The Weight & Meaning of Names
I told my grandmother before she passed away that if I had a daughter I’d name her after her. But I had a son. The only daughters I’ve brought into this world were birthed on the page. And that is why my first protagonist was named after my grandmother, Sophie.
That was for my mystery series. Of course I also put a lot of thought into the character names for my subsequent Pure Sin books. In that series my protagonist is hell bent on getting revenge on those who destroyed her mother’s life. To her would be victims she introduces herself as Bell. A sweet name for a harmless gal. But Bell is short for a name she had given herself years earlier: Bellona, which makes her namesake the Roman goddess of war.
In Just One Lie my protagonist’s birth name was Melody which you’d think would be perfect for the singer she is. But when her family disowns her and tells their friends and family she’s dead Melody changes her name to Mercy.
Some critics would say naming a revenge-seeking character Bellona and a character who craves emotional relief Mercy is a little too on the nose even if they did choose those names for themselves. I might agree if the books were literary fiction. But I do think it works for an erotic suspense series (Pure Sin) and a love story (Just One Lie).
My upcoming book, The Great Mann is a reimagining of The Great Gatsby, set in 1940s Los Angeles with Black characters. In other words it’s not a book that belongs to any of the genres I’ve written in before. What it does have in common with my previous works is that it’s filled with characters who carry significant names.
The central female character in The Great Gatsby is Daisy. I considered just stealing the name Daisy for my character inspired by her. But in Gatsby, Daisy’s only real complexities were the ones the men around her imagined for her. In the end she turned out not to be as layered as others hoped she might be. That was Fitzgerald’s point. Gatsby had sort of invented a fantasy of Daisy that didn’t fit the actual woman who was, like her husband, incredibly superficial. But for my character it’s a little different. She’s perceived as simple and harmlessly one-dimensional but that’s not the reality at all. So how to convey that in a name? How to add a twist, a dab of nuance, a thin layer of subterfuge to the name of my new iteration of Daisy? I decided the best path was to simply name her Marguerite, disguising the name Daisy by saying it in french.
Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby is of course the chosen name of that character. The character’s birth name was James Gatz. Presumably in the 1920s “Jay” sounded more posh than “James.” Today I think it’s the opposite. I named my character who was inspired by Gatsby, James Mann. It’s a name that has some sophistication and strength. And the name Mann…it can stand for so much. A man but more? A man but different, one letter apart from the men around him? It just appealed to me.
And then there’s my protagonist, my “Nick.” I named him Charlie. Charles Trammell III to be precise. The name of my big brother.
Which means I now have two characters named after people I love and have lost.
The Greeks said every human being dies twice. Once when they draw their last breath and again when the last person speaks their name.
Writers are in the unique position to ensure that the people they love never suffer that second death.