Consider names, names of characters. Alice in Wonderland. Hamlet. Huckleberry Finn. Do we accept (and know) these names because the literary works are famous? Or do we know the names because they could be none other? Would The Tragedy of Ted, Prince of Denmark, work just as well?
Years ago, when working as a librarian at the NYPL’s Theatre Collection at Lincoln Center, I would come upon manuscripts of famous plays in early drafts. Thus Oscar Wilde’s great play, The Importance of Being Earnest, was titled Lady Lancing. And Edward Albee’s play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? had character names very different than in the final version. It made a big difference.
Choosing the right name for a character is complex. If you choose a name from someone you know, say, your weird uncle Fred, will that “Fredness,” so to speak, infect your character in a way you don’t intend?
(Did you know that onomastics is the term for the study of the history and origin of proper names, especially personal names?)
When I wrote Blue Heron I used the name of a girl who was the daughter of a single-parent friend, a girl who read my books. When I told my friend what the story was, about a girl from a single parent home, my friend asked me to change the name of the character. I did. But in doing so, my feelings about the book also changed.
When choosing a character name, one must consider gender, culture, historical moment, and what it might suggest about the character. Also, you must consider variety. And context. You would not name characters Jack and Jill, unless you wished to suggest a reference to the famous poem.
I chose Crispin because it is a medieval name and it is easy to say. I knew the name from the “St. Crispin Speech” as it is called, from Shakespeare’s Henry V (Act IV Scene iii ).
On my own reference shelf, I own a number of books of names. One is titled Historical Names, providing names popular during particular historical periods. Thus I have a book of Irish names, Italian names, used for books that pertain to that place and culture.
I don’t recall if I ever considered another name for Charlotte for The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. I do recall doing research and learning that Doyle was a common name in 19th century Providence, Rhode Island, as was the name Charlotte.
When I wrote Poppy, the mice in the story, a story set in a forest, all characters have names of flowers. But there are so many names of flowers that I could match names to character personalities. Thus, Poppy’s pompous, over-bearing father is called Lungwort.
As for Ereth the porcupine, if I tell you that Erethizontidae, is the porcupine’s scientific name, you see how that worked out.
When I wrote Ragweed—he first in the Poppy series—which is set in a city, the editor Elise Howard suggested I switch to names with an urban resonance. I therefore choose car parts, thus Clutch, and my favorite, the drummer in Clutch’s band, Lug Nut.
And, thinking of Poppy, I am reminded that was not the original name for my lead character. When I wrote the book she was called Pip. As it happened, I was reading the (almost) final draft of the book to a class at the Moses Brown School in Providence. At some point a boy came up to me and said, “Is this how you got the name for your book?” He showed me a Canadian book titled Pip, the Story of a Mouse.
I went home and changed the name to Poppy.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
It was Manutius who invented italic type fonts. Consider the word and you can see it imbeds the term Italy in it—as in “The Italian font.” One of the advantages of italic font printed books is they use less pages—again, a factor in commerce.
In the long process of publishing, I have always loved the moment when the first “proofs” of a book arrive on my desk. Strictly speaking a proof means, “Something that proves a statement; evidence or argument establishing a fact or the truth of anything, or belief in the certainty of something; an instance of this.” (Oxford Unabridged Dictionary) In the world of publishing, however, the term means. “A trial or preliminary impression of a printed text, taken to be checked for errors and marked for correction before subsequent revision or final printing.”
I had left my librarian’s position at Trenton State College, and set in to write full time. 
![The library at Trenton State College [Wikimedia Commons]](https://www.avi-writer.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/ph_tcnj_library.jpg.jpg)
Most often asked question:
Many people are fascinated by maps. I knew a serious book collector who built a large library of books which were selected because they had maps in them. For example, Treasure Island, famously, has a map in it. Indeed, it’s said that Stevenson drew the map for his step-son first, and then wrote the book.
