: Re: 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

@Odierno164

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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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