Names

Names

Especial attention should be paid to the names of the characters in our story.

If the influence of a right name is felt in real life, how much more so in fiction! In real life it is a matter of chance or of lucky accident if the baptismal name prove a just and congruous one, suited to the character and the circumstances of the owner. The natural parent may claim forgiveness for error on the score that he could not foresee the possible career of the child whom he may have handicapped at the altar. The author of a work of fiction can make no such plea. His characters should take form in his brain, like Minerva in the skull of Jupiter; they should be armed at all points, and the most vulnerable point of their equipment is an unworthy name. Yet knowledge of the thing desired does

not necessarily lead to its easy discovery. It is a matter for thought, for research, for studious inquiry. Great skill and nicety of perception must be called into play. The effect must not be too crudely palpable. Suggestion, not in. sistence, is needed. The good old trick which pleased our simpler forefathers, that which consists in merely labeling a character, —an ingenuous, but not ingenious, stratagem, — has had its day. It was carried to an extreme in the early English drama, where even Shakespeare gives us such names among his minor characters as Mouldy, Feeble, Shadow, Shallow, etc., and it retained its hold on the comic stage down to the time of the Lydia Languishes, the Sneerwells, the Mrs. Malaprops of Sheridan, the Sir Fopling Flutters of Vanbrugh.

While such definitely descriptive names are perhaps not to be used, let us at least choose names that will seem to connote the effect intended.

"Scientific Sprague" is a good name because it is especially descriptive; and perhaps also because it is alliterative. We remember that name when we would not remember "Ledroit Conners" who figures in an equally good series of stories. "Craig Kennedy" does not stick in our memory like the "Thinking Machine, " and "Rouletabille, " though expressive in intent, has not the arrestiveness of "Raffles. "