I Worry Too Much About Naming Characters

Honestly, I could have just left this post title as "I Worry Too Much" and it still would have been true. But we are not here to talk about my general life worries, like OMG asking people for recommendations is so scary or OMG I hate going into Barnes & Noble now because I'm bombarded by people asking me if I need help and no, no I do not, I am a librarian and probably know way more than you about all of these books anyway. No, we are here to talk about how darn much I worry about naming my characters when I start a new WIP.

I have always been super into names and have been a collector of unique names. When I wrote as a little kid, I would make an index of names in the back of my notebooks to choose from. I even got three baby naming books, which I'm sure the Barnes & Noble people thought was questionable at the time, to help me out eventually, and which I would sometimes look through just for fun because I really, REALLY like names.

For the last novel I tried writing, the names came to me right away. I knew I wanted my characters to be named Molly, Jack, and Aaron. Those were probably the most normal names I have ever used on characters. I am definitely a victim of using super weird names in YA, but it's okay because it's YA and everyone uses unusual names pretty much.

For this WIP I'm working on for NaNoWriMo, however, I am having a lot of trouble coming up with names. My MC has gone through about three names in earlier drafts of my first 5,000 words, and she still doesn't have a name. For this draft, I'm just calling her MC for now and plan to change it later on when I revise.

But why do I worry so much about names? First of all, as I've already said, I simply like them and think they're super fun. But also, when I'm conceptualizing a story concept, the whole story can change based on what the MC's name is. I feel like the name can tell you so much about not just the character, but the vibe of the story and what kind of choices the character will make. Maybe I'm a lone wolf in thinking this; maybe most authors are like "it's just their name." But for me, the name is a critical component of my character development process.

So, I'm super interested in seeing how my character development changes or improves or evolves without starting out with a name and just calling my anxious bisexual main character "MC" for the whole first draft. Maybe it won't make a difference, or maybe I'll realize I put too much emphasis on the name for character development when I should have been focusing on deeper things. Maybe it'll be hard for me to come up with personality traits or quirks without having a name.

I guess we'll have to see, and I'll have to pick the perfect name at a later date.