A Rose By Any Other Etc Etc Etc
This week, in honor of The Cost of All Things coming out in exactly 10 weeks, I'm going to talk about one of my favorite things: names.
I bought my first baby name book at the age of 12, not for naming babies (thank god), but for characters in stories. Just imagine, for a moment, an awkward, bookish 12-year-old girl walking in to the local Borders and purchasing a baby name book. Or that same girl hanging out in the parenting section, poring over the baby name book selections for weeks before she was able to psych herself up to buy it. There was a lot of embarrassment to get over, but it was a purchase I have never regretted.
The book in question is still on my shelf: the game-changing name book Beyond Jennifer and Jason. Over the years, I have also purchased the updated edition Beyond Jennifer and Jason, Madison and Montana, and the fully revised edition Beyond Ava and Aiden. I consult these tomes frequently. These aren't lists of names. The authors of these guides really think about what a name is saying, where a name is from, what people will hear when they learn a name. (They now run the site nameberry.com, which is a pretty good resource, but nothing beats the books IMO.)
When I started writing The Cost of All Things, I made a couple of different name lists of my own. I wanted the world of the book to feel a little strange, not quite like our own. So I made a list of natural world names: Wood, Dale, Waters, Brook, North. I made another list of Roman/Latin/Greek inspired names: Diana, Markos, Echo, Ariadne, Corinne, Galen, Nic.
But you can't be too strict with these things, choosing a first name from one column and a last from the other. It would feel controlled, scripted. It's possible for a name to feel too unique, drawing attention to the author every time you read it. Plus if everyone has a same-sounding name from the same themed list there would be no diversity, literally or poetically, and the texture of the world would feel too smooth.
And so sometimes a character, like Ari's aunt, just felt like a Jess, or her ballet teacher felt like a Rowena. Kay and Mina Charpal's names came from two other different brainstorming routes entirely. Sometimes I used a name from the list and then cut the character, like Nick and Corinne, poor things.
But I did end up with a few names from those lists: Ari (Ariadne) Madrigal, Markos Waters, Win Tillman, Diana North, and Echo [no known last name].
Much later, I had to come up with the most difficult name in the book, and my trusty Beyond Jennifer and Jason wasn't going to help. I had to find a name for the magical people. They're witch-like but not exactly witches, and I wanted a word that would suggest that strangeness. So (no surprise) I made another list, this time using google to translate "magic" and "witch" and "power" into all sorts of languages and seeing what interesting themes came out. I found that Heka was the deification of magic in ancient Egypt. I liked the "hekamist" sounded a bit like "chemist" or "alchemist." The association with the Greek goddess Hecate works well, too.
(Hecate, Procession to a Witches' Sabbath -- eek)
Names might feel superficial. But all words evoke feelings, and sometimes finding a name opens up a whole thread of meaning and fresh associations.
Here is an awesome example of creative naming from very recent TV. Every name is a separate note, isn't it?
