Name Trouble

Well, if "Four" can work as a (nick)name, why can't "Trouble"?

If you're really worried that Trouble can get troublesome, maybe an ascent over some vowels? Tróublë seems really COOL!!!

I think Trouble is a great name for a character - it says so much with just an introduction

My current WIP has a space pirate that calls himself Buccaneer. He adopted it partly to hide his identity, partly because his real named is awful, and mostly because he's a massive dork who likes the idea of being a pirate more than actually being a pirate. And the name he gave his "daughter" and nicknames he gives the other characters are just as horribly uncreative. So it works.

Just give Trouble an embarrassing birth/adopted name he hates. And, you know, at least nod to the name being too on the nose. It's actually a good way to build in some characterization.

What the others said. Keep it. If it gets too troublesome later, change it

What's with the waffle?

All it makes me think of is the character by that name in Grimm. In that context I did think the name choice was a bit forced. It did not seem like a real nickname people would give her.

Mamitt said:

Oh. It's a Norwegian waffle, with strawberry jam and sour cream, so it's quite messy.

Click to expand...

Hence the swearing

(Trønder, sjø.)

I'd say keep the name if it works for you. I named a sci-fi character Chin. And he's not Chinese. At first it was a place holder, but it stuck. If an agent or publisher doesn't like it, changing later isn't a problem, but if that's how you see your character, well, he's your character.

Speaking of which, I have a number of characters in my WIP referred to only by nicknames, including:

Buddy, Golden Girl, Baller, Bubble Gum, Gecko (and they all have reasons behind their nicknames.)

ETA: And two detectives who wouldn't give their names to the MC, thus: Detective Beanpole and Detective Tubby.

In my last MS, my MC referred to people with nicknames in her head until she found out their names, and they were far from creative: Tall One, Roof Man, Asian Guy,

Mmm... I don't care for it. Seems a bit "try hard." But I am just one person who is notorious old-fashioned when it comes to most character names, so feel free to disregard me!

I see both sides -- I love just calling characters by nicknames, either their actual nicknames, or just how the MC is identifying them.

I can see the problem with "Trouble" being a little too on-the-nose. Hey, you can always change it later if you need to!

(says the person who called a character Marie Claire because MC stuck by accident.)

"I spilled wasabi on my shirt that one time!"

I could see it being more realistic if it was like a nickname he'd gotten as a kid for being a troublemaker, and it stuck. I know of a few people who have more unconventional nicknames (Money, for example; or some of my friends call me Table when my name is Tabatha - don't ask!) and a lot of the "weirder" ones come from something their parents didn't think would stick at 8. Good luck

One of my favourite character names ever is Ratchet. From "the Canning Season" She was named so because her parents were fighting over what a tool left on the window of the hospital was called. Her mother named her Ratchet out of spite.
If the story is good enough, anything goes.

I think it works, but I'm a little biased seeing as I named a character Whisper. If you're wondering the story behind that character, my story is post-apocalyptic, set in a world where all the adults are dead as a result of a virus. Whisper is a spymaster, obsessed with information (believing that it decides any battle and will ultimately decide the future) and finding out the origin of the Virus. She is referred to as female by everyone in the series, but there's little to indicate her gender in her voice and manner; she's androgynous. I've also decided that she suffers from, in the words of another character, "some weird allergy to the sun" so she is swathed in fabric from head to toe and is described as being so pale that looking at her, you think of those weird white bugs seen under rocks. Haven't decided if Whisper is an Albino or is afflicted with Xeroderma Pigmentosum, so I'll probably cheat by keeping quiet about her precise diagnosis.

Anyway, I named her Whisper because it seemed to fit her spymaster, mysterious personality. She and her Spiders are obsessed with collecting information despite the fact that due to the adults being dead, she's limited technology-wise.

My son and my daughter (15 & 19) have nicknames like crazy for all of their friends. I thought this one kids was named Carl for years, until his mother called him Kyle. There are other kids in this town who I have no idea what their real names are because they go by nicknames, or when my kids occasionally use their real names. I'm so confused. My point: teens give each other nicknames and use them consistently all the time.

I have a character nicknamed Trouble, too!

And jt - I totally relate to your confusion! I work in a school and the kids refer to each other by all these nicknames and don't even know each other's real names, which has made for some crazy situations when I'm trying to figure out who they're talking about and they're all like, YOU DON'T KNOW STANKY? EVERYONE KNOWS STANKY.

Perhaps change the spelling but let it still read phonetically as trouble.

In school I had a friend named Sean who my other friend and I referred to exclusively as Johnny because when he introduced himself, he mumbled we still call him that, even though we don't know each other very well anymore. Makes for funny comments on social media.