The TvTropes website notes characters with alliterative names is:
"one of many ways a writer can make a name more interesting and catchy, which in turn makes the character more memorable to the audience. This is especially important in works with loads and loads of characters, where extra help is needed to differentiate between them."
More than a few alliterative names pop up throughout the Bellairs Corpus:
- Bishop Barlow
- Roderick Random Childermass
- Peregrine Pickle Childermass
- Charles Coote
- Byron “Fergie" Ferguson
- Hagtooth Harry
- Isaac Izard
- Ishmael Izard
- Warren Windrow
- Rose Rita Pottinger
- Emerson Eells
Does "Brewster the Rooster" count?
Do names such as these distract from the story, or do you feel alliteration “makes the character more memorable”? Are there too many alliterative names or should have there been more? I don’t think the stories would have been the same with Donnie Dixon or Tony Tuesday running around, though.
What about book titles, because alliteration rears its head there, too, sometimes across the entire title or two out of the three parts:
- The Face in the Frost
- The Spell of the Sorcerer's Skull
- The Mansion in the Mist
- The Drum, the Doll, and the Zombie
- The Bell, the Book, and the Spellbinder
- The Specter from the Magician's Museum
- The Wrath of the Grinning Ghost
- The Beast under the Wizard's Bridge
- The Whistle, the Grave, and the Ghost
- The Sign of the Sinister Sorcerer
Do you feel the same way about alliterative book titles as you do characters? Are full-fledged titles such as “Spell Sorcerer's Skull” or “Mansion Mist” a bit much, or would have more titles alliterative made the books more noticeable - and then possibly, popular?
How would the series sound if all had alliterative titles?
And pray tell what would you call The House with a Clock in its Walls? The Town’s Ticking Terror? The Terrible Tick-Tock? The Killer Clock Countdown?
That’s enough for now.
2 comments:
Well you can't really blame John Bellairs for Roderick Random or Peregrine Pickle because Tobias Smollett beat him to the names by over 200 years. But names like this are fairly common even out of literature. I think some parents think the name gives the owner some distinction. I also see parent that give names that all start with the same letter like James, John, and Jacob. I don't think Bellairs can carry much blame for the names. Now the titles might be another thing, but then again, were these John's titles, or did they come from the publisher. Often the books editor will pick a title that is different from the author's working title. Sort of like how they often pick the illustrator for a book. Probably an author with more weight with the publisher get his own way with these things more often.
What other Children's author named a character after a Tobias Smollett character? I doubt that anyone will guess this one, but I will give a few hints. This character hated his Smollett influenced name so much that he went by the name "Drawers" to his friends. Also the author's name was brought up in connection with the J. K Rowling law suit, although she had nothing to do do with it herself. Also the author was originally from Ohio. Well do you give up? The author is Carol Kendall and her character is Roderick "Drawers" Random from "The Black Seven". Who knows, maybe John read her books when he was younger.
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