This one over at Heather Zundel’s blog. (She also reviews, with a few spoilers.)
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When I am writing stories set in the real, contemporary world, the names the characters have are much more familiar to our ears. That’s why the heroine of my first book is named Amy, and her friends have names like Lydia, Brandon, George, Jenny, Malcolm, Josh, and James. She has friends with more unusual names (like Harun and Odile), to be sure, but then again, so do “normal” named people in real life. Most of my writer friends have names like Carrie, Sarah, Jennifer, Julie, Erica, Heather, etc., but I also know writers named Richelle and Varian and Lavinia. Parents have all sorts of reasons to justify their name choices. They name children to honor family members or friends, living or dead, or to invoke qualities or feelings or to “borrow” the qualities and feelings they might attribute to saints, celebrities, or other well-known bearers of said name. They name children things that sound “unique” to indicate how special their child is to them, or go the other way and give their child a name they know (or think they know) that everyone will easily be able to spell and pronounce. When parents name their children, they are making a statement about that child. When a writer names a character, she is doing the same thing. The fortunate thing is that, when naming a character, I can cheat. I already know that I’m naming the villain, so I can pretend that years ago, his mother looked at his precious little infant face and went, “He just looks like a Lucifer Evilius Blackheart McNasty to me.” And sometimes, what that character’s parents are like really informs the name they are given. Take, for example, Poe, whose real name is James Timshel Orcutt. With Poe, I got to have the best of both worlds. He got his Evil von Villainous society name (it doesn’t get much more nefarious and intimidating than Poe), and the name that sounds like it was given to him by the people we later learn are his parents. He also gets a far softer nickname, Jamie, that takes both Amy and the reader by surprise when they learn it — a calculating moment in the text. Another name which says as much about the character’s parents as the character is Astrid. Astrid hates her own name, because it’s a symbol of everything her mother wants her to be — a warrior with a long family legacy. If Astrid had her druthers, her name would probably be Jessica or Katie or Amanda. But if you know Astrid’s mother, you’d know that would never be an option. With fiction, the author can also control everything that ever happens to that character as a result of their name. You can name a character Richard and pretend that no one ever made Dick jokes at his expense. (Or, if your character is Astrid, and you’re as cruel to her as I am, you can make sure the reader knows exactly how many jokes she suffered.) It should come as no surprise that I was much more concerned about the ridicule my actual child might receive on behalf of the name I gave her than what any book reviewer says about my character names. Astrid is pretend. She won’t be scarred for life if you make fun of her name. My kid is a real person, and when I named her, I had to imagine saying that name a hundred times a day for the rest of both of our lives. I had to picture her writing it at the top of every form she ever received. I had to picture it being a name that suited her when she was a baby, when she was a child, when she was a teenager, an adult, an old woman. I had to imagine it suiting her if she decided to become an actress or a physicist or a pilot or a politician. One of the best pieces of advice I got when I was naming my child is to practice the name. Go out and order a coffee at Starbucks using that name. Use it in a dozen sentences. “Diana, go clean your room.” “I have to go pick up Amy from preschool.” “I’m sorry, Astrid can’t come to the phone right now.” “Elliot, you get inside right this very minute!” “Hello, this is Philippa speaking, how can I help you?” By the end of my pregnancy, Sailor Boy was going nuts. He’d thought we’d narrowed the name list down ages ago, but I kept coming up with new options. (poor man. It’s one of the hazards of living with a writer. And, to be fair, we decided on Rio’s name super quickly.) And if you’re a big name nerd, like I realized I was when I discovered all these name blogs, and an author, you’re in real luck. Because I’m not going to have as many kids as names I’d love to use, and there are all kinds of names I wouldn’t give an actual child (or that I’d never be able to convince Sailor Boy to use) that I can bestow on my fictional children. Names like Malou (a nickname for Mary-Louise), that I used on the main character in one of the stories I have coming out this year. I have enough names to last a whole career, now. And no, they aren’t all “weird” either. Like I said in the comments section of yesterday’s post, I have another short story coming out in April where the protagonist’s name is Andrew. Yes, he’s a guy. One of the things I learned back when I was pregnant and looking at potential names for my kid was that there were people out there who are WAY more obsessed with names than I am (and all those links are only just the ones where I don’t point to specific posts, as i do below). Just as there are book bloggers and food bloggers and DIY bloggers and cloth diapering (I am SO SERIOUS) bloggers, there are name bloggers. They are prolific. They also taught me that everything I thought I knew about names were wrong. For instance, while I thought “traditional” names were things like Michael and Elizabeth, they showed me that the Pilgrims on the Mayflower were naming their kids Journey, Oceanus, Wrestling, and Truelove, and that names I thought were very modern, like Chad, actually have roots dating back to 7th century saints. When I complained about “boy” names like Hunter and James being used on girls, they reminded me that names like Lindsay, Ashley, Carol, and Kimberly were all “boy names” until relatively recently. Names like “Ashton” very nearly went girl, too, until a male celebrity yanked it back into the “blue” territory. When I was curious about “weird” names, they informed me that the naming traditions so often attributed these days to celebrities or teen moms is actually as old as naming itself. For instance, did you know that the medieval queen Eleanor of Aquitane’s grandmother was named Dangereuse?!?!? Talk about a hot name! And when you find out that 7th century residents of Cornwall were named things like Loveday and Applyn, you’re inclined to give Gwyneth Paltrow a break. (Speaking of “celebrity names” — the ones that make the news are… well, the ones who make the news. Many of the richest people in Hollywood give their kids names no one thinks are weird at all. Tom Hanks named his first two kids Colin and Elizabeth, Jim Carrey’s daughter is named Jane, and Ray Romano has a Gregory, Alexandra, Matthew, and Joseph! Name blogs taught me that, too.) When I began to question the “proper” spelling of a given name, they taught me how slippery spelling has always been. Sometimes people spelled their OWN name a variety of ways, as they felt like it. The name I used for my daughter has a variety of spellings (as does my own name) and though we use the most popular (in the US) one (again, just like my name) people tend to assume the spelling they first came across is the “right” one. So now, I worry less when I see a reader response to my book that questions the names. When some reader calls Giovanni a stupid name, I think to myself, “this reader must not be aware that it’s as basic as it gets — in Giovanni’s mom’s home country of Italy, where it means ‘John.’” (And where it falls in the expected top-20 of naming popularity). When they make fun of Astrid, I think, “Join the club. Astrid has been forced to witness her name being made fun of all her life by Americans who don’t realize what a popular choice it is in Scandanavia (top 50 in several countries), where Astrid’s parents met.” The characters in that book all have unusual names, because their families are part of a very specific heritage and name their children in reflection of that heritage. I got some snickers at Philippa’s name (though it’s always been way more common in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand) when Rampant came out, in 2009, but not anymore — a certain royal wedding attendant sent Philippa (who is close to the age of the fictional Philippa) to the very tip top of naming trends. When they question the wisdom of me naming a character’s (male) love interest Yves (usually while misspelling it “Eve”), I shrug it off. Maybe they didn’t have that cute kid named Yves in their neighborhood growing up, like I did. Like the real Yves I knew, the Yves in “The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn” has Moroccan heritage, and his French name (like Yves St. Laurent, the designer!) reflects that. And when people who haven’t read more than the description of For Darkness Shows the Stars ridicule the name choices, I shrug again. For not only are the names in that book nods to the source material of Persuasion (Elliot North = Anne Elliot and Captain Malakai Wentforth = Captain Frederick Wentworth), they also possess meaning within the book itself. I never pick names in a vacuum, and the names in this book are possibly more meaningful than any names I’ve ever chosen, for reasons that become clear to the reader as they read. What’s really unusual about the names, perhaps, is how normal they actually are. The book takes places hundreds and hundreds of years in the future. The names we use today are not necessarily similar to the names of seven hundred years ago. That they are so similar to names used today speaks more to the makeup of my futuristic society — they’re a very backwards-facing, tradition-oriented society, and thus you’ll see names that sound familiar, and even old-fashioned to us: things like Victoria, Benedict, Tatiana, Olivia, and Horatio. If the names aren’t realistic to the ones you’d hear today — well, good. I didn’t intend them to be. (Continued tomorrow, in part two. Meanwhile, thank you baby name bloggers. You make my job so much more fun.) Today I am thirty-three. This morning, when Queenie woke up crying before the sun rose, Sailor Boy let me stay in bed. Happy Birthday to Me! And now I work. I’m trying to finish a project today, before Sailor Boy and I go out to dinner. Meanwhile: here’s today’s post at Genreality. I’m just rather snowed under. Deadlines, sick dog, sick kid. The deadlines are for my last contracted book. It’s with Harper (Balzer+Bray). It’s YA. That’s all I’m saying right now. The kid has a cold. Nothing serious, but she’s pretty miserable. Still adorable in her miserableness, though, since all she wants to do is cuddle and have books read to her. The dog is…. middling. We took her to a specialist last week, who did all kinds of tests and ruled out all sorts of serious illnesses (tick-borne, cancer, Addison’s Disease). So now we’re back to the original diagnosis of pancreatitis. Weird pancreatitis. So we just take care of her and wait, and hopefully she’ll recover. She does seem to be perking up some, though. Still not eating the way I’d like. And now: back to work.
Today at Genreality, I’m talking about the unexpected benefits of setting goals that are out of your control. You know, like the overwhelming joy and surprise of reaching them. My mind is going in a million different directions these days. I’ve been typing all day with one eye on Rio, trying to discern from every little sigh and moan and how long she’s been napping and how much she’s been eating, how she’s feeling and if she’s getting better. It kills me that we aren’t sure what’s wrong, and so we aren’t sure if what we’re doing is helping or what would indicate recovery (other than eating). She’s been eating, some, though certainly not as much as usual, and everything appears to be in working order. But I can’t see her liver and her liver is what is worrying the vet. She seems low energy/spirits today, but it has been gray and snowy out, which always signals “nap day” for my pup. She did rouse herself this evening to go bark at the squirrels in the backyard, and when I came home tonight she was standing on the back of the couch, tail wagging, and watching me through the window. These are things she didn’t do while sick. But her nose is dry. And she left chicken in her bowl. And she still seems sad. I don’t know if she’s still fighting off the illness or she’s just mad at us for leaving her in the hospital all weekend. I’m also dealing with other major household diversions of the non-Rio variety. I think it may be time for some outside writing dates. Jess, Lavinia, call me. I also just have too many darn projects on my plate right now. Plus the siren call of promotion for my upcoming releases, website updates, reviews that have just started trickling in, and the awful chirp of twitter @replies. Is it any wonder I’m going a little nuts? Oh, for a writing retreat. Unplug, get out of the house, put my head in one project and FINISH it. Then again, this whole thing with Rio started the last time I left town, and I don’t like leaving while she’s still under the weather. Today I join the group blog Genreality. To celebrate, I offer a giveaway. Aren’t you curious as to what it is? (Hint: a similar one just sold for an outrageous $61.00 on eBay. Evil eBay seller, you should be ashamed of yourself.) Happy New Year everyone! I hope everyone’s resolutions and dreams and goal-settings come true. I spent New Year’s Eve in a highly productive manner: finishing my final proofs for For Darkness Shows the Stars. It’s fitting that I welcomed the New Year with work, as this is going to be a very, very heavy work year. Just look at my release schedule (anthologies and collections show my contribution in parentheses):
Fall: Under My Hat: Tales From the Cauldron anthology (“Stray Magic”) ; Foretold anthology (“Burned Bright”) There’s also another release I have been unable to find any information about. And for my overseas readers, there are a few releases I don’t have dates for yet. Like I heard on Twitter that my Brazilian publisher is putting out Tap & Gown (Rosa e Tumulo #4) “next summer”. But that’s all I know. 10 projects (AT LEAST!) out next year. Yikes. Guess that makes up for the big ol’ goose egg of 2011. (Hey, I always said last year was a “building year.”) And that’s just that I can announce yet. And, as an added bonus, all but TWO of this year’s SIX new releases are total stand-alones:
The other two include “The Hammer of Artemis”, which is set in the killer unicorniverse (it’s historical, like “Errant”) and the aforementioned unnamed secret project. Though compared to the beginning of the year, that second half of the year is looking a little bit sparse. I’ll have to get on that. Just Kidding. Sorta. |
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