What's in a name?

Naming characters in fiction is never straightforward. I usually spend far too much time on the internet, checking out what names were popular in the year of my character’s birth, or trying to find a name whose meaning reflects a particular aspect of their personality. Then there’s the problem of finding a name that isn’t shared by someone in your family or circle of friends and acquaintances. I’ve often had to discard the perfect name because of this, especially if the character is flawed in some way, and let’s face it, most interesting characters are flawed.

My editor usually has lots to say about my characters’ names. Either too many of them start with the same letter – why do I always do that? – or they don’t sound right for some reason, or they’re the same as another character in a similar sort of novel. There are often several emails going backwards and forwards with various names being suggested and rejected until I finally come up with something we both agree on!

The protagonist in Who Did You Tell is called Astrid which is, as she’ll tell you in Chapter 2, ‘a rebellious, rock-and-roll kind of name that carries a hint of the stars, a wildness.’ As soon as I hit upon the name, everything about her character and her voice fell into place. It’s no spoiler to tell you that her real name is Hilary, but as a teenager she decided that that was far too bland. (No offence intended to any Hilarys out there; it’s my character Astrid who thought that, not me!)

Surnames are especially difficult. There are thousands upon thousands of possibilities, but for some reason, as soon as I need to find one my brain struggles to come up with more than a handful. I often find that wandering through a cemetery and reading the inscriptions on the tombstones can be helpful in this respect. Graveyards are extraordinarily beautiful and inspiring places. All those names and untold stories. All those lives memorialised in stone.

I wouldn’t want to steal an entire name from a gravestone, though - I’ll always mix and match. Having said that, it’s almost impossible to come up with a unique first name/surname combo, although amazingly, I think I might just have come up with one for my current work-in-progress. I’m going to keep it under my hat for now, though. Just in case.