Changing a Character’s Name when you Realize you weren’t Creative Enough

So crazy thing— I had a really cool and interesting dream. When I woke up, however, my interpretation of said dream wasn’t that cool.

In the dream two characters missed the last plane going to Russia. However, one character is a doctor and also a super natural being who has these really cool powers that let him create a green orb. He says something like “what’s the point of having powers if you don’t use them” and the green orb allows them to fly over the ocean and bypass time, so these two characters are able to go there anyway. It sounds like a really cool science fiction story— this is why I became a writer. I get SO many of these cools snippets that I just can’t keep up.

Of course when I wake up, I like to interpret my dreams, so I remember them. I usually just look up the symbols one by one, but my brain goes into association mode and points out that I haven’t been very creative with my name of my main villain in Dragon’s Lament: Vladimir.

So what you got to understand firstly— I didn’t start watching or paying any kind of attention to any world events. None— zip. So the name wasn’t intentionally supposed to refer to the leader of Russia. I try to be diverse when I choose names. I wanted a ’V’ name that didn’t sound European or Western. Seriously— Victor or Vladimir is all I came up with. I was trying to go with the Harry Potter ‘V’ name thing as it was a ode to a great villian. As a writer, I just go with what inspires me. I imagine that I probably heard the name before, but I wasn’t paying attention. I love the movie Anastasia, so it is very possible— I derived it from there.

I don’t look for popular names or names in the media. As well as… I don’t want to make anyone have any sort of grudge against me on purpose… especially not a leader of a country. I’m not an idiot— just apparently uncreative.

So— all this said— no one reads my work and I’m literally writing in the dark here. I’m changing my character’s name! I’m hoping to come up with something unique outside of Victor when I think about this at a decent hour as it is 3:03am as I am typing.