Adam and Samuel, both Biblical names.
Oh, go for it. I mean, this is a writing prompt, you're writing for fun. I do think it's important to consider connotations of names though, as you can't really control them - so for instance I'd be unwilling to name a character Adam unless I was okay with people possibly linking in Biblical references in their head. Adam especially is a very Biblical name, in my head on the same level as David, Daniel, and the angel names - Gabriel, Ezekiel, and so on. Personally, I really like Biblical names on the whole. Right down to Belshazzar and Hezekiah. It's just that using them might elicit something out of your readers that it might be good to have an awareness of. I'm not even Christian - just raised that way, so it's sort of seeped into my bones. Plus having a working knowledge of Christianity is really helpful if you're going to explore Western lit. And this doesn't apply just to Biblical names of course - Christabel, for instance, is non-Biblical, but you won't be able to use it without anyone with a working knowledge of literature immediately going back, mentally, to Coleridge.
You're right, of course. As I become more serious about my writing I should become more thoughtful of the names I'm using and their connotations. It's funny you should mention 'Daniel' as that's another name I've been using in one of my writings. Maybe I have a subconscious thing for biblical names. My name itself (Jeremy) is a variant of a biblical name and I was bought up religiously until about 11.
_refugee_ might be right about The thing is this: People who become writers often have a lively knowledge of many written works. Those people also become screenwriters, TV writers, video game writers, 2nd life writers (does 2nd life have writers?) and so on. So we get scenes in movies like Magnolia where it suddenly starts raining frogs and you know they've got to be referring to something Biblical. I had never read the New Testament, any of it, ever. I'd never even been to a church where they read from it. When I was studying literature back in the day, I realized that other students seemed to catch on to things that I was missing, so I had to do some catching up. Time for a new writing prompt soon, but so glad these last two pieces, yours and istara's came down when they did.anyone with a working knowledge of literature
I'm amazed that there are so many of them out there and so many more without such knowledge.