This is the second in a series of posts I’m sharing about quick little backstories I wrote for a recent retreat. We were doing a painting session and I’d wanted to help my friends bring their characters to life with some brief prompts. To get them to start telling the story, if you will.

It was satisfying to watch them read through these vignettes, sometimes laughing or reading portions aloud. I heard a lot of positive feedback on the names, which was gratifying because I’d hoped to present names that were unusual, but not too awkward. In this post, I’ll share a few stories for which the characters’ names garnered the most attention.

Delish Monté slowly blinked her eyes. Another twelve hours had passed. She didn’t move, preferring her trusted routine of letting her eyes adjust.

Delish frowned. She shouldn’t have been able to see this well. The closet was in an interior room with no windows. By the usual math, it was now midnight, so it should be pitch black.

Delish stood, stretching her limbs and noting that the louvered doors of the closet were intact, but no light filtered through. She looked up to see a ceiling crisscrossed with cracks through which the illumination came. Something had happened.

Her nostrils registered a strong odor of smoke and burning substances. Someone had tried to burn her safehouse down while she was incapacitated. Their intel was good, but not good enough to know she couldn’t be harmed for the twelve hour she waited in suspended animation. The closet doors fell away as she pushed on them, landing in ash and the muck created by water from firehoses. She knew she should worry that the Collective had finally caught up to her, but this was actually a reprieve. No one would be chasing a dead woman. Eleven hours and fifty-five minutes to find a new hiding place.

Delish Monté is my favorite name of the characters I created. There’s a fun rhythm to it and it’s somewhat provocative in a couple ways that could influence the story you start to tell yourself when you hear it. Similarly, the next character, Jonny Gunsel, is evocative for fans of gangster noir (gunsel: a criminal carrying a gun; I assumed it was short for “gunslinger”, but the word has a Yiddish origin instead). It’s also occuponomous, if you believe in that sort of thing.

Jonny Gunsel wasn’t his real name. Obviously. But he sure loved the fear on people’s faces when they heard it.

Jonny didn’t even need a gun to intimidate people anymore. Just walk in, say the name, and watch the piss flow down their legs. It was a good life.

Now that he owned this town, Jonny was looking for the next challenge. Sure, there was always some up-and-comer looking to get their name known, and his own people had what you might call “disposable loyalty”, but if any of ‘em were real threats, he’d already be a corpse rotting in the woods or a bloated floater looking to pop on the shoreline.

He thought back to the queer tale he’d heard the other day, about some hooded strangers on the docks. Every story said they looked like humans, but their movements weren’t right. “Kinda herky-jerky” some old grey-hair had said in his grandpa language.

Jonny didn’t think much about the drug crowd, and as likely as they were to take a long, weirdo walk off a short pier, their presence was bad for business. And morale, or whatever you call the scared loyalty of ordinary folk. Then he laughed, surprising himself. He knew just what to do.

Finally, we come to a character whose name employs simple alliteration: Max Madling. I probably picked up my affinity for names like this from comic books: Clark Kent, Bruce Banner, Lex Luthor. Again, it creates a rhythm when said and it can be employed as a mnemonic device to ensure you’ve created a memorable character.

Max Madling called himself “The Incredible Healing Man”, though it wasn’t much of a sideshow act. Even the rubes didn’t believe his cuts were actually healing as they watched. It takes too long, he lamented. And damned if he could get even a finger to regenerate before the end of his act.

He’d been born under an odd moon, his mama had always told him. One barely a sliver in the sky when it rose, but completely full when it set. She said she’d known he was special when his baby hand grew back after a wild dog bit it off. She always recounted these things in a voice equal parts awed and afraid.

Her growing fear that Max had a devil in him had led him onto the road. He worked dangerous jobs for food, though he never stayed long in one place. People feared the man whose severed fingers regrew. Eventually, Max worked up the courage to cut off something larger for his act. Even if the crowd wouldn’t be around to see his foot regenerate, they’d at least be amazed to watch him cut it off. That’s when Max looked into the audience and saw the man who could have been his twin. His blood ran cold as he thought, If my body can regrow a part, can a part regrow a body?

As you’ve seen, I employed a number of different tactics in the creation of character names: rhythm, evocative terms, occuponomy, and alliteration. None of them are necessary to create a great character, of course, and they can be distracting if every character in your story has a name that has, well, too much character. Used sparingly, however, they can be fun to read and enjoyable to write. And that’s what it’s all about.

Good luck with your naming!

Mike

Related posts:

• Prologue
• Story #1

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© Michael Wallevand, March 2024