This is MJ. I'm an author. I'm an artist. I'm an analyzer. Find out my work at MJMunoz.com. Welcome to Story Over Everything, Episode 10.
This is for March 17th, 2023, and my question, my topic, my thing I want to discuss is, how do you name characters?
For the Grow Bug books right now, I am...
Well, I was stuck. I'm in an okay place. Well, let me start over. For the Grow Bug books,
I have a bunch of characters to name. They are Grow Bugs. They are angelic,
guardian angel type insects that are magical in their nature, and
they're basically being angels on a mission from God. And
that means
that because I like accuracy, and I like looking into the roots of things,
angels have the names of...
part of the name of God, the L part on most of their names, like Michael. It's not Michael. It's Michael.
Gabriel. It's not Gabriel. It's Gabriel.
Different names like that.
Raphael, another angel. It's Raphael.
So it's... I don't know what the... like the L in Hebrew means... has something to do with power.
Kings or lords or judges are called Elohim.
But the L part is in the beginning there.
I don't know what the Elohim part means necessarily, because I'm a lay biblical scholar,
so I don't really know as much as I could, but just giving you a little bit there.
L is a common
common used word for God. I believe... I would call, I guess, Arab or Arabic a Semitic language,
and
they call their god Allah as opposed to Elohim. Elohim, Allah. You can hear the similarities in there.
The L and the H and the A at the beginning. Anyway, so
they're commonly related things. So what I did was I didn't necessarily want to use like a
full name of God, so I went into
etymology, and I looked through the Bible, and I found that there's a weird coincidence
where there's a city called Luz, which is called the house of God by one of the patriarchs, Jacob, and
Luz means light, and Luz or Lu-x-L-u-z
means light in like a couple different languages, Latin, Spanish,
supposedly from what I've read, again, I'm a lay
biblical scholar. It looks as if the Hebrew even for Luz means something very much like light, even though the Hebrew words
for light or spark or flame or things like that are or and ash and
nair, that's like a flame or candle.
So they don't sound like Luz, but somehow Luz also in Hebrew according to multiple sources
I looked at seems to suggest a meaning of light as well, and I thought well if you're coming from a
theological perspective, isn't God light anyway? Doesn't God light up the darkness? And you have to understand
my fellow writers who might be listening to this or anybody who else is,
you know, I'm writing what I know. I'm writing from my perspective. My characters exist in a world
where there's a godly figure, a divine figure who orchestrates and
executes things if you will, which is how I believe our world runs, so I'm putting that worldview of mine into my fiction. So
all this background that I jumped immediately into, I hope it's not disoriented,
I hope it's exciting instead, but it's all to basically get to the point, the
meat, the question of this, which is how do you name your characters?
Well, I'm telling you how I name my characters, but I'm curious how y'all do it too because
I'm not done yet. I still have more characters to name and I think I'll go ahead and name them in the interim before I get any feedback,
but I still think it's a, you know, it's a relevant topic as a writer, so I thought I would go ahead and talk about it. So
getting back to it, let me know in a little bit how you
name your characters and I will ask the question one more time after I continue telling you how I name my characters.
So, I think about the context, I think about the culture, I think about the history.
Based on that, the fact that these are guardian angel insects, I thought I want them all to have something like L in their names,
which I wonder if angel
has anything to do with that, but I don't think it does just because it's a totally different language and
angel in Hebrew is malach actually, so the word malach becomes angel in English, which there's no common
sounds in there really and there's no root.
Malach means messenger, but it also means angel. I think it can also mean like minister or prince.
There's different,
there's different contexts. Well, Hebrew is a very high context dependent language, so depending on what you're saying,
in what context, it can mean many different things even though it's one word or one word can have several meanings.
I'm sure there are some words that have a singular meaning, but then there are others that have multiple meanings. Anyway,
moving on from there. So I definitely want that, that I'm going to go ahead and say that
so I definitely want that that fragment in the name that carries the name of the divine or a name or a reference to the
divine in my character's names. Now, these are magic angel, guardian angel insects like I said, but
I'm also
taking inspiration from tokusatsu. Tokusatsu, if you don't know, it's Japanese. It's a Japanese word. It means special effects. It refers
most specifically to live-action Japanese
film and TV,
products, whatever, that feature special effects. What kinds of special effects you may ask?
Supposedly, it's any kinds. What is the most typical case for the special effects that I'm talking about?
Men in rubber suits,
wrecking miniature sets of cities or countrysides. Yes, I'm talking about Godzilla. Yes, I'm talking about Ultraman.
Monsters
of gigantic size being fought by robots with
the people inside of them piloting them in a combination robot at Super Sentai or Power Rangers as most people
know it or a common version of it. And you know, they get into these combination robots and they combine together into a
giant mecha that fights monsters. Then there's things like Kamen Rider and I think I already said Ultraman. And there's lots of other
tokusatsu sci-fi products. Those are the kinds of things I'm into. I enjoy those a lot along with studying the bible and you know other
other things. So I've got a weird wide range of eclectic interests.
So
I'm bringing that all to the table. Also, I believe that anime has tokusatsu elements in it a lot of the time.
I believe specifically Digimon is full of Ultraman and Godzilla and other tokusatsu references even to the point where
in one later in the fourth season of Digimon, the children who are in the digital world actually
become Digimon. They transform into them like a Power Ranger, like a Kamen Rider would. Maybe even like an Ultraman would you could say.
Or you know Power Rangers or Super Sentai. So you know that's part of my context. So you know why is that relevant?
Well, each of my first five Grow Bug books that I've written the drafts for and that I'm working on getting finished.
Or you know, I'm working on refining them doing the drafts, you know second, third drafts, etc. And getting them all to be a cohesive unit.
They're all inspired by different tokusatsu. I mentioned them all already.
Godzilla, Ultraman, Super Sentai Kamen Rider or Kamen Rider then Super Sentai then Digimon.
And I already told you why I consider that to be tokusatsu. So
they're all inspired by those things. So I thought well, I'll give each of the
Grow Bug characters in these books a name that is rooted in and based on the specific tokusatsu
property that is being referenced or homaged in that particular book.
So my first book I have Godzilla, which in the Japanese it's called Gojira or Gojira.
And I just changed the emphasis on that. That's all I did. I'm pedantic like that sometimes.
But anyway, I thought well, can I take you know, can I can I do can I take this
can I take this suffix lose L-U-Z and combine it with Gojira somehow in order to make the angels name.
Gojira lose. No, no, no, that's not what I want. Go lose. Maybe.
Jiluz. Maybe.
Ra lose. Possibly. Gojira lose. Ra lose. Something like that because that's breaking down Gojira
into three different syllables and making a name out of it.
And some of the angel names in the Bible are long. Michael. That's three syllables.
Rafael is three syllables again. Gabriel. A lot of them are you think are that way.
There's one. I don't know all the other angels, but you know, those are some of them and those
are their names. They're all three syllables. So if I could do, you know, goji lose that would
fit within the paradigm of what I'm doing. I'm I'm identifying a structure that I want to mimic
or emulate in this instance specifically for naming these types of these particular characters.
And I'm breaking it down and saying, well, you know, all of them mean different things.
Rafael is the angel of healing. Rafa is healing and El means of God or whatever. That's how it's
typically translated. Michael means who is like God. That is typically the angel known as the
angel of the Lord. And it's supposed to be like this most powerful angel who represents God.
So you would say this is the angel who is like God, not who is like God, the question, but this
is the angel who is in fact like God because they speak in the space or name or in the presence of
God instead as like an intermediary. And then Gavriel means I believe it means strength of God
or like it has something to do with strength because Gavur is the strength of severity.
And that's an angel of judgment. So like when Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, I believe the
text says that there the angel went and destroyed it. That would have that's identified in rabbinic
literature as Gavriel or Gabriel the angel. So because he is severe, he is the one who brings
down punishment. Whereas before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah actually Rafael was there
because there were three angels, I believe it says specifically that visited Abraham after his
circumcision. And that was Rafael was one of them who actually helped to heal or speed along the
healing of Abraham's circumcision, which was a surgery which you would need to be healed from.
So anyway, that's I'm taking that kind of concept of how it's broken down in the actual naming of
angels according to the Jewish texts. And I'm putting that together with this concept. Okay,
I got a tokusatsu and I've got this, you know, suffix that means basically of the divine,
and I'm combining them together. So my first one, I've got two characters in the book who have names
like this because they're grow bugs, there's a spider, and there's a praying mantis. And one of
them needs to have one name and one needs to have another. So I think I'm going to go with gilus and
Ralu's. And those sounds strange, but it's supposed to sound strange because these aren't normal
characters. It's not an everyday thing. It's, you know, fantastical and wonderful. And I'm hoping
that those names convey that. And that's part of the rationale behind, you know, how I'm aiming
these characters. But I have more to say on the matter. I just need to pivot real quick and
think about what exactly I'm going to say. So I'll be back in a moment.
So in this instance, I am using kind of cultural and etymological and like a structural template
that's been set up for me that I'm copying. So that works for this because it's kind of fantasy
stories, you know, they're magical bugs, right? So it's kind of a fantasy story or set of stories.
And it's a whole fantasy world that exists. And there is actually, well, I won't say that, but
so I suppose how you name your characters should be dependent upon your context. If you're writing
sweet romance versus if you're writing hard science fiction versus if you're writing,
you know, fantasy or drama or literary fiction or whatever, you may have to change your approach.
You may have to change rules. And I, I jotted down some things, which will be in the show notes.
And I asked a couple of questions, you know, you know, do you just pick names that you like for your
characters? Do you pick names that are related to the theme of the story? Do you pick names that
are related to the title? If you pick something related to the title or the theme, is that just
your main character or is that everybody? Or is it one of those books with an eponymous title?
And then you have weird, well, I guess it's a whole different genre, but
Popes, you have a kind of, they are, and they aren't eponymous. So like the shadow books, I looked at a bunch of them.
They're not all called the shadow colon such and such. It's the living shadow is the first book.
There's the eyes of the shadow. There's the black master. The golden master, I think is one.
Lots of different titles. Lots of different titles. And I don't know, like as far as like trade dress
is concerned or whatever, they all had an image of the shadow on them or the shadow menacing somebody
on them. So that's how that worked. And that's more specifically talking about like series and
things like that. But those were also, you know, much older books. Those were published in the shadow
magazine. I think every month there would be a new novel. So, you know, 50,000 word, approximately
40 to 60,000 words, I think is the length that they usually went with on those. But anyway,
you have that kind of idea or, you know, I'm a Star Wars fan, so I'll read, you know, Star Wars colon,
you know, Kenobi colon, whatever, or, you know, just Star Wars Kenobi. So you have it, you know,
it's the name of the series plus the name of a character. You can do that. So eponymous titles
definitely work. I don't feel like eponymous titles work for every genre, but there's probably,
I don't know, I'm trying to think of books now. I'm trying to think of books in other genres.
But like the only thing that's popping into my head at the moment is like, you know, The Notebook
and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, because I know those are books.
You know, The Martian, what's that, by David Rear, you know, that's kind of a misleading title.
The guy's not really a Martian, but he's a human who gets stuck on Mars, so therefore he is a,
technically a Martian, just like, you know, you and I would be Terran living on the Earth.
So that kind of thing. So, and like, I don't know if, I don't know if most people want their titles
to fake out their readers, or if they want them to be very direct and very clear as to what they are.
Again, I suppose that depends on what genre you're working in. I think because I'm working in
children's books, you know, Grow Bug Tales, or you know, so-and-so and the Grow Bug, which is the
titling structure for my children's picture books, it makes sense. It puts an emphasis on the kid,
and it puts an emphasis on the fact that you are having some fantastical element,
some fantastical element in it, which is the Grow Bug. But I have veered into talking about
titles for books as opposed to talking about names for characters, so I will pivot back to that
real quick, and my humblest apologies for that. If you want to come back later, I will have an
episode where I'm talking about titling books and titling series, but we'll get into that.
Anyway, so there are different structures, and I'd be curious to see what other people
do or how they pick their names. You know, for fantasy, there's always the temptation to just
make up names, or for science fiction, more like Star Wars, which is a blend of science fiction and
fantasy, I would say. You know, they have, there's no Steve, you know, there's no Steve Skywalker,
but originally there was Zeke Skywalker, and Zeke is definitely a name or a nickname in the United
States. So there's that, again, you know, Obi-Wan, but then there's also Ben. So there's kind of an
interesting mixture of, you know, standard, you know, Earthling, you know, Western American type
names, and then they combine those with with other things. So and again, that's just depending on your
genre, I guess, you'll have to figure out what to do with that. But personally, I like names that
make sense. I also, oh, here's another thing I wrote down, you know, when you pick your names,
do you want to have them all start with the letter J, for example, or do you want to have them all
start with different letters, or do you want to have them all make sure that none of them make
sure you don't have a, I was gonna say Courtney and Whitney, but that kind of has a bit of a flow
to it. You could have a Courtney and Whitney, but you probably wouldn't want to have a Courtney and
a Cordelia in your book, because then that's two people who have core is the first part of their
name. And I would think, I would think the first part of somebody's name is more impactful, has
weighs more in the memory than the last part of their name, or the, you know, third syllable,
fourth syllable, fifth syllable in their name, just, especially the way we come up with names,
especially the way we come up with nicknames. Lots of people will come, you know, a Brittany
will become Britt, Courtney will become core, a David will become Dave, all sorts of things
like that. So, although I've never heard of Sean called the Shaw, but I guess he's dropping one
letter doesn't really make sense, but some people do that for their names, depending. So, you know,
and then, you know, do you want to consider nicknames in how you're naming your characters?
I don't know. It depends. And I think that's, that's a big question, but I more just kind of
wanted to talk about the mechanics of it. I've shared with you my methodology for how I'm picking
names, at least for these fantasy stories. And then actually I will tell you for my global superhero
story that I have planned, which will be, you know, series upon series, I do plan on each title
character having their name. Of course, they have their superhero name, then they have their civilian
alter ego, or however you call that. And because I want them to be all around the world, I'm not
going to have them be called, you know, Bob, you know, Bob Champagne or Bob Shun Banye and,
you know, Steve, I can't think of any other Steve Akbar or whatever. Like I would have names rooted
in their culture, but I think a caution with that is you don't want to be silly and call somebody
John. You don't want to be like a Japanese writer from in Japan calling people, you know, you don't
want to have Tom, Dick and Harry and John Smith in your book. That's, that's a little too much.
Um, but those are real names. So it kind of depends. I would say if you're going to do
something like that, like a cliche cliche, you know, American or white American name,
uh, for example, you would want to have one of those in a book and maybe they're a side character
or something. Um, and you wouldn't want to have that be every single name, uh, just so that there's
a better flow. But, you know, for me, that's, you know, that's my preference. And I'm saying,
I think that's going to serve your audience better because they don't have this clash of all these
names sounding so similar, where it becomes easy to confuse the characters for one another. And
then it makes the story more difficult to follow because you have to think about this. You're
writing to your audience, even though I think you should write what you want to write. You should
present what you want to write in the most palatable way for your audience so that they can,
they don't have to work as hard to track with it, you know, whether they're reading to it or
listening to the audio book or whatever, uh, they should be able to easily follow along.
Cause if you're not doing that, then I think you're doing it to service to your audience.
And ultimately you're doing it to service to yourself because you're making your books less
accessible, less easy to read. And, uh, yeah, so then definitely, uh, I don't like, um, certain
constructions of sci-fi or fantasy names. They're too difficult to read a lot of the times. You have
to really guess or work hard at how you're supposed to pronounce these names. For example, when I,
uh, started earnestly reading Star Wars books, I read the, in high school, I read the Zon Trilogy,
Timothy Zon Trilogy, which is the heir to the empire. Uh, what is it? Dark force rising and
last command, I think are the titles of the books. And there's grand Admiral Thrawn, great villain
name, simple one syllable sounds regal, has a bit of gravitas to it. Like, it's got a good sound to
it. And then his, I dunno, uh, captain, I think it's captain Pellion, P L L E O N. I had no idea
how to pronounce that. I think I only learned how to pronounce it once. Uh, I heard that there was
an audio book or I heard maybe people talking about on a Star Wars podcast, but until then I
was just like, uh, yeah, I guess it's whatever. And I honestly just glossed over it in my mind,
which there was an advantage to that, especially for, you know, if you're putting out something
as a print novel or an ebook only, or whether it's print or e format only, if somebody's just
reading off the screen, you know, that you can kind of fudge things a little bit and get weird
with how you spell things. But at the same time, do you really want to do that? Again, my argument
for accessibility and for ease of digestibility, you don't want to now it's nice probably to
spice things up a little bit, but again, would depend on your genre. And I don't think your, uh,
literary fiction or your, your, uh, you know, sweet romance, you know,
have crazy character names that stand out, but, uh, you can have names that work with each other.
And I think that's really cute. I definitely think it's something you should do for something
like that. Uh, a drama or a fantasy with team members, do their names really need to go together
and have a certain music or symmetry or, uh, unity to them? I would say no, it's less, less likely
that they need that. And I would say it's a detriment to you a little bit if you have all
their names sounding the same. Uh, like honestly, as much as I love the Hobbit and I, I like the
Hobbit more than I like the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I think it's a better overall single
story. And you know, because as you may or may not know, the Lord of the Rings trilogy was
originally going to be a single manuscript of an, an enormous, immense, massive book.
And Tolkien was told that he could not publish it like that. So he split it up into multiple
pieces. Uh, and that's not apocryphal information that's coming from Blackstone on the audiobook
version of it from the, uh, I don't know the appendices, not the appendices, but there's a,
there's information from the publisher about the books and that's part of the history of
the publication anyway. So there's that to consider. Um, but, but I'm getting to my larger point.
Uh, while I can sort of appreciate the ease of remembering, feely, keely, poin and gloin,
bifer, booper, bomber, uh, it's also kind of like, I don't know, it feels a little unsophisticated
and I don't need to be pretentious in everything I do, but, uh, I don't know that names work
like that in a culture. Uh, Star Wars has a little bit of a problem like that too, where
a character will get an official name from a movie and then people will have names that sound like
that with one letter changed or something. So I don't know if that's going to be a good
thing or not. But I do know that there are names that sound like that. I don't know if
that's going to be a good thing or not. But I do know that there are names that sound like that
with one letter changed or something like that. Like, you know, Han and Dan, like, you know,
oh, uh, this is Han Solo's cousin from Karelia, Ban Solo or Ran Solo or like I said, Dan Solo.
People can have names that don't sound immediately similar to other names. I mean, there should be
common things in a foreign language, but, uh, I think not like that. I think not like that.
So yeah, I'm going to go ahead and wrap this up here. Let me know in the comment section,
however you want to comment. There's a variety of ways to do it. You can do it on the website. You
can do it on the app that you're listening to this through. And you should definitely have that
option pretty soon. I'm going to make sure that I'm going to do my best to make sure it's turned on
as quickly as possible. And I'd love to hear how you go about titling your characters and what you
think of my approach to titling my characters, at least in these grow books. So anyway, until next
time, uh, take care of folks and be well. If you enjoyed me talking about the writing process,
then hopefully you'll enjoy reading or listening to my writing instead. So go over to MJMunoz.com
or MJMunoz.com slash books and check out what I have there. My plan is to keep that updated
all the time with the latest and greatest of my writing, whether that be books, audiobooks,
you should be able to buy direct from me there. And yes, so please go ahead over there to MJMunoz
or MJMunoz.com slash books and check out all the good stuff I have to offer there.