Feature and Follow Friday #9

 

Feature & Follow Friday is a weekly social blog hop between book bloggers. There are two hosts: Parajunkee and Alison of Alison Can Read. If you want to join in, click on either of their blogs to get the details. The FF question of the day is:

Q:  I like unique names for characters and am looking forward to coming up with some when I start writing. What’s the most unique character name you’ve come across?

The most unique names are oddly enough the most difficult to remember. They're from hard sci fi; the kind of names with apostrophes in the middle. But if we're discussing unique as in appealing, memorable and rare, I'd have to say Delores Haze, aka Lolita, because of the way her various nicknames play into her characterization. 

Four, from Veronica Roth's DIVERGENT, is another unique name (albeit a nickname) that comes to mind. But a lot of unique yet forgettable names run rampant in fiction. On a different note, there's the unique name convention that prevails in romance novels, in which a hero named Chance Strongfront or some such thing is accepted as having a totally unremarkable name.

Ultimately, I don't think it's as important that your character's name be unique, as it is that it fit the character. Nadine Cross from THE STAND struck me as such a good fit for the character that it took on unpleasant qualities as a name in and of itself. There's nothing wrong, per se, with the name Nadine, but just as it happens with a bully in elementary school or a horrible ex, the name became linked for me with the sliminess of the character and her subplot.