What's in a name?

So, it's kind of a dead hour in the office. Not gonna lie about that and just admit it. Interestingly enough I discovered something while playing around on an app in Facebook that a friend sent. It's some avatar thing but you have to name your character. The catch is that it's a one word name, so given the amount of users, the name definitely has to be unique. Or entirely ridiculous. (You do the math, 'coz I can't). So anyway in attempting to name the said avatar, I stummble across (or purposely search for) this website of baby names. I actually typed "interesing names" in Google but this popped up so I clicked it. And here's what I discovered: a little section that gives authors advice on naming their characters. As I read the tips I can't help but nod in agreement and realization. "These tips are so useful!" I keep thinking. But useful for what? I don't exactly have the need to come up with charcter names daily right? I mean, it's just not in the job description and it certainly doesn't fall under any of the sub-activities of my hobbies and/or non-work related activities now does it? Yet I'm nodding along thinking this could have been useful. I was always terrible at naming things. Much as I love to write, my titles have always been either long, corny and/or predictable. But even more so my character's names. Which is why I often used first person perspective later on, to either prolong or avoid naming my main characters. Lest I brand them with a name that would altogether stereotype or murder my character and it's intentions. Not that that made me any less connected to my characters. I always loved them. But dubbing them so-and-so was always something that would take more time than I had. So they'd end up with half-thought out misnomers that revealed nothing of who they really were to me and the story. Needless to say I took naming my characters really seriously. Especially when we discussed in our scriptwriting class how important those were. I always took it seriously. Shakesphere may have said "What's in a name?" dismissing the power of names or their importance in defining who we are and dictating our existence. Yet even as he did so, little did he know he was dialoguing the script to a play whose title characters have forever stereotyped and/or cliched the names of romance forever. When someone calls a guy Romeo even if that isn't his name, we all know they mean the guy's a romantic. (At least for the present situation). Such irony there is in that huh? But it is true. Again I nod to the website's introduction to this section as it says "There are many literary and movie characters that become everlasting brands in our culture". Which is why I always took care to name my charcters well even if I sucked at the job.

On another note, reading about naming characters and remembering my urgency in finding the right names to match the words of my story has made me...sentimental yet again, to say the least. I remembered the lessons we had in scriptwriting or our other writing classes. The questions my teacher would ask that did not warrant much fact but more opinions. Opinions from us, as writers ourselves. I totally agreed with the fact that namin characters properly was important. I said little on the matter in the classroom to give a chance for the others to give their own input. But at the end of the day I always loved classroom discussions like that and learning that there were actually uses for my thoughts and opinions in real writing. Even our film theory classes were gratifying in revealing thories and names to match patterns I had always spotted in movies. As I remember the feeling, I reminisce on being a student. In writing scripts at 3:00 am in the morning even when my brain was dry because I had no other time to do them. Forcing the words to come out structured yet poetic and conversational at the same time was a high I'll always readily slip into. It wasn't always easy being a student. But reading tips like these reminds me of what it was like to learn in a classroom setting and to put what I learned into writing. It makes me realize, the name student was one I enjoyed, especially in college.

So students, enjoy wht you have...soon you'll have another name.

I know I sound totally geeky and cliche raving about classroom discussions that made my mind race, but if you won't name me that, then who am I to brand myself? These are just random thoughts and feelings after all. Besides, what's in a name?