Showing posts with label freaky name coincidences. Show all posts
Showing posts with label freaky name coincidences. Show all posts

07 April 2015

Freaky Name Coincidences, Part Four

Or better title, Attack of the Sequential Vowels!

If you missed out on the first three installments of my Freaky Name Coincidences posts (which you probably did if you’ve never been here before…), check them out here! These posts started when I realized that strange things tend to happen to me when I’m trying to name my characters. If I had 26 instead of 4 I would probably do an entire A to Z Challenge on them. Maybe someday. Since my theme is all about names, I thought it was a great time to share the fourth freaky name coincidence!

This one is tricky to describe because I’m not even sure how I figured out this was a thing in the first place. When you think about your characters’ names, you don’t usually think about the individual letters and how they relate to each other. Or how those letters relate to the letters in a different character’s name. But sometimes those names may have something in common, and you don’t even realize it.

I was plotting a book with every intention of writing it for the last NaNoWriMo. I got the first sentence down on November 1st and never wrote another word, but that’s not the important part right now. What I did figure out were the two main characters’ names: Gabe and Jamie. I wish I could remember the exact moment, or what exactly triggered this thought in my mind (because that would probably make this story more interesting), but at some point I started thinking about Gabe’s full first name (see my D post!), which is Gabriel. And then I realized something. The vowels in my two main characters’ (and love interests) names lined up perfectly:

G A B R I E L
J A M I E

It was an interesting coincidence. It only worked if I used Gabe’s full name, of course, but it was still there. What exactly did this mean? I had no idea, actually. I just thought it was cool. So I decided to examine my other book ideas. I looked at the characters in Uneven Lines, Jordan and Tom. Doesn’t seem so at first. But wait! Like Gabe, Tom’s name is a diminutive one (I really like using that term now that I know it…). What happens if I spell out the whole thing?

J O R D A N
T H O M A S

The vowels strike again! I was even more freaked out, especially because in no way did I do this on purpose. But I had to check one more time, to the characters who’ve been in my head since I was 14, Drew and Amber. I’ll spare you the diminutive speech again…

A N D R E W
A M B E R

AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!! It happened again! Or more accurately, it’s been happening for years! Not only are all the vowels in these characters’ names the same, but they’re in the same order. And for all three sets, it requires the full first names, not the shortened ones that I actually use. Weird and cool? Yes. But I have no idea what it means. Maybe these love interests are supposed to be soulmates? Definitely with one, nope nope nope nope nope with another, and the verdict is still out on the third, but probably. So that can’t be it. Maybe it’s just one of those things that sneaks its way into a story and maybe the reader will notice, but it’s perfectly fine if they don’t. It just makes things a little more interesting.

What do you think the vowels mean? Have you ever noticed strange patterns in your characters’ names?  

22 August 2014

Day 3 of the Freaky Name Coincidences

Last one, I swear...until something like this happens again...My brain doesn't seem to want to work today, so I'll try to make this short, and then go make a second cup of coffee.

What's in a Middle Name?

I've always given my characters middle names. It's one of those fun little facts that probably won't even show up in any book, but makes the character feel like a real person. So when I started writing Uneven Lines, I wanted to come up with middle names for my characters.

I actually came up with the middle name for the second most important character, Tom, first. Apart from also liking sexually ambiguous names, I also like names that can be shortened in different ways (I had a character named Drew in the fantasy book I used to work on, his first name actually being Andrew). I like to have the character's whole name--first, middle, and last--flow nicely together. I pulled "James" out of thin air for this character and I liked it. Not with Tom, obviously--too short--but with Thomas. Thomas James Callahan. I liked it. So I moved on.

It took me forever to come up with Jordan's middle name (you'd think he would just tell me, but nooooooo). I didn't want to settle for anything that didn't feel perfect. At some point I knew I wanted it to start with an M (it just felt right). I went through lists of boys' M names over and over and over again, trying to find the right one. Eventually I stumbled upon "Mason." I liked it--it seemed different, unique. I came up with an entire back story for why that would be his middle name--it was actually his grandfather's first name and would have been his first name if his mom didn't throw a fit (she was only 15 when he was born). She hates her family, so she hates her son's middle name. Will any of this be in the book? Of course not, but it's fun to come up with these little details. So now my main character had a full name: Jordan Mason Palmer.

You'd think that would be the end of it, but no, of course not. For a brief moment, I thought about their middle names at the same time. Wait a second, I thought...why does that sound so familiar?

I pulled up the IMDb app on my phone, and then literally facepalmed. Of course! James Mason. The actor! And what role do I know him best in...? Humbert Humbert in the film adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, one of my favorite novels of all time. And one giant source of inspiration for this particular novel I'm working on. My heart skipped a beat when I work-shopped the original short story and one of my classmates described it as a "gay, backwards Lolita." Plot-wise, of course--not meaning it was anywhere near as good as Lolita. At all. But anyway...

It happened again! Something weird about my character's names. As with the other freaky occurrences, I left the names the way they were. No one was ever going to know my character's middle names, anyway, and if they did, maybe they would notice and think I did it on purpose.

Yeah, right! I find the universe is usually more in control of things than I am.

20 August 2014

Day 2 of the Freaky Name Coincidences

Back for more, huh? Did you see my new profile picture?! I love it, and you know how much I hate pictures of myself, so that's saying a lot! My old picture was over three years old so I figured it was a time for a change. I still have the same glasses, though...

So here is the next post in my Week of Freaky Name Coincidences. This one is originally from January, 2012. Also, I should point out that I absolutely love sexually ambiguous names. I have no idea why. I'll probably give them to any children I have, but for now I'll settle for my characters...

What's in a Sexually Ambiguous Name? 


Let me preface this by saying that the “What’s in a Name” blog was not supposed to be a two-parter. But as usual, things are beyond my control. Believe me, I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

I had a new character to name. Since she was only going to appear in one chapter (and in a quick cameo near the end of the book), she wasn’t all that important on the grand scale of things. But in the chapter itself, she was very important. I call her the “Last Straight Temptation of Jordan Palmer,” since he almost has sex with her before deciding that he’d rather lose his virginity to a guy.

Within this chapter, she’s a very striking character. Almost like the female counterpart to Jordan, an adversary even. She shows up suddenly, challenges his attitudes, his beliefs, and serves as a temporary temptation. Basically, she doesn’t put up with his bullshit, which he finds incredibly sexy, and her desire for him may or may not be completely based on getting revenge on another girl, so he finds that intriguing. So at least for this scene, this girl was important, and to give her some dignity, I had to name her.

Since I started writing my novel in early 2011, I have it stuck in my head that this is when it takes place, so I figured this 15-year-old girl was born in 1995. So I cruised the internet to my favorite name site, behindthename.com, and found the list of popular names in 1995. I scrolled past the typical names—Jessica, Ashley, Emily, Brittany, and my own name, which was #5—in search of a name that spoke to me.

My eyes stopped on #29: Madison. I liked it instantly. And not just because it was different than all of those stereotypical girl names, but because, like Jordan, the name could be either a boy’s or a girl’s. It seemed kind of perfect, to put both characters on the same level and watch them butt heads.

That would have been the end of it—the decision had already been made—but curiosity got the better of me. To the left of the list of girls’ names were the top 100 boys’ names for that year as well. I’m not sure what made me look at it at all. Some force of nature, it seemed, because then I just happened to see #29 on the boys’ side. It was Jordan. Those two names had been standing side by side the entire time, and I hadn’t even noticed. Madison was even more perfect than I had thought.

I can’t really explain why these things keep happening to me. I just kind of go with it. I’m sure someday I’ll be writing Part Three…

Like on Friday! Come back to check out the strange coincidence with my main characters’ middle names…

18 August 2014

The Week of Freaky Name Coincidences!

So this week’s posts are a slight copout. Just a slight one, I swear! I was thinking recently about some older posts on my blog that didn’t get a lot of page views since they were written when I had about five blog followers. Should I repost some of the good ones? I’m still not entirely sure, but there were two posts in particular that had a common theme, and I’ve had a third one in the back of my mind that I've never written, so I thought, why not revisit them first?

So this week is dedicated to the freaky name coincidences that have happened to me when working on my novels. I’ve learned that when it comes to naming characters, sometimes you have no choice in the matter. Sometimes weird things happen.

This first post was from September 2011 (yikes!). I’ve tweaked it a bit because I felt some of the statements about my characters were no longer true (and it was waaaaaay too long). But anyway, here it is:

What’s in a Last Name?

Finding a name for a character can sometimes be excruciating. I can spend hours looking over baby name websites or trying to find different meanings and etymology, just trying to find that one perfect gem of a name that will sum up the entire character. Every once in a while, though, I don’t have to do research or make a list of names to choose from. Sometimes a character’s name simply pops into my head without me even having to think about it at all. I find this usually happens when I’ve created a story that I’m very passionate about, one that I won’t be able to let go. I think it’s because these characters are special to me, almost as if they’re real, so of course they already have names.

But in the case of two characters, something even stranger happened when I tried to give them last names.  

When I was fourteen, I started a fantasy novel called Bleeding Life, which I would go on to write three times and eventually be forced to shelve for various reasons. I feel it will always be in the back of mind until I actually finish it. When I was creating the characters, eventually I had decided upon every single detail about them, including middle and last names. But something didn’t sit right with me about my narrator, Amber’s last name—Johnson. It was too boring, too generic. I decided to change it.

Back in those days, I decided on last names by flipping blindly through a phone book. If I liked the name I found, I went with it. So, the logical next move was to go back and pick a new last name for Amber. I grabbed the phone book and closed my eyes, thumbed through the pages and opened the book in my lap. I ran my finger down the page and stopped, opening my eyes. My finger was pointing directly at “Johnson.” After a few seconds of shock, I slammed the phone book shut and put it away. There was obviously no fighting this. I had given Amber a specific identity, and to change it now would mean changing who she was as a character. And she had other plans in mind.

For my current obsession WIP, Uneven Lines, I had another strange occurrence when trying to figure out a last name for my narrator, Jordan (you know him, right? He hangs out around here…). When I first started developing the novel, I had it floating in the back of my head that his last name would be Palmer. I wasn’t quite committed to it, but it was the only name that had stuck even a little bit. I figured I could keep searching, maybe find something better.

But one day my boyfriend was driving me home, and I was sort of idly looking at street signs on the left side of the road when we came across a street named Jordan Dr. “Oh, haha,” I mused to myself. “I want to live there!” As we drove on, I was already forgetting about it when we came across the next street sign: Palmer St. I did a sort of double take as we zoomed past. It was like a moment of clarity. You see? the universe was saying. You were right all along! Don’t go around changing what’s already perfect!

Were both of these instances a coincidence? I don’t like to think so. The circumstances were just too strange, that I Just happened to be looking at street signs that day, that my finger just happened to land on that particular spot in the phone book. So yes, on some level I believe that these characters haven taken control of their own existences. If I try to change them, the universe will find some way to show me that I’m wrong. And ultimately, it’s all about trusting my first instincts, even if it’s only for a name. 

Anything strange like this ever happen to you? Be sure to come back on Wednesday for the next freaky name coincidence!