Happy St. George’s Day! I do hope you are celebrating with something tasty, or wrestling dragons, or scaring snakes, or whatever suits your fancy.

St. George was one of the saints responsible for soldiers, as well as one of those fighting plague and leprosy. He, coincidentally, was born on the same day as Shakespeare (if you can believe any facts about that latter mystical person).

So he would have been an appropriate persona for a story about soldiers and tuberculosis, but that’s not why I chose George as the name for one of my characters in Spit & Polish.

Nor was it because my grandfather was named George, nor that there was a fellow in my writing group named George. I chose it simply because it was a name appropriate for the time period.

But then I got into hot water. You see, the George in my book is a bad guy. Not a super bad guy, just a man of his time, with the associated expectations of the late 1940’s. Men were meant to dominate women. All women lived for a man. Every woman wanted a husband, any husband, and any woman who said they wanted a career was just playing games. My main character, Ruth, is at first attracted to handsome George, but soon realizes he wants more from her than she can give.

George doesn’t take this well.

What this Saint’s Day made me think of is how easy it is for our readers to think we are writing about them or someone they know when we use their names or similar histories. The fellow in my writing group got quite hot under the collar as my George revealed his nastier side. Didn’t help that the group all commented about it every time he came up in my readings. Especially when he was bad. (The character, I mean…)

Other times, when I’ve written pieces, people often think I am writing about myself, or them, even when I don’t use their names. They get hurt, or angry, or even overly excited. But truly, it isn’t about them, or me! Most of the time, anyway.

Selecting the name for a character isn’t easy. I found it simpler to name my children, to be frank. (see what I did there?) I scour obituaries from the period I am writing about, read appropriate news articles for names, try them out over and over, and still somehow I end up offending someone. My bad female character, for example, was named Patricia, which I am sure someone thinks I directed at a person I know, but no. Again, it was just a name from that time. Though it was fun using it…

Because, truthfully, sometimes it’s a source of glee. The evil part of me enjoys teasing my readers with suppositions. Did I mean to imply that they are like the character? Or am I really assigning that behaviour to their cousin/uncle/father/town leader? It was particularly enjoyable when I wrote my first book, Recycled Virgin, playing with religious names and events. My readers spent the first pages trying to figure out who each character was meant to be, while I just smiled. It was fun searching for the various iterations of the name Mary over the centuries and cultures, though. I do love the research. But then I have to commit, and stick a name on a character, for good or ill.

And then I find out I have somehow named everyone with a name starting with B, so I have to go through and change most of them so readers (and the writer) don’t mess them up. We hope.

Sometimes I think it would be easier to write fantasy or science fiction, where I could make up names and avoid this situation…though I suspect there are treacherous paths even there. Naming characters is such a huge piece of creating them, and it is worth the time to sort them out properly. Maybe even clear them with people you love…;-)

I’m adding this lovely painting by Scot Gustafson because I love the way he has made the dragon the size to look St. George in the eye. In the sculpture we had in my house growing up, the poor dragon was so small George’s horse could have squashed it with his hoof. I prefer an even playing field. As did Ruth, in Spit & Polish.

Happy St. George’s Day! Why not take your local dragon out for a chummy drink, instead? Though it MAY annoy your horse.