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It depends how distinctive the name is. If you have a character named "John", well, there are lots of other fictional characters, and real people, named "John" would not bother me at all. There a...
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#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T06:27:41Z (about 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/39218 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
by
Jay
·
2019-12-08T06:27:41Z (about 5 years ago)
It depends how distinctive the name is. If you have a character named "John", well, there are lots of other fictional characters, and real people, named "John" would not bother me at all. There are plenty of real people named "Snow". I think few people would even notice the similarity, or would only notice it for an instant and promptly move on. On the other hand if you named a character "Gandalf" or "Sherlock" or "Batman", yeah, lots of readers would notice. Matching just a first name or just a last name is far more likely to pass unnoticed that matching both. And no one expects you to study every novel ever written and every movie and TV show ever made to avoid such duplication.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2018-10-03T19:13:29Z (about 6 years ago)
Original score: 1