: Re: Would it be a copyright violation if I made a character’s full name refer to a song? I want to write a realistic fiction book similar to Thomas Hardy’s works, where he used techniques

@Annie587

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Naming your character Violet Raine does not violate copyright.

You can throw in a joke about the mom being a Prince fan but the father drew the line at naming the kid Purple. This would be contextualizing your story in the real world.

Since he has passed on, you can even make Prince a character in the story – I know that's not your question, but it's my segue into the grey area of Intellectual Property and celebrity image.

Based on your references to allusions, I'll guess that Prince is more a creative inspiration, not an actual character in the story (real or fictionalized), with references to cranberry berets and driving little red sportscars too fast. I'm not a lawyer, but I can't see how it would trigger the ire of his estate. Even if you were more on-the-nose with the references, in the US it would probably be considered fair use through recontextualization.

What might ultimately be a problem is if the work appears to trade on Prince's fame or image for commercial (marketing) purposes. A judge would consider your intent to determine if you have infringed on the estate's licensing (I have no knowledge of Prince's estate, this is just speaking generally about a celebrity whose image is a marketable commodity).

If the name of your novel were Purple Rain, or even Purple Raine, a judge might consider if that was just a grab for name recognition. Since you are going for more subtle allusions (homage?) it would be much harder to claim you are damaging or trading on the estate's intellectual property.

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