What's in a name?

Last week there was suddenly a run of small children asking me for books with their names in them. Books where one of the characters has the same name that they do, or better still, books which have their name in the title. Finding books for children named Sophie, Olivia and Jack is easy. But it's more difficult looking for stories to suit the multitude of Thai nicknames. You can find a book which is about the subject of the nickname, but it's just not the same.

In English language children's books there are names which come up over and over. And the name of a character is important, an essential part of them which could make or break the story. Think back to a book like Where the Wild Things are. The escapades of the daring and difficult Max come to mind. What about The Tiger who came to tea? Straight away it's got me thinking about Sophie and the Tiger who drank all the water out of the taps. There's also the more recent stories of Oliver who travelled far and wide and Olivia. Lily is a name shared by two of my absolute favourites in the children's book world - the Blue Kangaroo series and Lily's plastic purple purse. When it comes to more unusual names you can find books like You'll soon grow into them, Titch.

Disney has had a lot of influence on names. Sleeping Beauty is no longer Sleeping Beauty - she's Aurora, of course! Now I know what to look for when one of the girls asks for Belle (Beauty and the Beast), Ariel (The Little Mermaid) and Tiana (The Frog Prince). They've even put out lists of baby names inspired by Disney. It will be interesting to see if authors pick up on these names too. Guess it will take a while for them to filter through though.
Baby names for girls.
Baby names for boys.

Thank you, Disney.

This has me wishing that I could read Thai. I'd love to know what the most common Thai children's book character names are. Obviously they'd be Thai names. But what would they be? Something like Namtaan or Ploy for a girl? Or Nop or Ong for boys? The most common Thai nicknames at our school are English words like Proud. So would the characters have an English nickname? And if so, how do you write that in Thai? Since I can't read Thai (and am unlikely to be able to anytime soon!) I looked up the most popular names in English language children's books... which turned out to be a really interesting thing to do.

Especially since I haven't been able to find anything conclusive yet!

It does seem that the most common names in children's books are names such as Jack and Max for boys, and Rosie and Lily (hmm, both flower names) for girls. But I don't know for sure. The names would also vary by country the book was written in, the era and circumstances around the publishing of the story... plus a range of other factors.

Hmmm... I think I feel a research project coming on!