In a story I’m working on I’ve had one minor character named practically since the beginning and then I renamed another minor character and later realised that the names might be too similar.
[name]Ellery[/name] and [name]Elsa[/name]
too close or am I over analyzing?
The story is about 5 adult siblings ([name]Gretchen[/name], [name]James[/name], [name]Andrew[/name], [name]Lavinia[/name], [name]Cameron[/name]) living their lives and coming together as one of the siblings tries to restore the family’s old home, basically they live, they laugh, they cry, they learn - now the naming problem, neither character are main characters but both are important to main characters and would have met/interacted with each other and will be spoken about
[name]One[/name] character [name]Ellery[/name], is [name]James[/name]’ middle daughter and the other who I named [name]Elsa[/name] is [name]Lavinia[/name]'s mother (but not any of the other siblings mother)
[name]Ellery[/name] would also sometimes go by [name]Elle[/name]/[name]Ella[/name], [name]Lera[/name] and occasionally [name]Ellery[/name] Celery or Ellerina as a joke by family members
[name]Elsa[/name] would mainly go by [name]Elsie[/name], [name]Else[/name] or C.C and a couple of times Legs
What do you think are [name]Elsa[/name] and [name]Ellery[/name] too similar?
I mean the characters aren’t related [name]Elsa[/name] is in fact [name]Ellery[/name]'s grandfathers ex mistress (confusing to explain I guess, it makes perfect sense to me lol) basically it wouldn’t be an honour naming thing, would it be weird or am I just completely over thinking things? I love both names for their characters but I just don’t know
I think I just need an outside opinion
I don’t think they’re too similar. They have the same starting sound, but they are comepletely different styles. [name]Ellery[/name] is a fresh, new, rising name and [name]Elsa[/name] is old-fashioned and sophisticated. If you just called them [name]Elle[/name] & [name]Elsie[/name], they would definately be too close but something like [name]Ella[/name] & [name]Elsie[/name] or [name]Lera[/name] & [name]Elsie[/name] would be fine. Good luck!
Thanks so much for all the feedback I feel so much more confident in my name choices and I’m glad they’ve been well received.
I think naming characters are so important because for me at least it helps me understand them as people, [name]Ellery[/name] has been named since the beginning almost so it would have sucked to have to rename her because I see her as this person and her name is a part of that but as soon as I renamed [name]Elsa[/name] I knew it was right (she had previously been [name]Luciana[/name], [name]Marielle[/name], [name]Jane[/name], [name]Jade[/name], [name]Opal[/name] but none of them worked, but then I thought [name]Elsa[/name] and I was like YES it’s right and then the character which had originally just been two dimensional and only there because I needed her to be but now with a new name she has a personality and I can envision her and she’s actually got some purpose or at least reasons behind her actions… all of those probably won’t even make it into what I’m writing but it helps me understand why she does things and how past events came about and see what happened from her point of view)
& yes I fell even more in love with [name]Ellery[/name] when I thought of having her siblings calling her [name]Ellery[/name] Celery
