LOOKS distinct enough from Georgia, but can retain the same meaning. Maybe a little Spanish girl gave Jorge/George his name?
Just food for thought.
No, I’m not changing who named him — a fiftyish, rather geeky guy.
Over on LiveJournal the discussion’s been more active, and we’re reaching the conclusion he should be called Fred, rather than George. I mean, the only reason for George was the cartoon reference, and that doesn’t work for Jorge.
But thanks; I appreciate the input.
I don’t think it’ll necessarily be too confusing; you might want to hang a lampshade on it by having one of the characters express exasperation at the similarity.
If not, would it be possible to tweak the reason for the naming? For instance, have the character be a fan of old movies and name him “Harvey?” (That one’s overdone, maybe, but something along those lines.)
What do you think about Gossamer?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossamer_%28Looney_Tunes%29
Hmm. This might be too convoluted a line of reasoning, but…
The Abominable Snowman character in the Warner Brothers cartoons was a caricature of Lenny from Of Mice And Men. Would it be possible for the character naming him to make that connection? Think of “I will call him George,” but decide to go with “Lenny” instead?
I know I’m about a week late, but the first thing that popped into my mind was “Sam”. In the movie Alien Nation, when all the newcomers end up on Earth, immigration officials couldn’t make up names for all of the aliens, so they started using silly names. The main alien character is named “Sam Francisco”. His real name was essentially unpronounceable. Any rather geeky guy would know all about Alien Nation, I’m sure, and the naming dilemma that caused such a ludicrous name (incidentally, the character’s original scripted name was “George Jetson” but they couldn’t get the rights to use it … an interesting geeky parallel to your “George” dilemma).
Gossamer is a nifty character, but I’m specifically looking for an ordinary name, one that one doesn’t really expect to be attached to a character as outlandish as this one.
I liked the Alien Nation approach, but I’ve used Sam a couple of times already.
Lenny — actually, Lenny has potential. It has the right feel. I need to think about this.
Thanks, everyone, and I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to respond.
Joe?
Joe is a viable option. Right now I’m still leaning toward Fred, but Joe’s probably a close second.
For some reason, this post has been attracting large amounts of comment spam lately. Why only this post?
Strange are the ways of spammers.
At any rate, I’m tired of deleting it and I wish they’d stop. This blog’s comments are moderated, and I am not letting anything through unless it actually addresses the content of the post.