By all means keep a special notebook in which to jot down new and unusual names to fit characters of every nationality and of every station in life, but try to get names that are short and easily pronounced.  Very few photoplaywrights adhere to only one line of writing.  A clever and ambitious writer may “do” a story of city life this week, and one with the scenes laid in Mexico the next.  You can get plenty of names for your “down East” story, but will you be able to find eight or ten really appropriate names for your photoplay of life in “Little Italy” or the Ghetto?  The following methods of obtaining suitable names—­especially surnames—­for characters have been found very helpful: 

1.  If you live in a city, cover the different foreign quarters thoroughly and note in your book names of every nationality that strike your fancy.

2.  If the public library in your town gets French, Italian, or other foreign papers (all great city libraries do, of course), go over them and get similar lists of foreign names.  You can never tell when a typical Russian surname, or an Italian Christian name, may be wanted for one of your stories.  This will prevent your calling a Spaniard “Pietro” or an Italian “Pedro.”

3.  Buy an old or a second-hand city directory.  An out-of-date New York or Chicago directory contains names enough, of all nationalities, both Christian names and surnames, to last you a life-time and will cost you little.  But directories are not absolutely trustworthy after all.

4.  When reading novels and short-stories, copy any names that particularly strike you.  Use only the first or the last name in every case, of course, and do the same when selecting names from the directory or from signs in the street.  You would not name your hero Richard Mansfield, nor his uncle John Wanamaker, but you might wish to call the uncle Richard Wanamaker and make John Mansfield the hero.

5.  Select from regular theatre programs names that please you, but transpose the first and last names as recommended above.  If you choose a French Christian name from one of Henri Bernstein’s plays, do not take the surname of another character in the same cast to go with it.  Rather take it from another French play, or from a French story in a magazine.

You do not wish to find, when the time does come for your cast of characters to be thrown upon the screen, that the director has found it necessary to change half of your names.  Make them so good and so appropriate that there will be absolutely no excuse for altering them.