At two p.m. last Tuesday, my fingers clattered to a mid-sentence stop. I found I’d rung every last drop of inspiration from my brain. Being too early to go on my evening commute around the park and so declare writing time over and reading time beginning, I looked around for something else work-related to do.
It will come as no surprise that, with a good measure of trepidation, I’ve been following the articles on AI in the creative arts. I’ve read a fair few now from writers who have been using AI. One suggested that they were quite helpful in coming up with character names. As it happened, I needed a name for the Australian soldier who was detailed to be Jay and Heppy’s chaperone. (I’m sorry, but there’s no way Chester and Nilda, or Arlene and Neil Mansfield-Ferney would let two 16 year olds drive off on their own!)
I thought I’d see if ChatGPT could help. The results were interesting.
Frank - Please could you suggest a name for a 53-year old Australian woman who is a career soldier, first in the artillery, then as a training officer.
AI - How about Lorraine Mitchell.
Well, that’s obviously no good, because I’ve got a character called Lorraine (and she’s in this book), and there’s Henry Mitchell in Strike a Match. So I asked again.
Frank - That’s a great name, thanks so much, but it’s too similar to the name of other characters. Could you suggest another?
AI - How about Karen McGregor
Again, we have the same problem, with the Alaskan bush pilot, Lewis McGregor, and there’s a slight issue with ‘Karen’, as it now has that other meaning, so it might conjure up an inaccurate impression of her.
Frank - Thanks very much, my soon-to-be digital overlord, but could I have something a little more unique.
AI - Certainly, how about Taryn Anderson for your character.
Frank. That’s great. Thanks very much. And good luck with your plans for world domination.
Except it’s not a great name. It’s just Karen, but with a T, which, strictly speaking is only ‘a little more unique’, so it is actually exactly what I asked for. I’m not going to use it.
Non-sentient AI can’t create a new idea. It can only cull information from existing sources (and I’m very interested in the law suit taken out by the Authors Guild suing ChatGPT for using writer’s novels without permission as those sources.) So if it can’t come up with a story, it’s only value is a time-saving tool. Sure, it only took seconds, but here’s another snag. How is the AI coming up with these names? Is it just looking at lists of popular baby names from 53 years ago? Or has it actually found the names of real people who served in the Australian military? Were I to use the names, I’d have to spend time checking.
Sure, I didn’t have to mention that she served in the artillery, or even that she served, but I figured I’d give the AI the same information I was using. Maybe I should have asked for ten names of Australian women, but even then, I don’t know it would have helped.
There’s an old saying. Names have power. They certainly have influence, even if it’s only when someone asks why that particular name was selected for them. Were they named after a relative who died in battle, or after a mother’s favourite brand of hot dogs? Either way, when they find out, it will change their outlook on life.
Chester Carson is a perfect case in point. Say it in a sawf London drawl, and you can just tell he was born to be a gangster. Nilda has a few translations, but among them are ‘armoured warrior woman’ and ‘ready for battle’. Lucy Tucker is about as ‘ordinary’ an English name as I could think of, but Tuck harkens back to the legends of Robin Hood. It’s like having a second, secret identity. There was the time before her accident, and her life after.
When hunting for names, sometimes I will scroll through players in a national sport team. Sometimes I’ll hunt among poets and artists. For others, it’s a little more complicated. There is a famous epic poem in Thailand titled ‘Phra Aphai Mani’ by Sunthorn Phu, whose main hero is known as Aphai (It’s over 600,000 words long. Now that truly is epic!) So when looking for a name for the Thai prime minister, I went with Aphai Phu.
In this coming book, Jay and Heppy find some letters that a couple left behind as each searched for the other. Etienne and Maggs. Honestly, I just like the name ‘Etienne’. Their surname, though, is Pangloss, after the character in Voltaire’s Candide. I loved that book growing up, and often daydreamed my way through maths lessons mulling on the line ‘All is for the best in this best of all possible worlds’. I’ll admit it took me a year or two before I realised that Voltaire was being sarcastic. I may well change the surname before I publish, but it gave me a sense of his character. Etienne is the eternal optimist. Maggs is the more practical one. They’re opposites, but don’t they say those attract?
Thaddeus and Bartholomew, two famous brothers from two of the most popular books in history. With names like that, you can tell their mother was religious. But you can also tell that she always wanted to have two boys, begging the question of why there was such a long age gap, and in turn speaking of some sadness at the heart of their family.
And then there’s Bran. Wilbur Edgar Branofksi. Web to his family, Bran to his friends. Wilbur and Edgar were his mother’s great grandparents. Both flew Spits during the Battle of Britain. His paternal grandfather, Stanislaw Branofski, flew Hawker Hurricanes in the Polish 302 squadron based out of Duxford. Wilbur and Edgar both died, but after the war, and unable to return to Poland, Stanislaw married a WAAF from Hebdon Bridge and moved to Yorkshire.
But there’s more. Bran is a half-giant Welsh king in Celtic mythology, which fits nicely with stories that radiate out from Anglesey. I created him at the same time as George and Mary, so before book 1 had been published, and always planned a much larger role for him as Mary’s right-hand. He was going to travel to Ireland after Bill had faded from the story, but Bill’s journals took over so things took a slightly different turn.
Names are important. They help define a character. They can’t be rushed or outsourced. Which is why, on another rainy afternoon, I’m writing this little post . Bran’s just found a dog. An utterly loyal, slightly scared, Northern Inuit Dog, and I can’t continue the story until I have a name for him. Argh! This will take days. Oh, wait, it’s obvious. Hawker. Yep. That’s exactly the name he’d choose for his dog.
:)