A big flinch at names

I have such a discomfort with names. It's one of the few tendrils of shyness I started having in some form before I developed more 'actual' shyness in my late teens for whatever reason. Addressing people by name or otherwise using the name of a person who's in earshot feels like calling over the entire person, commanding their entire attention. You know the singular way you perk up when you hear your name—and, ooh, the feeling you get when someone mentions you while speaking a language you don't know. It just feels so in-your-face, so unsubtle; even whispering a name is as shouting. Similarly, I'm uncomfortable writing down certain names of people I know, and that's even if I don't plan for them to see it.

Online it's different, by the way. A username feels different as it's not a real name and was chosen by its bearer. In a group chat I feel as though I'm even speaking softer when I use someone's name since it communicates I'm speaking directly to another person, not loudly to everyone at once.

I gave this trait to the main character in a longer work of fiction I'm attempting to write. She isn't me, and the plot is in fact about struggling with a sort of shyness I lack. Still, I enjoyed incorporating a bit of my own experience in there.

But from the beginning, I, myself, have felt something similar to that name-discomfort when using that character's name. I've changed it several times already with the help of the Replace tool: it's gone from Anvorvei to Sanvorvei to Sanvorlei. They're all embarrassing names I've hacked together without etymology, merely obeying the naming and linguistic conventions of my own made-up society, since I didn't want to connect it to any real-world society. It has the side effect of making them feel baseless, like they shouldn't exist. It recalls the issue I have with writing down the names of real people: that sense that I don't really have the authority or the need or something to be doing so.

I thought changing the name would help, since my own discomfort with names in real life seems to vary partly depending on the feel of the name. I can't remember what felt so much better about putting an S in front of 'Anvorvei'—that one might simply have been to make the name more memorable—but the change from V to L was an attempt to render the name less heavy and plodding-sounding, which I thought would make it feel less consequential to say. However, now, about 13,000 very tentative rough-draft words in, I'm feeling like the 'orl' sound makes the name sound too squirmy, which seems awkward to me in a slightly different way. I actually think I'll change it back to the original 'Anvorvei,' made lighter by its vowel beginning and made less squirmy with the V.

I've heard other amateur writers mention the difficulty in choosing names for their characters, too, so that isn't just me. It goes back to that uncomfortable power of names: a single word used to apprehend an entire person. I can see why it is such a hefty decision for the author of a written work, since regardless of however much has been added to the character, they will largely always appear as their name.