>>> Galileo Galilei handled this really well

Errr… Galileo was asked to write a book discussing both sides of the heliocentric / geocentric debate … and so wrote a book with two characters having a debate while walking in a garden - one named (I paraphrase for effect) “Galileo” and one named “Pope Simplehead”

Needless to say the next twenty years under house arrest gave him a lot of time to think about character names :-)