It’s the name that makes a literary character complete

Every aspiring writer knows how hard it is to name your characters. I can speak from experience that way too much time can be frittered away trying out and rejecting character names. For me, the best solution is using placeholder names, hoping that the perfect name will magically pop into place when I’m not thinking too hard about it.

In a recent article on Literary Hub (my favorite literary website), Alison Stine advises writers: “A name is more than just something to call your character. It’s more than just a writerly task you have to complete. It’s part of a person’s identity, part of their family and home. It can impact tone, convey history. Let the names be a part of your story. Let names tell the story too.”

That’s certainly true of W.M. Thackeray’s Becky Sharp (“Vanity Fair”), whose name reveals something intrinsic about her conniving, social climbing nature.

Any list of great character names would have to include Charles Dickens’ Uriah Heep (“David Copperfield”), a name so unctuous and cloying it makes me squirm. And so fabulously odious it was adopted by a British hard rock/heavy metal band in 1969. More than once I’ve hurled Heep’s name as an insult at someone oozing false humility. And while we’re talking Dickens, Ebenezer Scrooge? The best name ever for a skinflint!

Shakespeare, of course, excelled at naming characters, from the jester Sir Toby Belch in “Twelfth Night” to Nick Bottom, a comic character whose head is often transformed into an ass by the elusive fairy Puck in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” has the suitably named Atticus Finch and Scout, but it’s Boo Radley who gives me the shivers. I’ve heard that name applied to countless scary neighbors.

And Roald Dahl was no slouch at the naming game. In just his “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” we meet the eccentric Willy Wonka, spoiled brat Veruca Salt (a name adopted by a Chicago alt-rock band in the 1990s) and the Oompa Loompas.

Joseph Heller’s satirical war novel “Catch-22” has two splendidly named characters: First Lieutenant Milo Minderbinder, the personification of capitalism, and Major Major Major Major, who only allows people to see him when he’s not in his office. I had a friend who reread “Catch 22” every year and laughed like a loon every time.

Here’s my list of other most aptly named characters. Feel free to send me yours at barbara.lane@ sfchronicle.com.

⏩ Ichabod Crane (Washington Irving, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”): What better name to connote a lanky scarecrow of a character?

⏩ Long John Silver (Robert Louis Stevenson, “Treasure Island”): Justice Clarence Thomas almost ruined this one for me.

⏩ Holly Golightly (Truman Capote, “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”): Charming and delightful, with the particulars of how she makes her living left unspecified.

⏩ Hannibal Lecter (Thomas Harris, “Silence of the Lambs”): Rhymes with … ?

⏩ Pippi Longstocking (Astrid Lindgren, “Pippi Longstocking”): Every redheaded, pigtailed girl is a Pippi to me.

⏩ Count Dracula (Bram Stoker, “Dracula”): So classic and evocative nothing more need be said.

⏩ Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”): Anyone who reads the novel can close their eyes and conjure up an image of Huck.

⏩ Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Defoe, “Robinson Crusoe”): The musicality of his name combined with thoughts of cruise and canoe always put me in mind of the sea.

⏩ Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde, “The Picture of Dorian Gary”): I have more than once asked insanely youthfullooking contemporaries if they have an aging picture in their closet.

⏩ Humbert Humbert (Vladimir Nabokov, “Lolita”): There’s a theory about the “thumb” contained within his name being a symbolic phallus, but I prefer to think he just sounds like a creep.

Finally, Ernest Hemingway goes against the grain when it comes to thoughtfully naming characters. Robert Cohn, Nick Adams, Jake Barnes — what’s the big deal? But Hemingway being Hemingway, that’s probably the point.

“To Kill a Mockingbird” has the suitably named Atticus Finch and Scout, but it’s Boo Radley who gives me the shivers.