Something I often tell my students: Your first idea may be the best, but you won’t know that unless you test it. I want to start by spoiling the ending: I’m feeling grateful and comfortable with where I’ve landed with this.
I recently discovered there’s a character named Baron von Bear in a popular series (if you’re really interested, you can search for it). It was tough to sit with this, especially right after finishing a 217-page graphic novel and ten years of sharing drawings of my Baron. All sorts of angry and sad voices shouted inside of me. I’d spent so much time developing this character. Revisiting what to even call him felt like ten steps backward.
I sat with those frustrated voices for a while. I’ll bet there’s a good chance we can prove we used the name first, they said. Let’s go get them. I thought about what fighting for the name might look like.
Then I remembered that the character’s name wasn’t always Baron von Bear. Ten years ago I had been calling him Doctor Bear:
He’s a scholar of the occult, I remembered. His character is inspired by sage heroes like Professor Van Helsing. Like Dr. Sam Beckett, my bear probably has dozens of degrees in various fields. So yeah, why wouldn’t he be a doctor? I liked the title baron as it’s someone who has inherited something regardless of deserving. But a doctorate is something you earn. So he’d be even more invested in his identity as an occult expert. Which could make his confrontation with that identity even more delicious (spoilers!).
What if the first name, Doctor Bear, was the right one all along?
So here’s to Doctor Baer, Occult Archivist:
I came across the name von Baer while searching for derivations of Doctor Bear. And I liked the German spelling. It leaned a little more toward that Van Helsing influence, it was farther away from Baron von Bear, and I could get the dot com domain.
I’ll also admit I liked giving my character a name people would likely misspell or trip over. He’ll companion me every time someone addresses me as Jerry or Jersey.
Now I’m off to update the landing page, the cover art, the interior art, marketing materials, and everything else I’ve slapped that name on over the last few years. Not a terrible tradeoff for making a book that matters to me!