favorite character name blog | favorite character name blog
Nov.22.2010
Last week, Red Room invited our members to blog about their favorite character names in literature. We did this after asking our authors the week before to participate in the First Amendment Project's Character Name Auction, joining Red Room's Andrew Sean Greer, Ayelet Waldman, Dave Eggers, Jane...
|
Nov.20.2010
Ebenezer Scrooge.
Ebeneeeeeezer Scrooooooooge. All those hard consonants and vowels together are the perfect name for Dicken's protagonist of A Christmas Carol.
The first observation is that it is the perfect name to be uttered by ghosts with their ethereal and echoing voices. Each of the three...
|
Nov.19.2010
The central characters in “To Kill a Mockingbird” are Scout, Gem, and Atticus Finch—perfect names for a smart, spunky, six-year old girl, her daring older brother, and their optimistic father, a man of strong character and moral convictions. Charles Baker “Dill” Harris, Arthur “Boo” Radley, and...
|
Nov.19.2010
I was driving home from work one day, when a girl showed up in my mind with the most interesting name. At a red light, I closed my eyes just long enough to get a glimpse of this feisty girl with a story to tell. When I got home, I tossed my stack of grading on the kitchen counter, took out a...
|
Nov.18.2010
Dewey Dell: a woman a place a womanplace. Seventeen years old and pregnant. Seventeen years old and burdened with a baby she doesn’t want and brothers she’ll have to take care of as she inherits her mother’s place in the family. Dewey Dell Bundren. It’s one of the most organic names in fiction....
|
Nov.18.2010
History and romance intertwined can jump start my heart and send my imagination soaring. Years ago this was the case when I was introduced to the characterization of Scarlett O’Hara in the novel Gone With The Wind. Scarlett, a name like no other. The imagery projected in her name said it all. ...
|
Nov.18.2010
I grew up in rural Michigan, in a lower middle class community. One would assume that my education was lacking, but we were lucky in the number of incredible teachers who settled in our area. My seventh grade English teacher, Miss Morpaw, was one of those inspiring educators.
One morning,...
|
Nov.18.2010
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Grave_of_Kafka.JPG
In case there is any doubt, Joesph K and Franz Kafka are interchangeable. Franz was named after Franz Joseph, Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This was done by his father to help assimilate into his society (what better way). His...
|
Nov.18.2010
I like character names that reflect something about the character’s personality. Dickens (Ebenezer Scrooge and many, many others) and Nabokov (Humbert Humbert) are just two of many authors who delighted in creating such names. A more recent example is Steven Erickson, whose fantasy series The...
|
Nov.18.2010
Her name doesn't even appear on the cover, only a lime green girl in the style of a child's stick drawing, beneath a hastily scrawled yellow star against a brilliant blue background. This simple enigmatic cover drew me to the book, even before I knew the author and the title, named on the spine...
|