Finding the Perfect Names for Your Historical Characters
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.— Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)
I suppose that true, but if James Cameron had decided to change the name of Titanic’s “Rose” to “Reginald”, anyone reading the script would have pictured Kate Winslet’s character with a bushy mustache and a trophy room filled with African big game. When it comes to stories, names matter.
Let’s take a closer look at Titanic and it’s main characters, Jack and Rose. Dating all the way back to the 17th century, “Jack” was a generic term for a male, and it is this everyman quality that endears us to the character. He is the poor man who reaches beyond his place to win the heart of the rich and beautiful Rose. He is the American rogue who picks himself up by his bootstraps and goes after his dreams. Once he’s achieved his aspirations in finding his true love, he is allowed to perish with a life fulfilled.
On the other side, Rose is a delicate beauty on the surface, but has fight and grit beneath. The beauty of a flower alongside the threat of its thorns. She can dazzle you with poise in one moment and reject the class system the next.
The names fit the characters’ personalities and arcs beautifully, but they also steep the film in the historical period. Both names reached peak popularity in the early 1900’s – the Titanic sunk in 1912. If Jack and Rose had been named Asher and Aurora, we’d wonder what fairy-tale land or modern, hipster borough we’d been dropped into. The period facade would be weakened.
Finding the most popular baby names of the last decade is easy, but searching for period accurate names dating back through the middle ages can be a bit more challenging. What the hell was the most popular French name in late-13th-century Paris? Turns out it’s Jehan by a landslide. So, if I want my story about lovers on opposite ends of the 100 years war to be period authentic (and Lord knows I do), it’d be a safe bet to name someone Jehan.
We know this because much of Europe was kind enough to conduct censuses and other onomastic articles – onomastics is the study of the origin, history, and use of proper names, but you already knew that, and obviously, I did too before I even wrote this post. Even luckier for us, a few academic folks were nice enough to put these documents together.
You can find A Small Collection of Medieval Onomastic Articles from Durham University’s Dr. Sara L. Uckelman, which includes the 1292 census of Paris I used to find the popular name of Jehan. Uckelman is the Editor-in-Chief and Principal Investigator of the Dictionary of Medieval Names from European Sources, but I prefer to use the aforementioned “Small Collection” to easily find onomastic articles from the 8th through the 18th century covering given names from England, France, Germany, Italy, and many more countries.
While these resources are the perfect companion for period pieces, they also provide great names for fantasy and science fiction projects, or any modern project looking for unique names with intriguing provenance.
