Alias Smith and Jones?
Oscar Wilde’s enduringly funny play The Importance of Being Ernest is, as its title suggests, all about the importance of a name. This is never truer than with major fictional characters. Would Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple be the same woman she is if she were called Miss Smith? What about Christie’s even more famous detective Hercule Poirot? How would generations of readers, film-goers and television viewers think of him if he were called Henri Poisson?
Fictional detectives build up their whole characters around their names. Dorothy L Sayers’s aristocratic sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey has a brilliantly unusual name, far more memorable than if he had the mundane name of Lord Peter Smith. Another toff detective, Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion, has a much better name than Albert Jones or Albert Cook. Campion’s sidekick, Magersfontein Lugg, is another name that will not easily be forgotten.
Not that there is anything wrong with common surnames. But in detective stories, a name that sticks in the memory is the best way for the private eyes to remain in the public eye. Television handles this particularly well, with detectives such as Rosemary and Thyme, a couple of gardeners who somehow stumble into murder mysteries amongst the rose pruning and lawn mowing.
However perhaps the master of naming his characters with evocative, atmospheric and somehow totally appropriate monikers was Charles Dickens. His people come alive through their dialogue and speech patterns, their behaviour and aspirations, and not least, through their names.
The Mystery of Edwin Drood … how boring it would be if it was the mystery of Edward Bear, while Dickens’s Ebenezer Scrooge of A Christmas Carol has given his name to a whole class of personalities. Dickens might have been one of the best, but the tradition of great names has been happily carried through right up to the present day.
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