> Recognize that all authors make
 > "continuity" errors. Simenon couldn't even keep Maigret's
 > first name straight (though he used it very rarely).
 
Simenon may have goofed, true, but it's important to recognize that in some 
cases, when the characters' first names change, it is not an error.
 
Over a long life, people can acquire multiple first names.  My brother, for 
instance, was named 'John'.  Then at one point, when he was regularly hanging 
out with a friend named John, and our brother also had a best friend name 
John, he switched to his middle name, 'Steve'.  But in addition to this, 
somewhere along the line he had acquired a nickname of 'Dick' -- why I don't 
know, since nobody in our family was named Richard.  (This was before the 
name acquired its current connotations.)
 
There's an American example for you; the situation can be even 'worse' if 
other cultures are involved.  Russian names, for instance -- names can have 
variants that don't look at all alike to the non-Russian speaker.  Heck, even 
in Ngaio Marsh, some readers might not recognize 
'Rory' as a diminutive of 'Roderick', since neither name is very common
in this country.
 
And if an author plays with this kind of variation over the course of a long 
series, it's easy for the reader to miss the explanations 
(if any) of how the character came to acquire all these names.  And 
if it's a cultural thing, like the Russian names, it won't be explained at 
all, since the author will assume that all his/her readers know it already.
 
Do you happen to recall what names Simenon used over the years?  I can't 
recall which one they settled on for the TV series.
 
--- Opus-CBCS 1.73a
---------------