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Another Industry Editorial
I won't print this one in full, as I assume it's a few years old by now. This is an editorial by Sue Corbett, a children's writer and reviewer, on how to do your own book tour to promote your book. She has some fun ideas, but one about marketing struck me particularly:
"The first thing I did was unconscious. When I needed names for minor characters in my book, I used friends' names.... I named my main character's friends after colleagues. Each of these people, after complaining that they should have gotten more lines and a bigger role (one wondered why he didn't have a romantic interest) not only bought the book, but told their parents and friends, bought copies as gifts, etc."
I'm entirely amused by this, if only because I've used this technique myself, though not quite so blatantly. One of my main characters is named after a writer friend of mine who blogs about strong women, feminism, and other issues, so when I needed a strong female character, I borrowed her name. (Nevermind that this character ended up to be much different from the character I first imagined.) Another character is named after my sister, with the letters switched around so that it's not obvious, but she and I both know it. One of the minor characters is vaguely named after my sister-in-law. I named two minor characters after my chiropractor's daughters on a whim, because I needed two girls about their age. I was mortified to find out that I'd spelled one of their names incorrectly, and the character, forever after, will have a misspelled name. Other things I use when I need names for minor characters: actors or writers I particularly admire. That, likely, does not help me sell books as much as using colleagues would.
I'd love to hear if other people do this, since it wasn't something I'd even done intentionally, and certainly not as a marketing technique.
The full article is at the Lee and Low Web site.
"The first thing I did was unconscious. When I needed names for minor characters in my book, I used friends' names.... I named my main character's friends after colleagues. Each of these people, after complaining that they should have gotten more lines and a bigger role (one wondered why he didn't have a romantic interest) not only bought the book, but told their parents and friends, bought copies as gifts, etc."
I'm entirely amused by this, if only because I've used this technique myself, though not quite so blatantly. One of my main characters is named after a writer friend of mine who blogs about strong women, feminism, and other issues, so when I needed a strong female character, I borrowed her name. (Nevermind that this character ended up to be much different from the character I first imagined.) Another character is named after my sister, with the letters switched around so that it's not obvious, but she and I both know it. One of the minor characters is vaguely named after my sister-in-law. I named two minor characters after my chiropractor's daughters on a whim, because I needed two girls about their age. I was mortified to find out that I'd spelled one of their names incorrectly, and the character, forever after, will have a misspelled name. Other things I use when I need names for minor characters: actors or writers I particularly admire. That, likely, does not help me sell books as much as using colleagues would.
I'd love to hear if other people do this, since it wasn't something I'd even done intentionally, and certainly not as a marketing technique.
The full article is at the Lee and Low Web site.
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Odd thoughts on naming characters
I don't think I've "made up" a name for a (human) fictional character since I was in college, because I found that made-up names just sound funny somehow. (This may simply mean that I'm not good at it.) I sometimes use friends, but always ask first. I've used a number of names of my old college profs, most recently the late Dr. Rachel Romano, for whom I worked my last two years at De Paul University.
When in need of a name, I often go back to old yearbooks. To keep out of trouble, I often choose a different first name, so that while sounding real, the names are not actual full names of anyone I ever knew. Very rarely I will use the name of a real (if obscure) historical figure as a kind of homage to a small-scale hero. I did this with Isaac Dripps, who was a talented steam mechanic for the infant Baltimore & Ohio Railroad in the 1840s and 1850s. (He was the apprentice mechanic in my story "Drumlin Boiler.") I deliberately lean toward ethnic rather than anglo names because it adds a certain flavor to a story; hence Kowalczyk, Luchetti, Grabacki, Harczak, etc. rather than Johnson, Hayworth, Ames, or boring things like that.
I have often used names of dead ancestors, and it's become a kind of inside joke with my cousins.
In my novel I had a scene in which the hero, Peter Novilio, was looking at old books on aerospace engineering, and the authors he cites are all friends of mine in the techie SF fan community. Oh, and "Novilio" is the last name of a girl my best friend dated for a while in 1968. It was just such a cool name that I've never forgotten it.
I wouldn't think you could embed enough names of real people in a story, even at novel length, to make a difference in sales, but who knows?