Characters' Names

[erastes]

I know i've complained about this before but gah!  NAMES! Sometimes I'm sooo tempted to go bananas and leap down the "implausible name route" like Deymien Aztec de Chandon or something.  I've actually started writing today and there i go, tap tap tap - I have the name of the butler and I stick "Mrs XXXX" for the housekeeper because she's not vital - and then I hit the first major male character and GRIND TO A BLOODY HALT.

I go and search for Parish records - and am bombarded with Charles and Edward and George and John -sheesh- all so DULL! Names just drive me bonkers.

Does anyone have any great links?  And no, I don't want baby names sites, I want parish records, or sites with real names!  help help help. Or you may be responsible for me having a Deymien Chandon.  (although that's SO bloody tempting...) I'd like unusual but plausible if you know what I mean.

Comments

[liriaen.livejournal.com]

I was about to say, King James Bible, too, which has already been suggested (for lo, what name could be better than Malachi? Dang, wait, that's already in use in "Angela's Ashes"-).
Dickens, Collected Works. ('Sketches by Boz', for instance?)
My fave, though not particularly Regency: spam senders' names. Brilliant, the majority of them.
And to harp again on my current book squeeze, the herculean "Against the Day"... have a look at those names and go "gakh!". :D

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Thanks hun! I admit that I don't find many of the Biblical names very romantic - probably because Hardy used many of them for his working class characters in his Wessex novels, but I'll find something!

Goodness, I hadn't heard of that book - looks interesting.

[liriaen.livejournal.com]

Romantic they're not, that much is certain. -- Ohhh umm, if you haven't read Pynchon, I wouldn't recommend it as a starting point; chances are, it would drive you furious. It drives even me, a confessed Pynchon-lover, furious. (I deem that a good thing *g*) Have a peek into "Mason & Dixon"? That might even touch the historical period(s) you prefer, in a very strange undulation between what would become the US, and England. (And in a way, I'm still waiting for someone to slash Messr.s Mason and Dixon, even though that's almost hinted at in the novel.)

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Oh - I've always been a firm slasher of Mason and Dixon - in my head, at least!!!