Playing with character names

Regarding character names in fiction:

In my first novel, The Abduction of Cassandra, I played some games with the characters' names, and I was wondering if anyone else does this. For example: The two main FBI agents are Donald Burgess and Shannon Maclean. These were simple, serviceable names, not too difficult or exotic for the reader to keep in mind. However, I named the agents after two of the most notorious Communist spies of the 20th century: Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean. (This negative connection has nothing to do with the characters themselves.) I did it simply for my own amusement. I don't expect my YA readers to recognize the names!

Does anyone else do this kind of thing? The only case I can recall was (I think) in a book by Robin Cook, in which a hospital's public address system barked out "Calling Dr. Braxton, calling Dr. Hicks." I remember rolling my eyes when I saw this; as a new father, those names were not unfamiliar to me.

I don't know that it counts as a joke, but it is definitely a form of play...

In my space pirate graphic novel essentially all the pirates have pirated names: stolen from factual or fictional pirates, although I do sometimes muck with the spelling a bit. The heroine is Bonnie Anne, the two male leads are Captain Blood and Silver, and it goes on from there. :)

I've sometimes thought that if I ever had enough fans it would be fun to run a quiz with actual prizes for anyone willing to track down the more obscure name references.

Jasper fforde does this a lot. All kinds of obscure references are thrown in for fun. He used to list them all on his warren of a website, but hasn't done so for the latest books. It adds some interest for the dedicated readers. https://www.jasperfforde.com/index.html

Check out PG Wodehouse for character names and, tangentially, Iain Banks for spaceship names. Warhammer 40K has wonderful character names, each about as subtle as a freight train. Arrested Development also has funny character names.

And Monty Python gave us this:

https://montypython.fandom.com/wiki/Johann_Gambolputty_(character)

At our 40th high school reunion, a classmate asked us to consent to using our real names in a novel he was had recently scoped out. Apparently, there were a lot of characters and he didn't want to bother with making up names.
He was going to write it while doing some missionary work somewhere in South America. It's been twelve years, and no one has heard from him since that night. My money's on you won't be seeing my name in print.

>4 kswolff:
I have seen a Chinese version of the very long name aka Johann Gambolputty gag, (the notes mention a Japanese one) where the older brother because of his long name dies from falling in a well, and two different follk/campsongs one of which also does the falling in the well plot, the other one just does an "introduction".

Lee and Miller have a long slow lived alien species, whose names apparently take days to say in their Liaden books.

(I have never done this, but I do have couple characters whose full names are so long I put them in the character notes rather than the 'Character Name' field.) :)

Another spaceship name gag, found in a Stirling and Doohan book, although the name itself isn't the gag, was where there is a space convoy going on, and they get an announcement "The Province of Quebec is separating" and the response is, "What, again?". This bit may only be funny to Canadians though.

A brief glace at the Warhammer website doesn't show me any character names. :( Maybe you could share a few with us?

>5 WholeHouseLibrary:
On the rare occasions when our world names are appropriate for my writing, I usually grab mine from my spam folder, rather than my former classmates.

I think you are right not to hold your breath many, many more books are planned than actually written.