The naming of characters is manifestly a game for Dickens - he makes occasional concessions to authenticity (Copperfield, say) , but most names are inventions. This may have been a kind of sensitivity about the real (as when dates in other writers appear as "the year 18--" or places as "the county of --"). The names, though, are memorable in an auditory sense - and Dickens knew (see his own Mr. Sloppy in
Our Muutal Friend or Mr. Wopsle in
Great Expectations) that his readers would read aloud for others, who could not read, but enjoyed listening.
When I started teaching at South Hunsley school, the chief caretaker was Dick Head. He never hid behind Richard. An excellent caretaker, too. Our students included a Paul Newman, a James Bond and a Jane Eyre.
The suggested character of the names comes, I think, almost wholly from the humour in the sounds. Mr. Sweedlepipe, like Mr. Nandy, is never going to be a hero. (Though Martin Chuzzlewit is.) Clennam and Doyce are more restrained names. Pip remarks of Orlick in
Great Expectations that
QUOTE
"He pretended that his Christian name was Dolge - a clear impossibility - but he was a fellow of that obstinate disposition that I believe him to have been the prey of no delusion in this particular, but wilfully to have imposed that name upon the village as an affront to its understanding."
Perhaps there is a further joke here - since Dickens himself does with surnames what he suggests Orlick does with given names.
There are some familiar names - Bill Sykes has one of them. But they are heavily outnumbered by the Micawbers and M'Choakumchilds and Pumblechooks.
I think Derek's explanation takes us only part of the way. Western readers may (in broadly consensual ways) prefer some sounds to others. You can see this at work in
The Lord of the Rings where the good characters have beautiful names like Galadriel and noble names like Aragorn and funny Hobbit names like Bilbo, and the bad ones have nasty orc names like Ugluk and Grishnakh. But this does not explain why we like some sounds and not others. And these vary among language cultures.
Ideas of euphony and musicality vary across cultures, as do notions of physical beauty - modern westerners may share some of our aesthetic values with classical Greece, rather than contemporary Botswana.
I agree that the sound of Scrooge's name suggests meanness - though that is partly now because we know his character. I'm not persuaded by Graham's explanation: using the principle of Occam's razor (no need for a complex explanation when a simple one will do), one can readily see Dickens (rather like Edward Lear) using his rare moments of semi-leisure to invent whimsical names for his wonderful characters.
