The Naming of Things

What's in a name? Well I don't know really. It took me ages to come up with an overall name for this blog, I know that naming things is a problem for me. I eventually settled on one only to discover it was already in use by a Portuguese solar energy blog that updated twice in 2003.

So I was back to the drawing board. I don't know why I find it so hard to name things. As a writer this is annoying. Sometimes I find myself a total lost to think of character names or even book titles. I have yet to find a reliable way of generating these names. I have seen, and used, random name generators online in the past but this doesn't feel authentic. They aren't my names, I don't get a sense of ownership.

When I do finally find a name I like I tend to reuse it; never in the same story of course, but certainly different story universes. Back when I used to write fan fiction I created a character called Sofia Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and used her in half a dozen different stories. The same happened with a chap called James Keffer, he was a particularly persistent name that kept cropping up whenever I ran out of ideas.

I thought that maybe I'd shook this off with my current work. Sofia and James are certainly nowhere to be seen. There are lots of new fresh names that I've never used before. Unfortunately while writing this piece I realised I've got someone called Marcus Hall. I've used Marcus before, and Hall.....bugger. 

Oh well, I guess some habits die hard.