A letter was delivered to Coryos base from the covey kids. He hadn't been to the covey home in a week or two as he was quite busy with his duties. The handwriting was neat and clearly written by Magic Maroon as it was much bigger then Dolly Roses handwriting.
"Dear Coryo,
We might get burned at the stake if you don't bring us a new sugar bowl. Lucy Gray is collecting sticks to burn us.
Love Maude Ivory, CC, Marigold (both of them destroyed the sugar) Magic Maroon (the one who's writing) Dolly Rose and Sky Jade.
Ps: CC and Marigold if you don't get them sugar"
coriolanus snow read the letter twice. the first time, he had merely skimmed it, annoyed at the interruption that it had caused in his routine and the childish tone and the sheer absurdity of its contents. burned at the stake. for a sugar bowl? by lucy gray, out of all people? it sounded like the sort of nonsense one tolerated only because it came from children who had never learned the proper weight of words. the second time, he slowed down a bit. magic maroon’s handwriting was unmistakable. were any of those kids literate? probably not. the educational system in district twelve was of questionable quality, to say the least. it came as a surprise that one of them could write. he studied those large, careful letters with something akin to pity and only mild irritation. he could picture the boy hunched over the page, tongue caught between his teeth in concentration, and felt a strange sensation wash over him. those kids saw him as a savior, as the only person in the world who was capable of fixing that terrible predicament they’d found themselves in. a hero. to let them down would be to destroy that image in their eyes.
coriolanus rose from his bunk, the letter still in hand. he considered, briefly, the impracticality of the request. a sugar bowl was not something one simply acquired without notice, not here. to be caught diverting something so trivial would be humiliating. but to ignore them… his expression hardened. he would not be made to look small, not by children or their ridiculous little antics. he smoothed the paper once and folded it neatly before slipping it into his pocket, as though filing away a minor but necessary task. already, his mind was turning to logistics. who might be persuaded, what might be traded, how to make the acquisition appear incidental rather than deliberate? he ended up taking one from the mess, and delivered it the very next day to the cabin, knowing it would score him some points with lucy gray and maybe even earn a few extra kisses.
i think she's a springtime baby and was born just a little before they were rounded up in twelve and has little memory of their time before. but she loves hearing the stories and holds them very close to her heart.
loves dairy based food like butter and cheeses her favorite treat was a cheesecake the covey got from the bakery when they gathered enough money to afford it.
learned to play the guitar that lucy gray left behind and keeps her dresses to preserve her memory.
she loves ghost stories like in lucy gray's ballad and also any spooky stories barb azure tells her to keep her out of trouble.
i think her lover was a peacekeeper who got shipped away after their affair was discovered, relating to her name poem 'maude clare' where maude's love is a higher class man who leaves her for a marriage of convenience.
I generally kind of tailor each name I use to the character/OC, so I would recommend looking at meanings to sort that out for yourself (I'm also happy to help if people want to share OC details with me in helping pick!), but the website Behind the Name has lists for Ancient Roman names and Late Roman names. I also find just clicking around through historical Roman figures on Wikipedia to be helpful in picking a name. There's also Greco-Roman mythology that you can sift through!
I also think that Italian Renaissance names are a great place to look (these are also just often Italianized Roman names?). For example, Clemensia is italianized Clementia, and I have an OC named Artemisia which obviously comes from Artemis.
Of course, it seems that the Capitol is fine with using names that are more distantly (?) derived from Greco-Roman names. For example, Dennis comes from Dionysus. So just looking up names with Greco-Roman origins would work too!
For surnames, this is included in the linked post above but since I will be breaking all the links to my blog I make currently at the end of October, I'll paste it here too:
The Capitol also seems to have a tendency to have either simple surnames (typically words) or fancier/surnames.
Simple: Snow, Price, Creed, Moss, Click, Trinket, Crane, Fling
Fancier: Heavensbee, Ravinstill
There's also the average American sounding surnames: Anderson, Breen, Canville, Phipps (?)
I think coming up with a simple word could be easy. For fancier sound surnames, I suggest smushing words together and see if anything comes out sufficiently snooty sounding. Scrolling through popular American surnames could be good for the third category, but maybe avoid ones that sound more occupational like Miller or Baker? Those feel more akin to how the District naming conventions would work.
