Many
years ago, I noticed that if a book had too many characters, I had trouble
keeping track of them. If some of those characters had fairly similar names, I
had no hope of keeping them apart in my head. I devised a method of avoiding
that problem in my own stories.
Using
that method has become so much a part of my process that I really didn’t pause
to think about it any more. Until recently, when I started looking through
papers I inherited from my mother about the family tree.
Have
you ever looked through your family tree? I have been looking at one tree, the
one that started with Jacob, born in 1800, and eventually resulted in me and my
siblings, on my mother’s side. Families were pretty big back then, and
apparently, the supply of names was limited. Take a look:
Jacob’s
children included an Elizabeth, a Mary, a Robert, a Joseph, a John and a
Charles. Yes, there were others, but I don’t have any bones with them.
Elizabeth
and Mary both married a John, and their children (together) included an
Elizabeth, a Mary, a Robert, a Joseph and 2 Johns. Two of Jacob’s sons married
an Elizabeth, and both of those Elizabeths were the same age, and I don’t have a maiden name
for either of them. So on that tree, I have 2 women designated as ‘Elizabeth ?, born 1835’. The children of these marriages
include Mary, Elizabeth, Eliza, 2 Johns, Robert, Joseph, and Charles.
See
what I mean about the supply of names being limited? 3 generations, and I am up
to my neck in the same names, over and over again. Talk about confusion!
If
I ever create a family tree for a book or series that I’m planning, … On the
other hand, families do sometimes have a name or two that they pass down
through the generations. My father’s name was Melvin; one of his brothers was
Elvin. Not exactly the same, but close. My first husband had his grand-father’s
name as his middle name; our son also had his grand-father’s name as his middle
name. Not the same name, but follows a pattern.
Would
my made-up family have such a pattern they follow, or a name they hand down
through the generations? Maybe so. If they do, I’ll assign all the Johns
and Marys nicknames that EVERYbody uses, just to avoid any name confusion.
