Finding the right name

Parents get to select names for one or more of the children that they have. Too bad it's limited to the offspring total, because naming people is fun.

I've one daughter. She still hasn't forgiven me for the second L in Llara, although I've pointed out that she can change it. I think she prefers to complain. I just wanted to make sure her name was original.

I still wish royalty was more original when they name their princes destined for the thrown. Louis1-15, Henry 1-8, George 1-7, etc. It makes it harder to remember which number did what and when.

Pet owners can enjoy naming Fidos or Fluffys. For dogs we had Kimm, Kaiser, Nikki, Albert, Amadeus (I wanted to name him David, but my daughter said that was a stupid dog's name and Ama did fit him better), Vixen and Mikadoo. For cats we had more choices since my brother had a tendency to adopt pregnant cats.

But as writers we can choose hundreds of names for our characters BUT...

They need to be appropriate. Thus the picture above of a grave in Argelès where I went to find names for characters in my novel Murder in Argelès.  My wonderful and talented housemate, Julia Schmitz-Leuffen did the cover photo for the equally talented Deidre Wait, who did the design.

Murder in Caleb's Landing's character names were easy. I grew up in New England. However, I couldn't use the name of the town Rockport, where I visualized the book taking place. My publisher worries about lawsuits. They don't worry about lawsuits from European cities. Caleb was the name of the man whose book I used for research. He had compiled a massive book of every document he could locate from the founding to Plymouth Plantation and Massachusetts and certainly sounded what could be a town's name along the Massachusetts North Shore.

Book names can change over the period they are written. The original title for Caleb's Landing was Underground Railroads. The story centered around both the pre Civil War war underground railroad and a modern one bringing abused wives to safety.

Since we were trying to establish the series, the underground title was thrown out and the series  became Murder in (city), a Third Culture Kid Mystery. So even titles become part of the naming process.

For Murder in Genèva and Murder in Insel Poel, I used the phone book. This time it helps to have the paper not on-line version. Again there was the Julia-Wait collaboration on the covers. And instead on "in" it was "on" for Poel is an island.

Murder in Paris, wasn't all that difficult. French names are all around me with friends, friends of friends, relatives of friends. Here's a secret on the cover, though. The skeleton on the cover photo was unearthed in the Corsier Port church and dates back to the 7th century. We never will know his name. In the novel it was a she and Madeleine.

I have done all the research for Murder in Damascus, which would have also taken place on the dig in Ebla, but the civil war has put an end to that. One of my Syrian friends, gave me a list of names for Christian and Muslims. Maybe some day that wonderful country will find peace and the book will feel be written. I want to apologize to the University of Rome professor who spent so much time with me. He'd done the translation of the 17,000 cuneiform documents found there including names.

Murder in Ely, which is almost under contract with a publication date of April 2015, was easy for the modern time with all my Brit friends, but what about the names come from the 7th century? How many Etheldredas do you know? I'll bet no one reading this was ever tempted to name their son Tonderct, Etheldreda's husband. Naming them Ethel and Tom wouldn't have been authentic.

Authenticity is another problem. You can't have an 80-year-Swiss woman named Tiffany or Madison.

Name lists helps. I discovered my mother's name Dorothy was the third most popular name in 1917, her birth year. It surged the year of the movie Over the Rainbow. I did give a Dorothy a minor role in Murder in Paris.

I wish I'd named Annie my heroine's love partner anything buy Roger. It is not pronounced like Federer's first name but has the French Row-shay. I'm sure most of my readers don't care. And his daughter Gaëlle requires two keystrokes rather than one for the ë, something I didn't think about during her creation.

Names of my mother's friends are now showing up in my younger friend's children.

In the novel I'm working on currently, Murder in Schwyz, I'm using popular Swiss German names.

Rick and I will never have children, but we are thinking about a dog. Thus another opportunity to name a breathing creature. Then again, maybe not, because our first choice would be a rescue dog, and she might be confused with a name change. It's okay. I can put a dog in my next book and name it whatever I want.