Board Thread:The Reference Desk/@comment-68.142.55.0-20130120032730/@comment-1046-20130120054710

Welcome! Like so much in Doctor Who, the interpretation of characters' names is largely up to the individual viewer. There's no "secret code" intended by the show's writers or producers. Russell T Davies in particular liked to reuse certain names in his work: before Rose Tyler, he had Rose in Bob and Rose, and he used the name Harkness in Century Falls before he thought up Captain Jack Harkness.

That's not to say that you, as a viewer, can't find meanings in the characters' names. If Donna Noble means "noble lady", perhaps she was so named because unlike the two younger women who preceded her, she saw herself as an equal to the Time Lord. In The Eleventh Hour the grown-up Amy Pond says that "Amelia" was "a bit fairy-tale", which is a clear pointer towards the tone Steven Moffat wanted for Series Five. Going further back, one could say that the Seventh Doctor used Ace as his "trump card" in his ongoing game with Fenric. Some characters in the classic series did show their origins in their names: for example, Adric's name is an anagram of the scientist Paul Dirac, who described the universe with mathematics — a skill which Adric shared.

But in general writers just use names they think sound right for the character they're creating. In early discussions in the genesis of Doctor Who, his granddaughter Susan was called Biddy!

If you would like to discuss these ideas with other Doctor Who fans, I recommend the forum at www.gallifreybase.com. You'll find lots of fans, old and new, and I'm sure there will be people there with more interesting ideas about character names. Happy hunting!