I've been working on my character Jean for like a year and a half now, I've had the character for like two or three years, scrapped his original story, and started working on a new one, even altered his appearance signficantly, but I've always had his name; Jean White.
Since then I've given him a family and a relationship to this family; he has two older siblings: a brother named Kristopher and a sister named Crystal. I liked the idea of giving him this aspect about him where his family imposed his odd-one-out trait onto him. (Kris, Crys, and Jean). His family follows Christianity (to an extent), but Jean didn't have much of an attachment to the religion, even as a kid.
However, I've come to a cursed epiphany. I'm not even sure his name is Jean.
Last night I was discussing with my friend (who's also varey attached to this character as well) the reason his parents named him Jean instead of something similar to his sibling's names, when I came to the realization that the likelihood of his parents naming him Christian instead of Jean is significantly high. Then I realized that "Jean" is more likely to separate his identity from his family than his family is to separate his identity, so Jean would probably call his name Jean rather than Christian as a rebellious act against his family, so he can still go by Jean, but his birth name would be Christian.
Now, you might be thinking, "I don't see a problem with this. In fact, it develops his character more than hinders it." Unfortunately, you're absolutely right.
The problem is
i'm emotionally attached to his birth name being jean
He already has an alias :')
Also, applying this fact to him, he would have started calling himself Jean when he was around 10 years old so most of the people in his life now know him as Jean
Don't worry ur fine, @icecubes is my friend who's emotionally attached to Jean being Jean so she's voicing both her and my uncomfortablness with Jean not being Jean LMAO
Do you think it's possible for you to expand his initially name? It doesn't have to be Christian, it can be any other name which sounds fluent with his siblings names. If you find a name, which still has 'Jean' in it and fits to his siblings names, than maybe it's easier for you to get over it.
I have a similar problem, I named my main character Akira, just one problem… That's a Japanese boy name. She's a Canadian girl. BUT I'M ATTACHED TO HER NAME AND CAN'T CALL HER ANYTHING ELSE
this is just my opinion which you don't even have to take into account but why don't you switch things up a bit? Like his birth name could be Jean but let's say he wants to fit in and feel like part of the family (name-wise) and has everyone call him Christian?? But I think that if you wanted him to rebel against his family his birth name would have to be Christian so that later he can rebel by changing his name to jean. Also, couldn't you have him change his name legally later on to Jean? I'm sorry if this doesn't make any sense lmaoo
