As a novelist, when creating a character, I sometimes grope for a name that fits that character's personality and ethnic background. I often make up names, sometimes using parts of the names of people I know from my past experiences.

I have found a website that generates names - you first input gender, year of birth, and ancestral background. I have used that website for the names of several characters in my four novels.

Two of the more interesting names I used for characters in my most recent novel, Love and Perfidy, have a story. My wife died in 2012 so writing helped me overcome the grief. I finished writing that book in 2019 (under a different title).

I created a female character who was the best friend of the novel's leading character (discussed below). I went through several potential names and finally decided on "Sally". I was unsatisfied with that designation but somewhat put the manuscript to rest. In early 2020, I was in Washington, DC, to attend my son's retirement ceremony from the Marines. My daughter was there with a friend whom I had never encountered. The friend's name was Vonceil. I immediately asked if I could use her name in my novel and she somewhat reluctantly agreed, with the condition I give her a copy of the book when it was published.

I had trouble deciding on a name for the main character. She was blonde, beautiful, popular, and intelligent, but devious. She was born in 1920 in a small Louisiana town. Her mother had abandoned her as a child and she was raised by a stern father and grandmother. I finished the novel naming the character Mildred, and everybody called her Milly. That name really didn't suit that character. In the summer of 2020, while in Dallas, I met a widow. She was named "Sweetie". She was blonde, beautiful and intelligent. I asked her permission to use the name "Sweetie" for my main character, and she enthusiastically agreed.

With the magic of Word, I changed Sally to Vonceil and Milly to Sweetie. After the novel was published, I gave the real-life Vonceil a copy. She later complained that my book's Vonceil character had little personality. Sweetie, now my real-life wife, read the book and was not pleased to be associated with the fictional Sweetie. Sweetie's real-life son read the book and got extremely angry with me, saying he didn't appreciate his mother being cast in that way. He quickly realized the book was fiction and not about his mother.