Name Help

[amberfocus]

I am trying to come up with a good last name for the police detective in my novel. His first name is Dante. He's black, around thirty-five, works missing persons. The more fringe disappearances end up on his desk. He's a little less by the book than his colleagues because he's aware of the existence of things most people aren't. He's a minor character, or at least I thought he was, but I find hard to name characters often end up getting bigger roles than intended, so I need something that goes well with Dante. Every time I think Dante I think Inferno, so that's kind of blocking good name generation. Anyone want to throw some last names at me that might fit?

Comments

[londoca.livejournal.com]

You can use any name.

McEwan, Williams, Shields

[jer832.livejournal.com]

Probably because I've been watching "Burn Notice" and "White Collar" marathons:

His paternal grandfather, Dante LaNeve, told him that when he came to the States from Italy, he changed his name from LaNeve because, well the usual patriotic reasons... plus, Americans never bother to pronounce foreign words correctly. When his father married a beautiful, brilliant, Black professor from Chicago's South Side, they and the foreign language department of the University of Chicago (and a few others) appreciated the humour in it. Detective Dante Snow, named after his grandfather, still appreciates the prophetic irony. It has "inspired" several interesting undercover personas.

Back to "White Collar".

[susanb03.livejournal.com]

Alighieri
Bonfim


Just some names I found....

[draconin.livejournal.com]

How about the surname of the one that Dante loved but couldn't have: Portinari? Perhaps the backstory could be that your character's family is distantly descended from the real Dante via an illicit affair that he had with his lost love and every generation names one of the children after him?

From Wikipedia: When Dante was 12, he was promised in marriage to Gemma di Manetto Donati, daughter of Manetto Donati, member of the powerful Donati family. Contracting marriages at this early age was quite common and involved a formal ceremony, including contracts signed before a notary. But by this time Dante had fallen in love with another, Beatrice Portinari (known also as Bice), whom he first met when he was only nine. Years after his marriage to Gemma he claims to have met Beatrice again; he wrote several sonnets to Beatrice but never mentioned Gemma in any of his poems. The exact date of his marriage is not known: the only certain information is that, before his exile in 1301, he had three children (Pietro, Jacopo and Antonia).

ETD: I did see that you said that he was black but that doesn't preclude his having Italian ancestors in the mix!

[amberfocus.livejournal.com]

Well, he's light-skinned black. He has something else in him. I just haven't determined what. I was leaning Mexican or Puerto Rican, possibly Cuban.

[rebeccaclark.livejournal.com]

If he's vaguely Hispanic then take a look at http://names.mongabay.com/data/hispanic.html - I'm fond of "Reyes", myself, as it doesn't sound super-obvious where it's from.