{"id":1401466,"date":"2020-02-25T12:10:10","date_gmt":"2020-02-25T17:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/community.sparknotes.com\/?p=1401466"},"modified":"2020-02-25T11:58:12","modified_gmt":"2020-02-25T16:58:12","slug":"what-your-name-means-in-ya-lit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/blog\/what-your-name-means-in-ya-lit\/","title":{"rendered":"What Your Name Means in YA Lit"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I genuinely love young adult literature. I love it with my whole heart. This is probably because when I was a teen, I wasn’t a) skipping class to go on life-changing road trips with hot guys or b) overthrowing the government, so I have to live vicariously through the fictional youths who ARE doing those things.<\/p>\n

One of the best things about YA lit is that authors tend to use a lot of the same names, usually for the same type of character. This is helpful to me personally because when I meet people in real life, I like to know right off the bat whether they’re going to be a love interest in my story, or a villain, or the popular cheerleader who always has a mean-spirited quip at the ready.<\/p>\n

So here, for your convenience and mine, is a list of some of the most oft-used names in YA lit and what they can tell you about a person.<\/p>\n

Noah<\/b>\u2014You are a love interest. You are blue of eye and floppy of hair.<\/p>\n

Kat<\/b>\u2014You are the main character, and probably spunky.<\/p>\n

Courtney<\/b>\u2014You are the popular girl with blonde hair and perfect skin who has never known hardship, and you drive a car that costs more than the protagonist’s college tuition.<\/p>\n

Felicity<\/b>\u2014You are the sixteen-year-old daughter of an eighteenth-century aristocrat, and you are too clever by half.<\/p>\n

Isabelle<\/b>\u2014You have no idea how attractive you are to every teenage male within a fifty-mile radius.<\/p>\n

Hunter<\/b>\u2014You have dark hair and green eyes and no idea who your parents are.<\/p>\n

Liam<\/b>\u2014You are goofy and everyone likes you, but your jokes mask a secret sadness.<\/p>\n

Emily<\/b>\u2014You have been the protagonist’s best friend since first grade.<\/p>\n

Scarlet<\/b>\u2014You are a femme fatale. You enjoy things like dark lipstick, cute skirts, and danger.<\/p>\n

Tristan<\/b>\u2014You’re mysterious, brooding, and kind of rude but it doesn’t matter because you’re also extremely tall.<\/p>\n

River<\/b>\u2014You are lonely and misunderstood and you like the Smiths.<\/p>\n

Josh<\/b>\u2014You are the attractive, emotionally void jock who plays twelve sports and is probably only dating the protagonist on a dare.<\/p>\n

Ben<\/b>\u2014You are someone’s little brother. This means you are either comic relief, or you are marked for an early death.<\/p>\n

Will<\/b>\u2014You have a great destiny in store for you.<\/p>\n

Sophie<\/b>\u2014You are someone’s little sister, and you are very naive.<\/p>\n

Skylar<\/b>\u2014You read old books for fun and you never go to parties, which people find incredibly charming.<\/p>\n

Luna<\/b>\u2014You live in a town full of supernatural creatures, and you are the only female werewolf.<\/p>\n

Finn<\/b>\u2014You are a love interest, but not the main love interest. Most likely you’ll ask the protagonist to homecoming, but she’ll go with Noah or Josh instead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I genuinely love young adult literature. I love it with my whole heart. This is probably because when I was a teen, I wasn’t a) skipping class to go on life-changing road trips with hot continue reading<\/span>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[22594,25017],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1401466"}],"collection":[{"href":"\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1401466"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1401466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1442701,"href":"\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1401466\/revisions\/1442701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1401466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1401466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1401466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}