When I first started writing my latest story, Project Harem, I named my main character Jessica. In dialogue with other characters, it seemed natural that they would call her Jess for short. But for reasons that now escape me, in the narrative I continued calling her by her full name, Jessica. Nearly 60k words later it's created a hefty editing burden to maintain the consistency in the different use of her name in the narrative versus the dialogue. It's yet another lesson learned, when I start a new story in the future I'll be cautious of making editing rods for my back.
I do this all the time! It's a bit annoying for the writer, perhaps, but I routinely pick names for my characters specifically so they're nicknameable. It adds a bit of personality to the person being addressed, and is a nice shortcut for showing that two characters are close: you don't address your boss' boss by calling her "Kaykay", after all. Just looking at three of my more recent stories, I've got Kathleen, Natalie, David, Taylor, Michael, Samantha...
I definitely learned early to pick names that are easy to write, I think this is the reason you see so few double barrelled first names in stories! I have favourites too, Elizabeth and it's variations feature a lot in my work, as does Katie, Jack and Max. Also names that are flowers, Poppy and Lily are great names I use a bit to often. The other thing I sometimes do is try to fix the name to hint at the characters personality, a tip I picked up on a writing blog somewhere. In a story I wrote about characters with Irish Celtic ancestry, I chose the characters names by their Irish meaning, such as Erin, meaning child of Ireland, who at the end of the story goes to live in Ireland. Typically male names are another favorite I like to give female characters, Charlie and George(ie) chief among them for me. What I absolutely cannot do is name characters after people I know well, there's a whole host of names I'd love to use but can't because they're close relatives or friends.
