: Can my character's name match someone in real life? Is it legally OK that my character's name by coincidence matches someone's in real life, famous or not? (For example I am naming a character

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For just about every name, there are multiple people with it. Unless you use a completely made up name, there will be be real people with the same name as your character.

Now most of these real people with the same name will be rather different from each other. Your job is to make your character a different from each of these real people as any of them are from one another.

One of the advantages of using a common name such as John Smith is that unless you make your character almost exactly like one of the John Smiths, it will be hard to link your character to any one real person.

On the other hand, if you use an unusual name like Gavrilo Princip (a historical figure), even "broad" similarities might (wrongly) associate your character with a real one.

On a personal note, my first attempt at writing a novel at age nine, featured two women named Theresa Miller and Elizabeth Patterson in "A Telephone Call to Hollywood." Years later, I read in the news about a CEO named Theresa Patterson of a company called Frederick of Hollywood.

Another character I created at about the same time (late 1960s), was a blonde, 5' 4" French speaking woman named Marlene. I actually met such a person, decades later, in Geneva, Switzerland.

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This is not a copyright issue. As others have mentioned, people can have all kinds of names.

However, it could become a character defamation issue. Suppose your "Aaron Hale" has obvious parallels with real Aaron Hale, and in addition to that, you gave some really bad traits to this character. Then prepare to get sued by the real Aaron Hale :)

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I have a friend whose name is Michael Jackson--to make things worse, he is African-American--and no one has sued him so far. But that is real life. When you a writing a story everyone would expect you to name your characters deliberately and expect no coincidences.

While legal implications of the problem are beyond my expertise, I would steer clear of the possible matches of such sort, because they will be perceived as intentional, but since it is virtually impossible to create a modern day name which is unused, a standard disclaimer "this is a work of fiction and all resemblances to real people, live of deceased, are purely coincidental." might be all you need.

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One of my favorite mystery writers kills off people who annoy her. Annoy her enough and you will end up the character who dies. Some have even auctioned off that right to be named after a character who dies.

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