what's in a name?

Atticus Finch.

Jack Reacher.

Severus Snape.

Great characters from great books... and great names, too. Names that seem to speak of who and what these characters are.

Atticus Finch; cerebral, refined, steadfast.

Jack Reacher; straight-forward, direct, uncomplicated.

Severus Snape; sinuous, duplicitous, severe.

There are tonnes of great characters from brilliant books who feel like they could only be that particular name; Holden Caulfield, Jackson Lamb, Hercule Poirot, James Bond... But do all of these names feel perfectly suited because they've been chosen to be exactly that, or are they exactly that because we now know who these characters are and what they stand for? The reason I'm wondering this is because I'm in the process of writing the next Abraham Hart book and, as I'm introducing new characters, I need to find names for them.

The main character of Abraham Hart was chosen with a certain amount of care. There's a religious backstory, with Abraham's parent's having been practising Catholics, which meant a biblical name seemed appropriate. But there's also the flow of a name. Three syllables followed by one just felt right. I'm not sure why. Maybe because of other detective characters I've read and watched; Endeavour Morse, Jonathan Creek, Adrian Monk, Cormoran Strike... Abraham Hart seemed to trip off the tongue nicely.

The other characters in Dark Waters have names chosen slightly less meticulously. They are right for their age and gender, of course, and possibly for their class – or perceived class –but where some authors spend a long time on names, and sometimes can't find the character until that character's name is set, I feel that, in the main, a character's name is less important than who and what that character is. If, for example, Jack Reacher had been called David Burgess, would that matter? It sounds odd, but that's because Jack Reacher has been around for more than 25 years and we can't imagine him called anything else.

Lee Child struggled to find Reacher's name and only did so when, in the supermarket one day, someone asked Child (being tall) to reach for something on the highest shelf. "You should be a reacher," his wife is reported to have said to him... and the rest is multi-million book-selling history.

So it seems that Child needed a specific name that felt right for his character, and that just any old name wouldn't do. Maybe that's the case with main characters, on whom an author places more importance and whose name might need to feel relevant and somehow representative. Taking your time to make that name right... or at least for it to feel right... is completely understandable, but should we get hung up on choosing names for character?

There's no right or wrong answer, of course. Whether you spend hours leafing through baby books and searching the web for inspiration, or whether you pluck a name out of the air on a whim, as long as it feels right for you and for your character, then it's the correct name. And, before publication, there's always the chance to alter that name if a better or more suitable one comes to mind (though I've tried this and, invariably, my brain gets stuck on the original name that has somehow been seared into my head).

So, I suppose I'm wondering whether I'm under-thinking character names, or if some authors just over-think them. Like I've said, not that it really matters. We all have different ways of approaching things, but if you're anything like me, then you want to find out what other people do, in case there's some version of this that inspires a different approach, or puts you out of your comfort zone, because that's often where the gold lies.