Naming Follies

The Ghost Story is beginning to materialize as we discuss it during walks with our loyal assistants, pictured below: Lady Marzipan and The Bandit Lord. (They should form a band, that’s the best band name evah!)

Speaking of names, we ran into a bit of a problem with the Ghost Story’s dramatis personae. A new cast member showed up, who is really cool, and we gave her a really cool name. But the more we explored her arc, the more it became clear that she was going to have a lot of shared page-time with a certain other character and that their names were too similar. So, something’s gotta give.

The new character’s name was cool for assorted reasons. It just sounded cool, plus it gave us a desireable, subtle association to a relevant historical person. But in the end, that wasn’t enough to save it and we picked something else.

Why? Because it wasn’t just those two names. The new person’s name actually formed a bridge between two formerly unconnected names.

It was like we already had a Tina and a Will. That’s fine, nothing confusing about it. But then we dreamed up this new character, and discovered that her name should be: Willemina! And we blithely had numerous chats about Willemina, getting to know her better, meanwhile forgetting about Will and Tina. Until we noticed Tina glaring at us.

Willemina’s new name is also cool, and we’re getting used to it. (We still call her by the old one pretty often, though.) We’re glad we straightened this out early in the process.