This Is Why We Don't Let Teenagers Name Babies - Tumblr Posts

I have definitely gotten hung up on character names before, spending goodness-knows-how-long hammering out ideas until I hit the perfect one because if I don’t have the name right, I have a difficult time actually writing them.

I have also had instances of looking over something I wrote back in high school or college where I clearly went, “[Unusual Name]? Oh, yeah, that fits perfectly in this setting.” (Spoilers: it didn’t.) Names that were either just really awkward to say—often because I picked several random consonants and then just jammed vowels in between, or because I was trying to do a deep “Aragorn, son of Arathorn” thing with them but was starting with a much stupider name—or were far too “fantasy” to fit into a modern real-world setting. I’ve got note files where I made changes to various character names to make them better, so I would remember what changes happened to those stories.

Does anyone else have a mental roadblock when it comes to giving a character an unusual or unique name? I mean this within the context of this character being a twenty-something woman and the work being more along the lines of general/realistic or literary fiction, yet the name almost coming across like something in a young adult “not-like-other-girls” tale.

Names can really impact a character, and I’m one of those writers who gets stuck until the name is perfect for that character.