Posts tagged shakespeare

“Oh, honey, I think I’ll name our kid Icarus!  Then, when he’s old enough, he’ll be sure to reach too far and then die in a tragic way!”

— the parents of many a character, apparently…

Here are my reasons for why you shouldn’t use symbolism in names.  You’ll probably disagree.

It sounds deep.  If you want to fill your story with every trick that you learn when analyzing novels in English class, having characters named symbolically is a must.  It goes right in between “turning every character, at some point, into a being of pure angst” and “having something similar happen at every character’s death.”  Which is to say, it sounds pretentious and silly.

You’re highlighting exactly how much you’re copying.  You might think that if you name your character Alex, and then have him get swallowed by a whale for three days before having a religious conversion, people would say that you’re copying Jonah from the Bible.  If you name him Jonah, however, the idea goes that readers will say something along the lines of “Oh.  Symbolism.  It’s okay, then.”  This isn’t the case.  By naming him Jonah, you are putting a big neon sign on the fact that you’re copying from another story. 

It breaks some people’s suspension of disbelief.  A mother and father name their kid Socrates?  Okay.  It’s not a common name, but some parents sometimes do name their kids after historical figures.  Socrates is the brainiest character in the group?  Well, random chance could make that happen, I guess.  Socrates is a philosopher?  Yeah, right.  You’ve got me rolling my eyes.  The government executes Socrates for his philosophy?  Excuse me while I go over here and laugh.  Realistically, it’s unlikely that somebody with the same name as a famous person or character would have the exact same personality and story.

If you absolutely must use symbolism in names, allow me to make a suggestion.  Never, ever name your characters after people from Greek mythology or characters from Shakespeare.  You are just showing everybody how much of an enormous cliche machine you are.  People will see everything that happens to your character coming from a mile away.  Whenever I see a character named after somebody from Greek mythology or Shakespeare, it makes me groan a little.

The follower of the day is filthandflowers.