For me, I try to avoid friend/family names. I also avoid just stupidly long names because I’ve realized I don’t want to have to type them out every single time. I also try to avoid real life “celebrity”/“influencer” names, unless I’m actually writing about them. As a bonus: I also like to avoid using real locations unless I have to. I just don’t want to base something in Chicago and be completed wrong about the mapping. So I usually leave the city name out as long as possible or I make one up. Just wondering if anyone else can relate.
Family names are obviously out for me, for both the obvious ickyness and the fact i’m REALLY not close to most of them. as for friend names, i don’t use them if they’re close/recent friends. But just by the sheer number of people I’ve known over the years i have to employ some sort of time based qualifications. Basically, if I haven’t seen or talked to someone in over three years their name’s back on the table for me, old classmates/facebook friends or not. As for celebrity names i agree in part, some celebrities have pretty generic common names that I’ll use, but I’m not about to name a character of mine Rhianna. City names i 100% agree with. Hell, in my stories i hardly specify the county it’s located in. Context clues only thank you very much.
I like to use real places for the plot. If I don't know the city where the action is to take place well enough, I research it on Google Maps. Sometimes I include cafes or restaurants that I know. I even enjoy using real events, such as trade fairs, as settings and creating a certain "reality" that way.
I don't use names of the persons which are the ones closest to me. Regarding places, I have the bad habit to use actually existing places and then find myself forced to do reaserch to be sure don't go spewing nonsense.
I don't particularly avoid any name. Within a story, I try to come up with names that start with different letters and don't sound similar at all. (Unless it is actually intended.) I usually use names that are rather typical for the age (or rather birth date) of the character. So preferably top 100 of their birth year. Though if I have immersion variables, I try to do exactly the opposite for non-immersion characters to avoid that a user-defined name matches a non-variable name. I have never even thought about using any name of a friend/family member. But I have actually once used the last name of a business partner because the sound of the name just seemed to fit the character. (No other similarities.) I don't get the "hype" around celebrities like actors as they are basically just doing their job. So I don't know many of them by name anyway.
For me when it comes to influencers/celebrities I end up thinking of the people attached to those names rather than the actual characters. I mean, if someone is named Scarlet I can’t help but picture ScarJo naked. And there are certain people that I’d rather not picture naked just because it’s kind of weird especially if I’m closer in relation to them. Also if someone for instance is named Shakira and isn’t referring to the singer, it’s just a bit jarring to me.
There's a character about to show up in one of my stories called Erika, which I'm kind of reconsidering. I didn't know this at the time, but apparently Erika is also the name of a German marching song which, while seemingly not 100% associated with the Nazis, that's one of the main associations. Half the results when you google it are these "ironic" neo-Nazi memes. The character in question is also queen of a fantasy culture that's heavily Viking/Scandinavian inspired, and given the fondness nazis have for that kind of culture, I'm really thinking of renaming her. Just dont want to give off the wrong impression.
It's not that serious, use whatever name fits the character in your mind. How you build the character will trump most names' stereotypes, and your own personal bias as an author is not something that your readers will tap into. I try to avoid unique names that might be traced back to someone in particular, but otherwise I go with the names I think fit that character, and sometimes that is people I've known or known (but most of the time not when you're writing in another language than your background)
If it's a character that appears in erotic contexts, then I avoid names of close friends, family members and coworkers/peers. It may be immature, but I also have a personal distaste for certain names phonetically and culturally - I just don't want to write anything sexual about someone called Genevieve. Also, I don't believe anyone's mentioned recent sexual partners. I suppose that would usually be weird in the same way as "close friends" anyway, but I find that my thoughts about such a character are overly influence by my actual experiences with the real person of the same name. I think writing is more affected by such reservations, since a character's name is their only physical manifestation; everything else is imagination. On the other hand, a character in a film, for instance, is marked by their appearance. Granted, none of this comes up very often since I write mostly fantasy and have a much larger pool of names to choose from.
That's afwully specific. Don't know about Genevieve, but everyone has their preferences about names and such, how they sound, what kind of vibe they give, there's no real need to read too much into it. If a met a Brad which was a real asshole, the name Brad will probably sound to me like the perfect asshole character name. Makes sense, nothing really wrong with it either. We are shaped by our experiences, so does our writing.
I can’t take anyone named Kevin or Karen seriously anymore thanks to the internet. These are the specific names I avoid using for various reasons: Karen (unless they actually are a Karen) Kevin Kyle Chad Almost any flower name (just because they’re usually either long or corny) Almost any fictional character name unless I’m writing for that character or their name is common like Diana. Most unique celebrity/Influencer/historical names unless they’re common. Any family names Most friends’ names unless they’re common and I can dissociate from their person. ANY teacher/professor name unless its common Most culturally stereotypical names although I will use Li/Leigh/Lee as last names. I do mostly try to avoid getting too stereotypical with the names though. Also if I do include certain names, I sometimes like to change up the spellings just to be more unique like Cyerra instead if Cierra. Or Meghan instead of Megan or Juliette instead of Juliet. But I also avoid asymmetrical variants. So I would avoid Sara or Hanna and opt for Hannah and Sarah instead. Just a peeve I guess.
Swiss here. Erika is a perfectly fine name, and that's actually the first time I heard that it has some connection to the Nazis. Honestly the only name that got negativly tainted is Adolf. Otherwise you should be fine.
I won't name names... mainly because if I do, I'll be tempted to try and use it in a story after all. Still, I do avoid complicated names, or foreign names. Alien names I would lean on simple one or two syllable phonetic sounding words to easily remember and type. The first name that came to mind was Joey Jo Joe Joshabadoo... But I'd just end up calling him JJ and it would be an inside joke for all of his friends that know his full name.
As a non-native English speaker writing stories in English for one part is easy to choose names because most of the names that sound to me American or British names, and that means most of the names are names that are very uncommon in my country, except some names that are just the same in both languages. Even when names have an equivalent version I don't associate the English names with the names of my family and friends. On the other part is hard because those are not names that I usually use in my daily life, I can bet I won't meet any waitress called Michelle nor Claire, and that means most of those names I know because of celebrities and media. Sometimes I even have searched for a list of more popular female or male names in the USA or UK, and select one that is on the first ranks that sounds good to me.
I always avoid names of anyone I know in real life beyond a very distant sense, so if I know a "Cindy" I won't use the name unless it's a very casual workplace person I rarely interact with. Especially in the genres I write in, I'd never use a close friend of family members name. ;P What I tend to do, because I pay a lot of attention to names, is write them out beforehand. I want all the names to be distinct from each other (so no having a William and forget and have another tertiary character named Bill later) and be names I enjoy the sound of. I do want the names to not be anachronistic, so if I have a character who will be say 30 years old I'll google the most popular girls names in the US or England in 1990 and scan the list for names I haven't used before and seem OK. Oh, I also try to have a certain degree of diversity in my stories, and yes I know I'm writing shitty sex stories but still. So I'll google names of different ethnicities and languages for characters to be legit full names.
Ah yes, the most essential part of any writer's story, the motherfucking names of people. Since I'm currently writing two other universes (co-writing in one of those two), I have to come up with tons of names. I always avoid names that are hated for cultural reasons (Karen, Hitler, and Chad are the only two I can think of right now), but I also steer clear of stereotypical names (like Lamar for a black guy, Ken for a white guy, Lee for an Asian... you get it). Then, there's a rule, no a commandment, that I have, and since I write multiple things at once, it is an important commandment: "thou shalt not use a name thou hath used in thy other stories." For all you Shakespeare haters out there, this basically means I cannot use names that I've already used before in another story. This applies to literally EVERY name I make, it sometimes gets annoying when I have characters with long names like "Avonnica Marilyn Hayton," "Isaac Orville Bull," or probably the longest I've made, "Cyneare Kysanthrus Niris’raal van Alekroff." Now, like all rules, I make exceptions once in a blue moon for names I like a lot such as "Valentine," "Sirius," "Magnus," "Elyss," or "Greidan," the last of which I used again with a different spelling ("Graydin" instead of "Greidan"). I've had instances where the names of people I make match the names of people I know, but it's usually only first names, so I don't really care. As for family, well, I've used the first name Martin (my dad's name) once, and I didn't mind since it's a common enough name that I've seen and heard before. All in all, just your average naming restrictions. As a way to end this long soliloquy, I saw something here about the name "Erika" being a Nazi song reference, and I actually have a story for that. One of the characters in my futuristic military sci-fi story is named Ekaterina Arsenevna Kaspaya. Yes, very Russian or Soviet depending on if you still think the Soviet Union exists. Well, since it's the future and cultures change, she goes by the diminutive form of Ekaterina which I found out to be Katyusha which ALSO happens to be the name of a Soviet folk song. Well, if Hitler caused the Holocaust and killed something-something-million people and therefore anything (including songs) related to his regime cannot be mentioned or referenced, then Stalin, a man who killed even MORE people, should receive the same treatment if not more, right? Wrong! In fact, I literally met people on the internet who said, and I fucking quote, "Who's Stalin?" Long story short and personal beliefs and experiences aside, don't be afraid to use names that you think have a negative connotation. Chances are, it's a cool-sounding name that probably has no direct correlation to evil. If we had to pick and choose what names are "evil" and what names are not, everyone would go crazy fact-checking and re-fact-checking the names of their babies, let alone the names of fictional characters. Now, don't interpret this as, "Then I'm gonna name my character Hitler, haha I'm an idiot!" No, use common sense for God's sake. The internet would be a nicer place if even just ten percent of the people used their fucking heads as something other than a decoration.
One time I accidentally created a character who looked and acted like my cousin and didn't realize it until it was time to name her. I had to come up with another name thar didn't fit quite as well to keep it from feeling weird. That's the only time I've avoided using a specific name.
A person I know once told me that names are irrelevant to the story and says that giving more unique names than generic ones leaves people with expectations. You have reasons to expect Corpus Bloodvane to be a right asshole, but what do you know about a guy named Roger? What could he be like? What could he be upto. And to a degree, that is true. But I've heard their notes, considered it, and ultimately? Don't agree. Thing is, not all names are equally attractive. John Doe just isn't all that attractive of a name and it kind of makes me expect a flat and boring character. You can argue, do lewd stories need in depth characters? Well...sort of? Sure, people will eat up the basic stuff in the short term, but they'll quit paying attention soon after. Sure, people don't read lewd stories for the plot, but it doesn't mean that we should just do Pizza delivery guys and secretaries as if that's not completely dated and kind of boring. Characters don't need a full origin story to them, but having something to present them as at least worth paying attention too, does kind of matter. I've seen a lot of stories that more or less focus on a single male and female lead fucking...and some do it decently. Others, I stopped paying attention to because it just becomes "No more of this guy/girl. Do something else already." The only primary names to really avoid are in my mind are just the basic John and Jane names. It's the most minimum amount of thought put into anything and shows how much you care about this too as a writer that you didn't even bother to take the time to make them in anyway unique. You can get away with using those names, but I don't feel they should ever be used for a lead character that the reader is stuck with the entire story. Personally, I also heavily find the names of real people like celebrities and people I know to just feel really off and uncomfortable. I don't care for celebrity stories. Some people like them, I just find them really creepy and unsettling. And while I let co-writers get away with pretty much anything, I don't tolerate things that seem to imply encouraging rapists or stalkers in the real world. Maybe I have a warped view of it, but honestly, I don't feel like I do. I don't care for it, condone it, and won't pretend I actually really like it if I think about it just to appease people by greenlighting something I don't approve of. I'm sure some people do celebrity stories in a tasteful way.....I have yet to see it.
I noticed Margaret Atwood borrowed the real names of the crew of Shackleton's South Polar expedition for the minor characters in her Maddaddam trilogy. Thats the easy way to do it. Maybe I'll use the Brazillian 1970 soccer world cup team as the basis of my next set of character's names, or the names of the original cast from Charlies angels.
