Desiderius Price

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Oh, name duplication does happen in real life. Got a number of alter egos if I do a goggle search on my own name, a lawyer, a director of a food company, a firefighter? etc. Even an occasional issue at work where there’s duplicates in the global org-wide email address list, if people don’t realize that my real legal first name *is* the short version, not the customary long version (an assumption that’s valid 85% ofthe time, but I’m not in that 85% group). Issue comes to writing a story, if you had a story full of John Smiths, how do you distinguish them to the reader? In a movie, it’s less problematic, because unless the actors looked the same, the viewer would get the drift. Another J example is that I have “Joe” as a major character (short for Joseph). His mother “Josephine”, those two, role wise are easier. However, a side character coming in was Joey, see where the confusion can come in? Especially if I fat finger the name while writing? You typically don’t want to (unintentionally) confuse the reader more than you have to. Of course, having a duplicate name might be a good plot point too, but you still need some distinction for the reader. Now, in my main potter fanfic, the perpetrator is making heavy use of Polyjuice (or an equivalent), impersonating Harry while doing nefarious deeds. However, makes it challenging because as the narrator, I don’t want to call the doppelganger “Harry”, so I’ll go “raven haired boy” or similar descriptions. It still comes to the same philosophy of not wanting to confuse the reader to what’s happening (aside from deliberate misdirection).

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I started to foul up on my originals … now I’m bit more aware. A substantial number had “J” as the first initial, became worse when a number started with “Ja” and you’d have to go to THREE letters in to get them any different. Too late to correct all of them, however, I’ve been trying to introduce nicknames for secondary characters. Too similar and the names blend together in the readers minds.

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For main characters, I put more thought into it. For side/background characters, I’m more likely to use a random name generator for guidance. (Trouble is, I’ll use create a side/background character, and *THEN* decide to center a story around them, well, I’m generally not renaming them.)

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Moving the discussion on flashbacks with @Wilde_Guess here.