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The names of my characters (NH spoilers, ha ha)
9 years ago
When I was a kid, I would make up characters that lasted all of ten seconds just to give them weird names. I can't REMEMBER any of those names, but they were all just odd combinations of syllables like "Purndren" or "Azeper." I used to make up pretend cities so I could name all the streets. (When Sim City came around, the fact that you couldn't name any of the streets seemed to negate its whole worth to me.)
So it's funny that later in life, naming characters became the most difficult thing ever. And worse, I chose bad reasons to name characters a certain thing, or didn't realize how dull a character's name was. So I'm going to go through all of the characters i've had in Newshounds and Newshounds II (these are characters who appeared in the graphic novel; if they only appeared in the strip, I'm ignoring it).
Alistair was the first character I came up with in 1983. It was a name I found in one of Mom's romance novels. I just loved it on sight, and when I came up with a tuxedo cat character design, that was his name. It's not bad. it's very distinct and has a sort of "literate pretentiousness" (see Alistair Cooke) that sets him apart from the rest of the cast... besides being a cat in a sea of dogs.
I came up with Kevin later in 1984, as a dog character to be teamed up with Alistair. At the time I felt "Kevin and Alistair" had a ring to it. My brother later pointed out that I subconsciously ripped it off from Kevin Kubacheski and Alasdair Gillis of "You Can't Do That On Television." (To those of you too young to remember a time when Kurt Cobain was alive, it was a Canadian kid's show that appeared on Nickelodeon. Its main shtick was pouring water and green gak onto kids' heads.) Once Kevin evolved into an ordinary shmuck, his ordinary name fit him pretty well. Heck, MST has made jokes that heroes can't be named "Kevin." My poor pup will never be a hero.
Renata was the name of a classmate in college. I heard the name and fell in love with it. I think it fits her now; it's unique and stands out as much as she does.
Ferris may have come from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," but it certainly wasn't deliberate as I hated that movie. Again, a unique enough name, and if you do equate it with Matthew Broderick's breakout role, it fits him as a "lovable troublemaker." There is a touch of mischief in the name, I think.
Sam was named after a stray dog that was wandering around our apartment complex. Simple, to the point, unassuming, just a name. Sure, that fits. He could never have been an "Alistair."
Wolfram was a parody-twist of Wolf Blitzer. (I can't believe that guy's still around and relevant. Did Walter Cronkite last this long?) Here's where I think I've fallen down some. He does look like a "wolf," but he's not. His name has a sort of Teutonic quality which I don't think he shares. And the fact that it originated as a parody name stains it. You can't write a serious graphic novel about "Yogi Bear".
Lorna is interesting, actually. Up until today I couldn't tell you why I chose that name. But then I thought.. i think it was subconsciously an attempt to give her an unflattering, old-fashioned name. Sorry to any Lornas out there, but it can make you for-LOOORRRN and LORRRRRN-some to have a name like that. The idea was that she couldn't be defined by her name... she wasn't a "Cindy" or a "Missy". Her name had a "woody" gravitas, a serious undertone, that made her unlike everyone else.
Rochelle is just a lovely name, and somewhat exotic to me. I thought it fit her exotic nature (most of which turned out to be a sham). It's a quirky enough name to make her character seem enticingly unusual.
Hal O'Peridol is another parody name. All my attempts to work around that name are pretty horrible and stick in my craw. Here's what happened: I came up with the name, wrote a couple of strips, then at the LAST MINUTE decided he would be Renata's own stalker dog. And then he became an interesting character in his own right. With a goofy name. What is wrong with you, Thomas?
General Swallowemup/Byron Kerslake... This one was so bad, I retconned the original name as a joke nickname, though who in their right mind would call anyone "Swallowemup"?
egypturnash, at a comics panel, couldn't believe I came up with "Swallowemup" and went straight for the innuendo. Which never occurred to me. Which makes me hate myself more. By the way, "Byron Kerslake" is named after two members of Uriah Heep, David Byron and Lee Kerslake. "Byron" is also named after the famed poet, who Mom brought me up to consider a sinister individual.
Della's name has a weird origin. Back in the day, some kid's program displayed a drawing onscreen of a nerdy-looking girl in a sweater, with two voiceovers reciting the hoary joke, "What did Della wear? Her New Jersey!" And for some reason that stuck in my mind to the point where my nerdy girl dog got named Della. So I have to recuse myself. Della = geeky girl to me, and I have no objectivity to work out whether or not that's accurate.
Randy. Well, she is, isn't she? That's why she and Sam broke up. Maybe it's a bit too on-the-nose. She got more complex towards the end of her life, so the name just became a name to me.
Nigel... okay, this actually took some thought. Alistair was going to have a boyfriend. I wanted to think of a cool name, an atypical name, a fun name. So I came up with Nigel, a name Bill Holbrook was currently using (at least Kevin had been grandfathered). For whatever reason, my Anglophilia considered anyone named "Nigel" a more thoughtful person. I'm okay with it now...
Malcolm was named after Malcolm McDowell. Emma was named after Emma Peel (Diana Rigg's character in the original "Avengers".) I figured Rochelle would go for the exotic, dashing English types for names. Bullseye for once.
... Oh, man, I have a lot of characters. I'll have to split this into two entries. More later.
So it's funny that later in life, naming characters became the most difficult thing ever. And worse, I chose bad reasons to name characters a certain thing, or didn't realize how dull a character's name was. So I'm going to go through all of the characters i've had in Newshounds and Newshounds II (these are characters who appeared in the graphic novel; if they only appeared in the strip, I'm ignoring it).
Alistair was the first character I came up with in 1983. It was a name I found in one of Mom's romance novels. I just loved it on sight, and when I came up with a tuxedo cat character design, that was his name. It's not bad. it's very distinct and has a sort of "literate pretentiousness" (see Alistair Cooke) that sets him apart from the rest of the cast... besides being a cat in a sea of dogs.
I came up with Kevin later in 1984, as a dog character to be teamed up with Alistair. At the time I felt "Kevin and Alistair" had a ring to it. My brother later pointed out that I subconsciously ripped it off from Kevin Kubacheski and Alasdair Gillis of "You Can't Do That On Television." (To those of you too young to remember a time when Kurt Cobain was alive, it was a Canadian kid's show that appeared on Nickelodeon. Its main shtick was pouring water and green gak onto kids' heads.) Once Kevin evolved into an ordinary shmuck, his ordinary name fit him pretty well. Heck, MST has made jokes that heroes can't be named "Kevin." My poor pup will never be a hero.
Renata was the name of a classmate in college. I heard the name and fell in love with it. I think it fits her now; it's unique and stands out as much as she does.
Ferris may have come from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," but it certainly wasn't deliberate as I hated that movie. Again, a unique enough name, and if you do equate it with Matthew Broderick's breakout role, it fits him as a "lovable troublemaker." There is a touch of mischief in the name, I think.
Sam was named after a stray dog that was wandering around our apartment complex. Simple, to the point, unassuming, just a name. Sure, that fits. He could never have been an "Alistair."
Wolfram was a parody-twist of Wolf Blitzer. (I can't believe that guy's still around and relevant. Did Walter Cronkite last this long?) Here's where I think I've fallen down some. He does look like a "wolf," but he's not. His name has a sort of Teutonic quality which I don't think he shares. And the fact that it originated as a parody name stains it. You can't write a serious graphic novel about "Yogi Bear".
Lorna is interesting, actually. Up until today I couldn't tell you why I chose that name. But then I thought.. i think it was subconsciously an attempt to give her an unflattering, old-fashioned name. Sorry to any Lornas out there, but it can make you for-LOOORRRN and LORRRRRN-some to have a name like that. The idea was that she couldn't be defined by her name... she wasn't a "Cindy" or a "Missy". Her name had a "woody" gravitas, a serious undertone, that made her unlike everyone else.
Rochelle is just a lovely name, and somewhat exotic to me. I thought it fit her exotic nature (most of which turned out to be a sham). It's a quirky enough name to make her character seem enticingly unusual.
Hal O'Peridol is another parody name. All my attempts to work around that name are pretty horrible and stick in my craw. Here's what happened: I came up with the name, wrote a couple of strips, then at the LAST MINUTE decided he would be Renata's own stalker dog. And then he became an interesting character in his own right. With a goofy name. What is wrong with you, Thomas?
General Swallowemup/Byron Kerslake... This one was so bad, I retconned the original name as a joke nickname, though who in their right mind would call anyone "Swallowemup"?
egypturnash, at a comics panel, couldn't believe I came up with "Swallowemup" and went straight for the innuendo. Which never occurred to me. Which makes me hate myself more. By the way, "Byron Kerslake" is named after two members of Uriah Heep, David Byron and Lee Kerslake. "Byron" is also named after the famed poet, who Mom brought me up to consider a sinister individual.Della's name has a weird origin. Back in the day, some kid's program displayed a drawing onscreen of a nerdy-looking girl in a sweater, with two voiceovers reciting the hoary joke, "What did Della wear? Her New Jersey!" And for some reason that stuck in my mind to the point where my nerdy girl dog got named Della. So I have to recuse myself. Della = geeky girl to me, and I have no objectivity to work out whether or not that's accurate.
Randy. Well, she is, isn't she? That's why she and Sam broke up. Maybe it's a bit too on-the-nose. She got more complex towards the end of her life, so the name just became a name to me.
Nigel... okay, this actually took some thought. Alistair was going to have a boyfriend. I wanted to think of a cool name, an atypical name, a fun name. So I came up with Nigel, a name Bill Holbrook was currently using (at least Kevin had been grandfathered). For whatever reason, my Anglophilia considered anyone named "Nigel" a more thoughtful person. I'm okay with it now...
Malcolm was named after Malcolm McDowell. Emma was named after Emma Peel (Diana Rigg's character in the original "Avengers".) I figured Rochelle would go for the exotic, dashing English types for names. Bullseye for once.
... Oh, man, I have a lot of characters. I'll have to split this into two entries. More later.
You can tell I just woke up very recently because in that entire wall of text, the only thing I could think of was to make an XTC reference.
Like Laocorn above, I liked Pomme de Terre, but then again, Like Lao, I studied French in high school. It always amused me that the french word for "Potato" literally translates as "Apple of the Earth".
Believe it or not, it still works and is plausible. From what I understand, in the military, some groups give their members team names, which are basically nicknames your buddies give you based on some trait or characteristic of yours that stands out. Basically, your team name becomes your handle for your teammates, both formally and informally. Naturally, some can get pretty ridiculous and even embarrassing. Plus, they're harder to get rid of than ticks from a glue factory. (Mind you, I've never been in the military, so I could be way off.)
With this in mind, "Swallowemup" could be Kerslake's team name from when he was part of some team way back in the day, hence it being a name his men call him (since he obviously wasn't always a General). To speculate further, perhaps he'd gotten this team name because he had something of a cast iron stomach and allegedly could eat stuff that others would turn down. Of course, considering the often raunchy senses of humor many military guys have, the innuendo part would have been thought of almost as soon as the team name was created, thus guaranteeing Kerslake could never get rid of it no matter how much he tried. Or some other backstory that tickles your fancy as I don't know the character as well as you do.
As for the punny names like Wolfram's, real life has parents who thoughtlessly and/or accidentally saddle their kids with punny names. Others even give the poor kids important or impressive names only for the kid to grow up to be anything but. That could be Wolfram. He tries to look and sound more impressive than he really is, and his impressive name is part of that effort. Of course, Hal could have been a similar victim, but got the advantage of his name actually being appropriate.
(Of course, I don't mind any of Fred Allen's comedy names, even the lousy ones. And I am of the opinion my own ``Hieronymus Thump'' would make a fine character, possibly a kangaroo, so what is my judgement worth?)