: Re: When naming a character, is thematic naming or realistic naming more important? Or is there a way to strike a balance between thematic naming and realistic naming? Thematic: When the name relates

@Rambettina586

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Keep in mind that "realistic" is not the same as "statistically probable". Smith, Brown and Jones may the most common surnames, but in all likelihood most people you know have other surnames. Same with popular first names: yes, you've probably met a lot of people that share the same popular first name, but you've also met a lot of people with different names, and how many of those made you go, "Wait, isn't that name kinda unrealistic?"

Common names are realistic, but so are uncommon ones. In fact, a story peopled with just Smiths and Browns and Joneses would strike me as more unrealistic than one featuring none of those names. (Unless for some reason, this was a feature of the fictional world, of course.)

As with everything, you need to find a balance. I wrote a random name generator once for a game that created a random cast of characters each session. I spent quite some time tweaking the probabilities, and I found that the character names felt "most realistic" when the character set featured both names that are very common and names that are decidely less so.

Also, while rather rare, there are people whose names strangely match their personality, profession or, why not, clothing habit. That, too, is realistic. Sometimes, this is coincidence. At other times, a person's choices may be subtly influenced by their name and how their environment reacts to their name. In your example, you could have your character prefer to wear black clothes because he's proud of his heritage.

As long as the meaning is not "in your face", I don't see anything wrong with having characters with meaningful names.

For example, in Harry Potter, both Albus Dumbledore and Sirius Black have names that evoke colours, but neither struck me as odd: Albus because I didn't even realize it meant "white" until much later (when it was just a nifty bonus) and Black because it seemed a common enough name (and the "black equals evil" expectation is subverted).

On the other hand, Remus Lupin may be a bit too much. I didn't notice when I first read the books, but I guess for more savvy readers, a meaningful name could end up spoiling a twist. Also, in hindsight, I wonder how his parents ended up choosing specifically that name. Fate?

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