Playing the name game

I’ve heard of writers picking names out of the phone book, but haven’t done that myself.

One of the more challenging parts of writing a story is also one of the more simple elements of that story. It’s choosing the names for your characters. But it’s also an opportunity to have some fun.

You’ll see this from other writers if you’re looking. Michael Connelly named his most famous character after the 15th-Century painter Hieronymus Bosch, and uses the works he created as a comment on the sometimes hellish world of a homicide cop. John Sandford has a character named Del Capslock, the inspiration for which can be found on pretty much any computer keyboard.

I’m not immune to this either. In my novel “Rincon Point” I have a sailor named Wendy, and a phone company employee named Mabel (Ma Bell). One character is named after my two favorite saxophone players in sort of a subtle tribute to the Bosch novels. I named a few characters in the book for people I’ve known. Others were made up out of thin air. But what about my protagonist, Terry Cahill?

Well, I am inspired as much by old TV shows as I am by great books, and in that spirit I took the Cahill name from Officer Sindy Cahill, who appeared in the second season of “CHiPs”. The name was already chosen and the story largely written when I saw Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time … In Hollywood.” I groaned when a character played by Rick Dalton was named Cahill, but made the decision not to change it. After all, I stole it first.

As for Terry, that was a name I hadn’t seen much in fiction. Of course, as soon as you do something like that you start to see it everywhere. More groaning. But I liked the name and felt it suited the character, so it stuck.

The Cahill series of novels will continue, and as it does readers will be introduced to new characters and names. I won’t try to get too cute with those names, but I may have a little more fun here and there in the future books. There will be an upcoming character named Raymond Parsons in one of my books, and if you can figure out the inspiration behind that one I’ll be quite impressed.