# using Lovecraft last name



## lwhitehead (Oct 17, 2019)

I want to use the Lovecraft last name for my main character for my YA novel series, I don't want to officially get in trouble with the blood desendants of H.P. Lovecraft. 

If I can't use this lat name then I need help find a proper Monster sounding last name for my Human Boy main character,


LW


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## Olly Buckle (Oct 17, 2019)

Why should you get in trouble? Do you think thousands would object if you called him 'Smith'? As long as you are not making a direct reference to HP it is just another surname isn't it?


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## BadHouses (Oct 17, 2019)

You could always try Munster or Addams if the Lovecrafts are litigious.


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## J.T. Chris (Oct 17, 2019)

I believe Frankenstein is public domain.


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## luckyscars (Oct 17, 2019)

You can't copyright or trademark a name. Period.

On the other hand, unless there's a literary point to it (as in Kafka On The Shore), appropriating the name of a well-known horror author for a character in a horror novel is extremely unimaginative, hackneyed and amateurish.


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## Ma'am (Oct 17, 2019)

Yep, you can use Lovecraft as your character's surname if you want to.


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## Olly Buckle (Oct 18, 2019)

luckyscars said:


> You can't copyright or trademark a name. Period.
> 
> On the other hand, unless there's a literary point to it (as in Kafka On The Shore), appropriating the name of a well-known horror author for a character in a horror novel is extremely unimaginative, hackneyed and amateurish.



I am not sure that first bit is 100% so, there are several big chains of shops that carry their founder's name, so if you started selling newspapers under the name W H Smith for example I think there might be some recourse for them, and fan fiction sometimes comes up against the law, but I can't see it applying here, unless you are pretending to be him.

Your second point is a valid one though, unimaginative etc., Maybe you should go with Smith?


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## PiP (Oct 18, 2019)

luckyscars said:


> You can't copyright or trademark a name. Period.



Just to be clear: does this also include the names of fictional characters?


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## JustRob (Oct 18, 2019)

luckyscars said:


> You can't copyright or trademark a name. Period.
> 
> On the other hand, unless there's a literary point to it (as in Kafka On The Shore), appropriating the name of a well-known horror author for a character in a horror novel is extremely unimaginative, hackneyed and amateurish.



As I understand it brand names relate specifically to the trade of the company holding them. At one time the computer company Apple couldn't trade in any music associated products because the music company Apple created by the Beatles held that brand name in the music domain and customers could have been misled by the similarity. 

Intel used to number their microprocessors, e.g. 80386, 80486, usually just known as the 386 and 486, but it isn't possible to make a number a brand name, so they changed to using names, the first being the Pentium, which was actually the 586. On the other hand "Three" actually is a brand name used by CK Hutchison Holdings Limited in the UK, but that is a word, not a number. However, their trademark embodies the number 3, but trade_marks_ are works of art, not just text.

I agree that using the name Lovecraft in a horror context is unsubtle. In my perennially mentioned novel I used the name Clancy Burnside for a Manhattan businessman who was told that the British had plans to take back New York in a fantasy scene. One reader of the novel told me that that was a highly unlikely name for an American, but I had it fact derived it from those of Clancy Spangle, a one time top American executive at Honeywell with a delightfully colourful name, and the controversial civil war General Ambrose Burnside, who seemed to me with my scant knowledge of American history an appropriate person to lose New York to the British. Evidently I was being too subtle for that particular _American_ reader though. 

If you are going to use recognisable names then I think that you should be a little subtle about it so that readers who notice the connection feel that they have achieved a rapport with the writer through their own perceptiveness rather than just spotting a very obvious reference. 

Now if the character owned a dog named Lovecraft then that would be more acceptable because people do give their dogs meaningful names. Evidently that dog's behaviour was appallingly horrendous. In fact one day when my angel and I were out walking we heard someone calling their dog, whose name was evidently Asbo. That was very funny as in the UK an ASBO is a court order, an Anti-Social Behaviour Order, so the dog was clearly prone to antisocial behaviour, like not coming when called repeatedly.


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## Aquilo (Oct 18, 2019)

I'd be cautious and check with a trademark lawyer. Purely because there's both trademark and licensing to consider, especially if the families of famous people have a found a way to protect thier names. E.g, here, with Albert Eistein.


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## luckyscars (Oct 18, 2019)

Olly Buckle said:


> I am not sure that first bit is 100% so, there are several big chains of shops that carry their founder's name, so if you started selling newspapers under the name W H Smith for example I think there might be some recourse for them, and fan fiction sometimes comes up against the law, but I can't see it applying here, unless you are pretending to be him.
> 
> Your second point is a valid one though, unimaginative etc., Maybe you should go with Smith?





Aquilo said:


> I'd be cautious and check with a trademark lawyer. Purely because there's both trademark and licensing to consider, especially if the families of famous people have a found a way to protect thier names. E.g, here, with Albert Eistein.



Names can be protected as part of a brand, but they can't be protected as _names. _They can only be trademarked as _brands._

It's actually really easy to find out if a name is legally protected, you can search the name 'lovecraft' on the USPTO trademark office at which point you will see the name Lovecraft has actually been trademarked _twenty-one times. _How is that possible?

If you click on each one of those trademarks you will see each one of these trademarks of the name 'Lovecraft' is for totally different things, from the H.P Lovecraft Film Festival to clothing brands, and that there are numerous owners. That is because trademarking only extends to protection of a name insofar as it pertains to a commercially-recognized brand, and brand protection is solely to prevent consumer confusion between two separate businesses. If there's no reasonable possibility of confusion in the marketplace between two or more companies or entity using a name, there is no trademark infringement.

Even if a trademark was active for Lovecraft as a writer, and it isn't, a trademark has to be renewed every few years to be enforceable. I'm not aware of that happening.

As far as the estate of Lovecraft objecting to his name being used, again they would _possibly_ have a complaint if the OP was publishing books under the author name 'Lovecraft' without qualification it wasn't H.P Lovecraft (because that is confusing) but that is probably the extent of it. But that's not what the OP is talking about. This is an issue of potential defamation through appropriation of identity. That's a tough case.

Courts in the US have consistently sided with authors over family estates in issues of potential damages to reputation in appropriating historical and cultural figures who are deceased. To my knowledge there has never been a single successful case of a family successfully suing over the use of a dead relative in a work of fiction, nor for that matter a living one, even when it was explicitly supposed to _be _that person represented - otherwise, most historical fiction would be impossible. Forest Gump wouldn't exist and neither would most Oliver Stone movies. Libel laws don't cover dead people and they're fairly lenient even with living ones.

My WIP features lots of real cultural icons from the early 20th century, portrayed sometimes quite unpleasantly, and I'm not concerned about this at all. In this case the OP is only proposing using the name of an author for what seems to be otherwise a totally unrelated character (although knowing the OP here, I wouldn't necessarily bet on that). If so that has been done with no issue whatsoever.



PiP said:


> Just to be clear: does this also include the names of fictional characters?



Fictional characters can fall under copyright, but not solely as names. Harry Potter, for instance, is not copyright as a name but as the title of a book and a part of the intellectual property of that book. Theoretically I could publish a book today that includes a character named Harry Potter. I just can't make him a boy wizard with a scar on his face who goes to a wizard school. The lines get blurry sometimes, but copyright is about protecting intellectual theft and while that is subjective beyond a point, common sense prevails. A forty-six year old general named Harry Potter in a military thriller set during the Cold War? That should be fine. It is, after all, a reasonably common name.

This is a good article about the copyright protection of fictional characters. In short, it does exist, but it's quite a high bar of proof when it comes to books (as books are non-visual) and I'm not aware of a case where an author has been sued over simply creating character who happened to share a name with somebody well known..

 In Alex Garland's _The Beach _one of the characters goes by the nickname 'Daffy Duck'. That wasn't a problem for Warner Bros. In Silence Of the Lambs the serial killer is called Buffalo Bill. The family of the real-life Buffalo Bill didn't complain. It's a non-issue, honestly.


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## lwhitehead (Oct 19, 2019)

Well the whole hook of the YA series is that this Human Boy who is just turned 12 years old  due to his last name is mistaken for a Monster and is scooped up by one of this Monster's School fleet of School Buses, normally he would have gone to North American Middle or Jr High School. 

LW


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## luckyscars (Oct 19, 2019)

lwhitehead said:


> Well the whole hook of the YA series is that this Human Boy who is just turned 12 years old  due to his last name is mistaken for a Monster and is scooped up by one of this Monster's School fleet of School Buses, normally he would have gone to North American Middle or Jr High School.
> 
> LW



You do know Lovecraft was not the name of a monster, right? 

Why not give him the last name 'Ness'? Or 'Frankenstein'. Not that Frankenstein was the name of the monster per say, but presumably if Frankenstein's monster _had_ a last name it would be Frankenstein...

Jeez, I think I'm losing brain cells. Good luck. Try to actually write this one, okay?


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## lwhitehead (Oct 19, 2019)

Well I found a perfect Monster name Skrat, it's the original name for Old Scratch a perfect for my Banking/ Investment family. it's a greedy type of Monster just suitable to reflect his Father.

LW


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## Olly Buckle (Oct 19, 2019)

Great stuff, next step, what sort of bus takes kids to monster school, what other kids are on it, and what are lessons like? It might be scary, but it has to be good enough that he wants to go back and doesn't make the grownups aware of the error. Leastways, thatis how I would be trying to develop it. Good luck.


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## JustRob (Oct 23, 2019)

lwhitehead said:


> Well I found a perfect Monster name Skrat, it's the original name for Old Scratch a perfect for my Banking/ Investment family. it's a greedy type of Monster just suitable to reflect his Father.
> 
> LW



But confusingly similar to Scrat, the name of the squirrel in the _Ice Age_ films. Sometimes writers use homophones, words that are spelled differently but spoken the same, so readers think how a name is spoken when reading and Skrat might make them think of Scrat, hardly a monster. I once read a book that used homophonetic names for people and places, so didn't at first notice that it was actually set in Europe, not some imaginary world. For example there was a city called Paree.


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## lwhitehead (Oct 28, 2019)

Skrat is from Old Scratch a name for the Devil, Skrat is a greedy Gold taking Goblin. I needed a name reflecting the Devil, in this setting a Skrat is a rare type of Monster and that's why he was chosen for this school.

This type of Monster is perfect for my main character's Father who is known as Mephistopheles of Investment Banking, my character's Father is a ruthless money maker and very sharp operator, he favors Red Suits and Red Leather Shoes.

LW


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## Jan1989 (Dec 7, 2019)

Names can be trademarked. I understand not wanting to spend money but should a problem arise, you will have to spend money. For a certain audience, the name Lovecraft is instantly recognizable and some might wonder if the writer is trying to create a relative. Look at any toy package. Fictional character names are trademarked. Tony Stark. Iron Man.


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## luckyscars (Dec 8, 2019)

Jan1989 said:


> Names can be trademarked. I understand not wanting to spend money but should a problem arise, you will have to spend money. For a certain audience, the name Lovecraft is instantly recognizable and some might wonder if the writer is trying to create a relative. Look at any toy package. Fictional character names are trademarked. Tony Stark. Iron Man.



1. Lovecraft isn't a fictional name
2. Lovecraft is dead
3. Nobody is conducting business under the name 'Lovecraft' with any expectation of exclusivity (as shown by the USPTO records)
4. Nobody is likely to confuse a current character named Lovecraft with the dead writer named Lovecraft. 
5. There is no issue of confusion, based on the above.

For these reasons, the name Lovecraft is fine to use, is not protected by trademark against use for a character name.


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## lwhitehead (Dec 10, 2019)

I prefer Skrat the old name for Old Scratch I never saw any of Ice Age films, would I get into trade mark trouble on that front?.

LW


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## R. A. Busby (Jan 11, 2020)

I essentially agree with Luckyscars.  The Lovecraft name (along with other Lovecraftian things like Misskatonic University, Cthulhu, the Elder Gods, and suchlike) are so very well-known as to have achieved the cultural status of a meme.  If you want to use it, use it -- names aren't copyrighted -- but it needs to be DOING something in the work. For example, the central character in Jhumpa Lahiri's novel _The Namesake _is named after Nikolai Gogol, the famous Russian writer.  Gogol's acceptance and rejection of his name and his ambiguous relationship with his name, his identity, and his parentage are all central aspects of this novel, which (as its title suggests) is very much about the importance of being a namesake.

Otherwise, the best you're going to achieve is a kind of annoyance.  Real horror fans aren't going to be impressed because it's not a particularly tough Lovecraftian Easter egg to reward them with. "Mr. Dunwich" might be better, or "William Dyer," or something that isn't as well-known. 

Hope that helps.


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## Space Cadet (Jan 15, 2020)

luckyscars said:


> You can't copyright or trademark a name. Period.
> 
> On the other hand, unless there's a literary point to it (as in Kafka On The Shore), appropriating the name of a well-known horror author for a character in a horror novel is extremely unimaginative, hackneyed and amateurish.




It's quite funny. The premise is easy. It's a perfect _movie_.


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