I know I mentioned this in one of my general fan fic pet peeve entries, but lately it's all I see on fanfiction.net and it's driving me crazy.

I am talking about badly named characters. Now, the names themselves may not be bad in the general scheme of naming characters, but for an Outsiders fan fiction, there are some that I just can't even read the story because the name is just not right for the time. Now, I'm aware that I'm a picky reader, but anachronisms really throw me for a loop. If I see a name that isn't right for the '60s time period, I don't read it because I assume the writer is young (b/c young writers will choose names popular now or really unusual ones to stand out) and that the writing won't be very good (because if you aren't going to research names you sure won't research the time period)

Lately on ff.net we've had female characters named Courtney, Abby, Spencer, Evan, Orion, Lauren, Scarlet, Willow and Caitlin. And that's just the first three pages of stories.

Now, if your character is 16 years old in Outsiders world - she was born in 1950. Let's take a look at some of the names above and how popular they were in 1950:

Courtney - Not in the top 1000...unless you're a boy, then it's 852. Yes, it was originally a boy's name.
Abby - Not in the top 1000. Abigail was 827. Gail was the best bet at 42.
Spencer - Not in the top 1000 for a girl. For a boy it was 378.
Evan - Not in the top 1000. For a boy it was 461.
Orion - Not on either top 1000 list.
Lauren - 393 for a girl and 791 for a boy. Yes, it was originally a boy's name.
Scarlet - Not in the top 1000.
Willow - Not in the top 1000.
Caitlin - Not in the top 1000.

So basically you'd run a very slim chance of running into anyone with those names in 1966 in the USA.

The rule is, stick to the top 100 names for the year your character was born and if you want to be a little more different, definitely keep to the top 500. For 1950 you'd get the popular Linda, Mary, Patricia, Barbara, Susan, Nancy, Deborah, Sandra, Carol and Kathleen in the top 10. The last 10 (91 to 100) are Eileen, Irene, Anna, Victoria, Jeanne, Roberta, Sylvia, Joann, Anita and Sue.

The guy names aren't so bad - not that many writers create male characters for the Outsiders fandom. But just for fun, here are the top 10 names in 1950 for boys - James, Robert, John, Michael, David, William, Richard, Thomas, Charles, Gary. Most of them are fairly classic and you can still find them in the top of baby name lists today. The bottom 100? Lee, Earl, Marvin, Tommy, Clarence, Alfred, Curtis, Eric, Theodore, Clifford. Boys names take longer to change in fashion, so they are usually more old fashioned sounding for the time than the girls names.

For the record:

Ponyboy - Not in top 1000
Sodapop - Not in top 1000
Darrel - 293 (spelled Darrell it's 116, spelled Daryl it's 205, and Darryl it's 203 - combine all the spelling variations, it's in the top 100)
Keith - 78
Johnny - 50 (Johnnie is 158, John is 3)
Dallas - 331
Steven - 16 (Steve is 84, spelled Stephen it's 19 - probably in the top 10 with all spellings combined)
Timothy - 32 (Tim alone is 238)
Curly - Not in top 1000 (Curley is 918 though)
Angela - 147
Sherri - 370 (spelled Sherry it's 62, Cherry is 516, Sheri is 396)
Marcia - 77 (Marsha is 68, so it's likely in the top 50 with spellings combined)
Robert - 2 (Bob alone is 204)

So aside from Pony and Soda (who have common middle names - Michael (4) and Patrick (38), their names are all quite popular - all but those two are in the top 400.

Where did I get all these wonderful stats you ask? The Social Security Administration - http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/index.html You can search for specific names, popularity by state, by year and everything under the sun. It's indispensible when you're writing historical fiction - which the Outsiders is. Please, please, please use this resource fan fic writers. I don't want to be scared away from fic that might be good save for the Alyssa starring in it.

Tags: fan fic dislikes, names
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