Names fascinate me. I take great delight in devising names that match the characters they’re intended for. It’s more to do with the sound they make than any meaning they might have. Vernon Scobie. Amber Sakata. Rondo Chaterji. Algis Rekesius. Nolan Mendip. And here’s Emlyn McReedy, from my radio script A Ghost in the Garage, explaining more about my fascination with names:

Do you know there are tribes who spend their whole lives trying to find out what their names are? Some of them go to the grave not knowing what they’re called. They take their names very seriously. Very seriously indeed. They wouldn’t dream of taking up any old nom de plume just because the fancy took them. You could upset ancestral totems, anger the tribal gods. Anything could happen.

As the range of writing I’ve undertaken has headed more towards naturalism, in writing for television for instance, I’ve toned down some of the eccentricities of my naming. But even with more conventional-sounding names there’s room to play with confections of syllables, consonants and vowels. A pilot episode I’ve written for a post-watershed series features characters called Nuala Dunwoody, Leon Carr, Javed Phadkar, Wendy Tamm, and even someone nicknamed Spartacus.

Nicknames are an interesting area. Sometimes we choose them; more often they choose us, or at any rate are given to us by the people in our lives. But not everyone gets to use those nicknames, and even then, not all the time. I winced at a social event when a guest addressed the hostess, Emily, by her husband’s pet name for her, Boo. It’s just something I wouldn’t do: pet names are purely between couples, and unless the speaker in question was intending on a threesome with them, had no business using it in public like that. Mind you, I’ll be sure to use that gaff in a script at some point. Here’s Emlyn again, addressing stuff of this nature:

According to some Christian sects, when you’re called, it’s the name you were christened with that they call you by. That’s what it’s for. And how’s Saint Peter going to know who you are if you turn up at the Pearly Gates with a name that’s not the one he’s got written down? Be a proper to-do if you got up there, told him your name was ‘Spud’ say, and he’d got you down as a Barry.

We have different names at different times, and they’re used by different people. The visitor in A Ghost in the Garage is variously addressed as Mr Chaterji by Emlyn, as Ramesh by Emlyn’s wife Wanda, and their daughter Diane calls him Mr C. Each name is emblematic of their relationship with him, and Diana herself prefers to be called Dee-Dee, much to her father’s annoyance. It’s heightened, especially given that the play is just 30 minutes long, but that’s intentional, and given the span of a month, say, I’m sure you’ll experience different people addressing you or people you know by different names. Next time it happens, take a minute to ponder why they’re using that particular name for you, how it makes you feel when they call you by that name, as opposed to the feeling you get when other people address you by other names. The distinctions will be subtle, and that’s fine…good writing is all about accurate nuances.