names

After coming up with two important names that are supposed to be unique for the names of the two towns in my novels, I finally googled them today and found that one of the names is common in World of Warcraft for some reason, and the other is actually a town in Minnesota! So my fictional Minnesota town is a real Minnesota town. Oops. Plus, the real town is located in the same county where my grandparents live, so it seems likely that the name came from my subconscious. This same thing happened when I took creative writing in college. I named a character "Todd Huth," thinking that Todd would be a good name, and took the name Huth from neighbors I had growing up. Well, as two classmates pointed out to me (in a congratulatory way, not critical), Todd Huth is a recurring character in Primus songs. Primus was my favorite band for a long time. I did not make the connection until they pointed it out, and then you don't sound credible when you call the connection unintentional. What does this say about prominent plagiarism cases?