Hi there, I'm writing a novel and I need your help to choose the last name for the main character. I think the first name would be Emily or Mary Personality : girl, 25 years old shy sensitive smart sometimes mysterious, funny Can you rate these names : Mary Fitch Mary Franklin Mary Knowles Mary Gibbs Mary Grimm Mary Small Thank you !
Kind of plain vanilla, aren't they? I mean, what about Mary Prestifilippo? Or Emily Ofuate-Kodjoe? Or Mary Kowalczyk? Don't be afraid to get ethnic.
I would go for Emily instead of Mary if you're doing a contemporary setting. If your MC is 25 in 2017 that means she was born in 1992, and Emily was the 7th most popular female baby name that year according to one list I looked at. My daughter just turned 20, so she's a little younger than your character; while she's had a few friends/classmates over the years with the name Emily, but never one named Mary. I definitely associate Mary with an older woman (though according to that same list, Mary was the 36th most popular female baby name in '92) than one in her 20's.
Thank you for your replies. Well I think Emily will be the first name, I'll deal with the last name later
I liked Mary Knowles too, but Knowles is Beyonce's last name, which could be distracting if the intended market knows that. Her mother, Tina Knowles is also fairly well known.
I think Emily Grimm sounds like an interesting name, although it would be a contrast to her personality. Whether you want said contrast or not is up to you. Failing that, I think Emily Fitch also sounds nice. And if you want any more surname choices, have a look at an online surname generator. You can give them the first name of your character and keep on generating surnames until you find one that looks and sounds fabulous with the first.
Or try surnames dot behindthename dot com. Personally, I'm not such a fan of "Fitch", but I think "Finch" is lovely.
If I may make a suggestion. If you try to match names to the character, you run the risk of getting too obvious and contrived. We don't choose our names and they are given before our personalities become known. Very rarely do real people match their names -- unless the name is one that people would laugh at or attach stereotypes to, so that the growing person is affected by it. So you should concentrate on making your characters real, and let the names grow to match the character. Nicknames excepted, of course.
Well I just figured out Grimm is a famous tv serie, I will not use it yes, why not Finch, it sounds good to me Yes, thats entirely true in the real life. For a fiction book, I think it's important to match name/character, but it's just my opinion anyway.
My point is, do you want your book to read like a fairy tale or allegory, or to be read as a work of realistic fiction? Tom Joad or Ignatius J. Reilly or Jay Gatsby became icons not because someone selected their names to match the preconceived image but because someone wrote them into the readers' psyches.
