On... naming

I HATE naming. Those of you who have known me a while already know this.



I’m not very good at it, and I tend to change my characters’ names constantly throughout the writing process till I land on one that works.

Recently I realised that I’d called a dude in one of my manuscripts Ali, without even thinking for a second about the fact that one of my best friends from college, a girl, is called Ali, and I had to go back and change it.

So I thought perhaps we could go through the process of who I named and how I named them, if you’re interested in this sort of thing.

Let’s start with The Dating Detox.

SASS. This is another of my college friends. I only gave the character in The Dating Detox a name at the eleventh hour and it’s just a fucking cool name, non? I asked permission, and she didn’t mind, lucky for me.

JAKE. After Jake Ryan. In Sixteen Candles. Obviouslah.

RICK. Originally he was called JJ, a similar name to a particular idiot I dated in my mid-twenties. Then Leo, for a while (though thank God I didn’t stick with that as my friend Sarah’s baby boy is called Leo and it’s a gorgeous name). Then Rick, as that was the bastard ex of a friend.

BLOOMIE. I wanted a name that was an abbreviation of a surname, as my girlfriends and I call each other by our surnames a lot. I think it makes us feel like marines or something, I don’t know.

KATE. This is my middle name. I really love the names Kate and Katie. I have three girlfriends called Kate too, and I just think it’s one of the prettiest names in the history of names. It’s kind of my go-to name whenever I’m writing about a girl I like, and I have to go back afterwards and think about it properly and change it.

MITCH. Actually, he was called John for a long long time. Then someone said it was too similar to Jake and I realised, ah yes, a variety of names – the sound of them, the length of them, the number of syllables, the hardness of the consonants and the softness of the vowels - makes them easy to remember when you have a lot of characters. Boom.

Some names just plain work with whatever character you’re creating. Harriet is a good name for a really sporty, competitive girl. I watched a bit of the London Marathon once and they all have little labels on their vests, and I swear to God, all the girls were called Harriet and Rachel and all the guys were called Tim and Richard. I don’t understand the draw of doing shit like marathons at ALL by the way. They should time people to read War And Peace instead, it’d be far better for their brains and lives then running stupidly till their nipples bleed and they spontaneously poo and they nearly die. But I digress.

And now, A Girl Like You.

ABIGAIL. Again, just one of my favourite girls names. No particular reason.

PLUM. This was a name suggested by the gorgeous @larawilliamson when I was asking Twitter for help one night. Plum had previously been two characters that I’d decided to amalgamate into one, and when you do something like that I find it helps to get an entirely new name so you can give them a new personality in your head. This also helps when you’re bored with where you’re taking a character, or not sure what you’re doing with them. New name = new lease on life.

ROBERT. I don’t know where this came from. It was just always his name. When I first met Fox I thought his name was Bob, maybe it’s that. His name is actually Paul, but it was a very loud bar, and when he said ‘Paul’ in an Irish accent I thought he said Bob. I called him that for a quite a long time, and he’s still in my phone as Bob. (Gosh! I am interesting, aren’t I?)

SOPHIE Another ridiculously pretty name that I basically chose because started with a letter at the other end of the alphabet to Abigail and had a nice softness that the name ‘Plum’ doesn’t. I’ve worked with some lovely girls called Sophie. My cousin is called Sophie. It’s just sort of a win name for me.

LUKE. A nice solid name, with a sort of spikiness to the consonants.

DAVE. This was the winner of the ‘name that bastard’ online campaign thingy I did. You wouldn’t think it, but there are a LOT of bastards called Dave out there. Before this, his name was Felix, which I was aware was kind of a cheat as it’s just the sort of name that bastards in chicklit are always called. I quite like the innocuous innocence of Dave. (By the way I have several friends called Dave, I don’t think they read this blog anyway but just in case: dudes, you are not bastards.) (Or ARE you?)

VIX. I have two friends called Victoria, and they are both very cool and funny. Neither of them abbreviate their names to Vix, but I needed a really short spiky name.

And for the other characters... I just really like the names Charlotte, Bella and Henry, I don’t think there was any reason why. Particularly Henry, actually. I was gunning to call my baby Henry for a long time – Hank for short – but Fox refused. And so we chose Errol. Every now and again I think to myself ‘Fuck me, I called my kid Errol.’

My current characters in BEGINNER’S LUCK and the subsequent novels in the UNION STREET series are called:

PIA. I went to school with a girl called Pia in Hong Kong, though she spelled it Piya, and it’s just a lovely name. Nice and short, too. I think it means ‘darling’.

MADELEINE. I needed a really long name that wasn’t flowery the way so many long names are.

JULIA. A sort of bossy, solid name. Another marathon runner’s name.

ANGIE. Whenever I hear the name Angie I think of angels.

COCO. I love this name, so cute and eclectic. It’s not after Coco Chanel, who everyone should just stop fucking obsessing about, because she was a horrible old Nazi peasant with an eating disorder.

But for more on those characters, you’ll have to wait just a leeeeetle while longer...

PS Love love loved this from Rinniez - and hell to the yes, I'm going to put her in a book. Sounds like just my kind of girl. x