you had better name your main character “Jack.”
Seriously.
A few months ago, my friends and I noticed that a large quantity of action heroes had the name Jack. I thought I’d share an abridged list with you.
Jack Bauer, 24
Captain Jack Sparrow, Pirates of the Caribbean Trilogy
Jack Shepard, Lost
Jack Aubrey, Master and Commander and Aubrey-Maturin Series
Jack Ryan, The Hunt for Red October and others
Jack Harkness, Doctor Who and Torchwood
Jack O’Neill, Stargate SG-1
This is merely a brief selection of Heroes Named Jack. Save yourself the trouble of coming up with new names for your action hero. “Jack” is perfect.
Ned Wolfe 
Is there a female name that is the counterpart of “Jack”? It seems like most heroines’ names tend to be a bit more exotic. For every Sarah [Connor] you have a Ripley, Buffy, or Padme.
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(Correction! It occurs to me that “Ripley” was the character’s last name! Doh!)
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I haven’t really come across many duplicate female names (none spring to mind). I’ll have to update if I come up with any!
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See, until I read this, I didn’t know jack. Now I do, like, 40 million of them 🙂
I hear Kate is overdone…. But I think the other biggie in terms of names to avoid, are those that are almost branded by another successful book/movie. Like Bella, these days.
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So that is my problem – no Jacks. I do have a Harry, but I borrowed that from Harry Price (from Bernard Cornwell’s books) and not that other Harry kicking around.
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