The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
– T.S. Elliot

Yes, T.S. I think we can say the same for book characters. I’m not always on those baby name websites because I’m going to have a kid, I have to name characters.

I think naming my kids was easier.

I used to keep a list of names that I had used. I started after one of my editors said I could no longer have heroes named Jason or middle aged aunties named Michelle. I should turn it into a game, how many variations of James have I used?

I was recently editing some shorts to be wrapped up into this years Christmas Stripper offering Paranormal Packages when I encountered the same names I had just edited for the Halloween audio books.

Yikes.

The. Exact. Same. Names.

Well, at least those short stories were only ever released for a limited time and not in the same collection and I’m pretty sure no one will ever know, except for me saying something about it.

Double yikes.

I started doing the whole rapid release publishing strategy, and then I took a side job as a ghost writer, and I couldn’t keep up with the name list.

MISTAKE. Huge mistake.

I was diligent about not having any kind of cross over from ghost writing to what I was writing, but clearly I stopped paying attention to the characters in my own books.

And I don’t have an up-to-date list for checking to make sure I’m not using the same name again.

Names I am no longer allowed to use:

• Jason
• James or any variation
• Michelle
• Karen
• Drake or any derivatives like Drach or Drogo, anything that means dragon
• Steve or Stephen, and no more last names of Stevens
• Connor
• Hunter
• Tom
• Pete, Peter, or Petey
• Percy
• any iteration of Isabel

Apparently these names all show up way to many times as side characters, or much to my chagrin, I’ve named the main character the same name multiple times.

I guess it’s time to break out the names list again, and stop trying to name my heroes Stone. I need that name for a future book!