My face when I find out that someone doesn't go by their first

My face when I find out that
someone doesn't go by
their first name                    

To a reader, the names of the characters in a book seem effortless and are rarely given a second thought. Yeah, the name “Hermione” was probably stumbled over and made fun of when the first HP book came out but seven books later, that’s just who she is. No one would dream of changing her name to Anne or Deborah.

Readers associate a character’s personality, attributes and appearance with his or her name to the point that it seems impossible that he or she could be named anything else. We do the same thing with people. For example, I have a friend who goes by her middle name exclusively. When I discovered her first name I kind of freaked out inside because someone who I’d known as X had Z on her birth certificate. Crazy.

To me, names are incredibly important. Have you ever played that game with friends where you try to come up with “a name that they look like”? Maybe not, but my friends and I used to do it all the time. We’d usually be hanging out and someone would say, “You know Danielle, I’ve always thought you looked more like a Margret.” The conversation would continue until all of us were given a different name. The only hitch was that the new name never seemed to fit anyone as perfectly as the name they were known as. Maybe this is why I find it so interesting that some people just up and change their name to whatever they want, but I digress.