What's in a name, anyway?

by Brittany Geragotelis

One day a few months ago, Matt was putting some clothes away in one of my closets when he poked his head out with a questioning look on his face.

"Babe, why do you have a Big Book of Baby Names?"

photo credit: St. Martin's Griffin

Now, he's well-aware of my thoughts on babies, so I could see why he was perplexed by the find; I'm not exactly one of those women who's been planning her kids names since she was, well, a kid. But I had an explanation. One that actually made complete sense...to me, at least.

"That's how I choose the character's names in my books."

So, now you know. I have a SECRET baby name book and I use it to name my fictional babies!

Now, most of the time I don't have any problems choosing the names of my main characters. In fact, the name of my MC usually comes long before the title of the book for me. Secondary characters are sometimes harder and I'll often peruse the pages until I see a name that jumps out at me. I almost always drag out the book when I'm looking for last names and names for places like schools and streets.

Sometimes names pick themselves based on the story. In my book, Kiss and Sell, I was channeling Arielle from The Little Mermaid and just HAD to name her after the talented sea creature. In Painless, my main character is dark and broody most of the time, so it seemed appropriate (and ironic) to name her Bliss.

I'm now getting ready to start a new project—one that I'll be announcing here once I have all the details hammered out. Right now, I have an idea of what I want to do and who my main character is going to be. What I don't have yet is a name for her. Without giving away the storyline, my heroine's a bad-ass, smart, popular but secretive and very POWERFUL teenager. So, here's where you come in. What do you think I should name my main character? Leave your suggestions in the comments above and I may just name my main character after it!

Congratulations, it's a GIRL!

5x5,
B.