Hello! Lindi here! So, a little story back from when I first started writing oh so many years ago. This may not be true of all authors, but it was for me.
Me Back Then: Change my heroines name? No way! If an editor can’t see how her name is a part of the story, well, then they certainly DON”T understand my story! I”ll wait to find an editor who understands me and my story.
Me A Few Years Later: What? You don’t like my heroine’s name? What do you want it to be? I can change it to whatever you think works best.
These were strictly my thoughts. I’ve never had an editor ask me to change a name. And yes, these are both extreme, but seriously, the names of our characters run the gamut of emotions. I have a heroine named Shelby in my book Rich in Faith. Her name was extremely important to the story. I’ve had other names that I could change and it wouldn’t affect the book in any way.
Tha naming of my characters is important to me though. It’s like a “feeling’ I get when I know the name is right. I used to try for unusual names that weren’t so unusual they would stop the reader. But more recently I’ve drifted to more traditional names. My heroine’s name now is Nicole.
I often look up popular names for the year my characters were born—see what was happening in the naming world at that time. I also look at meanings of names. I named my daughter, Brenna. It means girl with black or raven hair. I have naturally dark brown hair and so did her father. She has blondish brown hair? How did that happen?
Some people go with family names. Lindi is my nickname. My real name is Belinda. My mother’s middle name is Belinda, and my grandmother’s name is Belinda. So, yeah, that’s a family name. I didn’t not carry that tradition on with my daughter. I was young when I had her and I didn’t really think about it. I wish now that I had, although Brenna Belinda doesn’t sound that amazing. Who knows what her first name would have been had I been more family name conscious.
I’ve only been talking so far about first names. Last names are a process as well. Also, having the right sounding name is important to me. I can get caught up in my characters name for quite a while. There have been stories I’ve changed the hero/heroine’s name more than once.
Whether we’re readers or writers, we all have probably named something in our lives. Our little ones, our pets, some people name their cars, or other inanimate objects.
What are your processes? Like I said above, I named my daughter thinking the meaning would suit her looks. Nope. I let my husband name our son—Alexander–I love that name! There’s no family meaning or any personal meaning associated with his name. His name does mean ‘Defender of Men.’ I do love that!
I’d love to hear if you name things like cars. Or how you decide on names for pets, children or anything. I’ll pick one comment to win a print copy of my book, Rich in Faith. You’ll see how her name is integral to the story.
USA Today featured author Lindi Peterson lives in north Georgia, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, with her husband and a lively array of cats, dogs and birds. She loves sharing life with her family and friends. Her passion for reading led her to writing, and then God spoke words of love into her heart and changed her life forever.
I named all three of my kids.
You could have had Belinda Brenna and still called her Brenna. My friend is Robina in her family the first girl was called Robina and she was number 3 her daughter is Robina Louise and has always been called Louise but when the 3 generations use to get together someone would say Robina and all three would say Yes. (Grandmother was known as Robin, mum Robina, and Louise).
I was always going to call a child Gilbert (single so didn’t happen) I have loved the name for as long as I remember but not from Anne of Green Gables, Then I was going to call a cat Gilbert (Gilly for short) preferably a ginger cat but when it came to my finally getting my 2 rescue cats Gilly didn’t feel right. I had chosen Liberty (LIbby) partly from the famous line “Give me Liberty or give me death” I thought Liberty fitted cos I was giving her liberty from being a rescue cat. Henry came for a few reasons. Patrick Henry said those famous words and Patrick Henry was to long (didn’t want Patrick). But Henry fit and Mum’s maiden name was Henry and if I had been a boy I was going to be Michael Henry. (At the vets Henry was called winks cos he tends to wink a lot). He gets Henry James when he’s naughty and turns out my grandfathers name was Henry James.
That’s great–did you get the names you wanted? Or did others have an opinion.
Ausjenny–Your story reminds me of one of my friends. Her name is Donnah and she named her daughter Donnah–but they call the daughter by her first and middle name, Donnah Alexis. I love your rational for your cat names. (I’m such a cat girl!) Those are great names. And i love how you just knew Gilly didn’t sound right.
In our family all girls have Anne somewhere in their name except for one of my uncle’s girls. We have a mix of family and other names, though some of the modern ones I feel sorry for the children as they will spend their life explaining and spelling their given names. I will put forward suggestions if asked but prefer to leave naming to others, so much more peaceful that way, lol!
I don’t have kids, and I’ve never named my cars. However, my three older sisters and I were given my Daddy’s initials. When my oldest sister was born, Mom decided to give her Daddy’s initials since she couldn’t be named after him. So, she stuck with it through me. My middle name is the same as one of Mom’s cousins, just the first letter is different so that I’d have Daddy’s initial. My 2nd oldest sister’s middle name is a play on Daddy’s middle name. None of my sisters did things like that with their children.
I like to see what name suits the personality of the dog before I pick. I usually have an idea of one in my head, but sometimes a different one just works better.
Hi Lindi!
My daughter’s first name is just because I liked it & her middle after a favorite Aunt. It wasn’t long after she was born when someone asked-with definite distaste why I named her two of the same basic colors…..Amber Rose! I never thought about that, figured I was doing good by her with shortening her middle name from my Aunt’s full name of Rosella!
When it came to my son 12 years later we picked my Daddy’s middle name and my husband’s first, Richard Michael. I called him what I thought fit him perfectly from day one assuming he would choose to shift from as he got older, Richie, but surprise! He just graduated and still goes by Richie today. Go figure!
With our dogs (very serious household members here), the first already had his name when he came home at 4 months and he responded well to it so we kept him as Ernie (I did think it was a strange name for a dog but didn’t want him to have to make one more adjustment). After 12 1/2 years and a ton of heartbreak with letting him go a few months later I was blessed to be picked by my current furbaby. She had been given a name by the rescue but didn’t respond to it at all (I don’t think she had a name in her first 3 highly abused years). My cousin & I met her (my husband passed several years ago) a week before she came home with me. I was trying to think of the name that fit her when I discovered I had called her my little Angel. It was quickly pointed out to me I had called her that many times already and she actually responded to it! Hence my Angel Joy came about…..the Angel that brings me so much Joy!
So yes, I believe the names we pick hold great meaning, whether being children, pets or characters in a book!
Diane—I love your Anne tradition. That’s fun and meaningful. And yes, some names are too different for my tastes. :)
This is interesting—-I love it. I gave my daughter the initials BMW. Ha!!
Megan—our last dog already had a name–and we did keep it. I have named 2 of my cats–the other was named.
We had a kitten come to us with the name George, named by toddlers after the monkey Curious George. My kids were “too old” for Curious George but they decided he could be George from Bugs Bunny instead, where Marvin the Martian hugs Bugs Bunny and says: “I will love him and hug him and call him George, and he will be my best friend forever and ever.” Why did it make a difference which George the cat was named after?!?! But it did.
My husband named both our kids. I had the girl’s name picked for the second child, but he was a boy, so he got the name his daddy had loved since daddy had been a teen. Both kids’ middle names are after their parents, and one of my granddaughters carries my middle name, too.
Character names: I’m with you, girl. They have to click. But I also try really hard to make them dissimilar enough from other names in that book/series so they stand out, especially if it’s the hero or heroine.
I was named Margaret after my great-grandmother, who was called Maggie all her life. It turned out she hated being called Maggie! So she got me aside one day when I was quite young, and told me never to let anyone call me Maggie. My parents said they tried all the Margaret nicknames, but none of them fit me, so I’ve always been Margaret.
We’d never named any of our cars until this year, when we ended up with 2 Toyota Highlanders. The green one is now Gretel and the silver one is Hansel :-)
Some of our cats have come with names that we’ve kept, and others we’ve changed. When we’ve had a batch of kittens born, then we’ve been more creative. One kitten had a very distinctive head shape when he was born, so got named Pink Panther :-)
My mom worked at an insurance office and named me after a file she saw, my real first name is Juliann.
We prayed for the names of our children. Brian came to be after I had a car accident while 10 weeks pregnant. We emerged without a scratch while the van had $12k worth of damage. His middle name is Paul. I won’t take for granted how I made fun of Christians before believing.
Hannah was because I prayed and prayed 1Samuel 1:27 (I think!) over our season of secondary infertility. My husband came up with the middle name, Christine.
I love names!
My car is named Flavia. I think it sounds girly and pretty, which is what I thought she might want since she is actually rather sturdy and functional (a small Honda SUV). My daughter, though, later told me that “flavia” means yellow or gold in Spanish. Not quite right, since my car is silver. Still, Flavia she is!
Oh, I am really big in names, very important in stories and in life. I have the funniest story about naming my son, I had always lived the name from a book hero – go figure – and then middle name after my dad …well, at a family reunion when my son was 3 months old my uncle carried on and on about how ‘kids today’ don’t care about family tradition and names…. except for, um, me?? Huh?
Turns out my son’s name – first and middle- was my great grandfathers name and I never ever knew this or heard it said, lol!
Go me😉
Deb—Thank you for sharing. And what a precious story about your dog, Angel Joy~ I love this. :)
Val—George the cat!! Love it. :) And when it comes to characters in books–also they say not to use a lot of the same letters for the first names like Allison, Adam, Anna—I think I’ve been guilty of that at times.
Margaret Nelson—-What a great great-grandmother story. My grandma was named Roseanne—she hated it and was called Nan. And the cars—those are great names–and Highlanders are awesome cars. :)
Julie–Thank you for sharing your story—our family has dealt with secondary infertility–and Hannah is a beautiful name!!
Sally, well, once you name her, the name sticks!! And you’re right–it does sound girly!! And pretty!
Paula Marie—-Can you say divine intervention? How awesome is that! Thank your for sharing this.
Names are important to me — ever since I read and fell in love with Anne of Green Gables. (White Way of Delight, anyone?)
Family and Tradition are very important to me, so I chose family names for our boys’ middle names. The tradition is the father’s first name becomes the son’s middle name. So my father-in-law was Brian Paul (Paul was his dad); my husband is Christopher Brian; my sons both got Christopher as their middle name. To choose their first names, I wanted something that sounded good with the middle and last names and also something that had some meaning behind it. I wanted to name our sons after the four Gospels, but Luke Christopher just didn’t quite have the same ring as the Greek version of that name. So Lucas Christopher won. Then our second son’s name became the Greek version of a different Gospel, so it became Marcus Christopher.
All the pets I’ve named have had something to do with their color, as color is also important to me. My first dog was Copper, my cat was Peaches, my son’s dog was named Copper after my first dog, and our current cat is Callie (because she’s part calico).
Naming characters is important to me, too. I usually try to find names that were popular around the year of their birth. Because my first name is often mispronounced (it’s a long eye, if anybody cares), I make sure it’s easy to pronounced my character’s names (at least the main characters).
Hi Lindi, as you might guess, I have an unusual name. My mother’s maiden name was Merrill. My parents just added two “e”s and came up with my name. I had to change several names in books that I wrote for Love Inspired. I named the heroine of Homecoming Blessings, Amelia, because I lived on Amelia Island in Florida. They made me change it because some other author who had a book out that month also had a heroine named Amelia. She became Ashley. In my last series for Love Inspired, I had to change the name of my hero in two out of the three books. I wanted to name my hero in Second Chance Reunion, Shad, a nickname for Shadrach. No go with that one. He became Ian. The I was going to name the hero of Falling for the Millionaire Hayden after my great nephew. The editors thought that sounded like a woman’s name because of some actress that I’d never heard of with that name. So I chose the other great nephew’s name, Hudson. I often use names that are popular in the area of the country where my characters live.
She isn’t always an Angel but is absolutely always a Joy! She’s truly a mental support for me making the long process of teaching things or breaking habits easy to tolerate! It seems like she was beaten with so many things it is heart wrenching. I can’t get very irritated with her for anything!
Lila—Thank you for sharing! I love your sons’s names. And the colors for the pets is nice! My name (Lindi) gets pronounced right, but always spelled wrong. :)
Merrillee—Thank you for sharing about your name. It is unusual, but pretty! Wow, that’s a lot of names to change~but, I know it happens. I think there’s an actress named Hayden Panetierre—(spelling?) When my son was born, if he was a girl I was going to name her Ashton–because I had never heard of a boy Ashton…now Ashton Kutcher has made that name popular for a boy.
Deb—-I love how you’re taking care of her. That’s so sad about her past. I can’t imagine. People like you are a treasure!
I named one of my computers “Jarvis” for Tony Stark’s computer companion in Iron Man. No pets (I’m allergic). Our child (lost to miscarriage) would have been either Charlene Anne (to match my Dad’s initials) or Charlie (after a young protege from church) along with some middle name beginning with A (same thing with the initials). My name, Lincoln, is not connected to any family. Mom just liked it. My sister was horrified, being absolutely certain that I would be teased mercilessly. While I did get my fair share of “Lincoln stinkin” and “Lincoln, Lincoln bo-binkin”, overall, I’ve had more good response than bad. I met a fellow Lincoln from Illinois (The Land of Lincoln) who said that, because of his name, he did not have to pay to renew his driver’s license in Illinois. Such a deal! And God led me to Maryland, Oh, well.
I’ve named a number of our cats. The first one was a Siamese mix kitten and my first thought was to call her Grizabella (for the Glamour cat in Cats), but one look at this tiny rescue made me think that I just couldn’t give her a name that was bigger than she was! So, I shortened it to Belle (also appropriate for a literary name – courtesy of Beauty and the Beast). I wanted an appropriate southern literary name for the next one. She was a lovely gray (“blue” to cat people) girl. This time I combined southern with literary and named her Bonnie Blue. An abandoned kitten (neighbors had moved away and left 5 cats behind) was a tiny little thing and always hungry. Time for another literary name – he became Oliver Twist. Others have taken their names from appearance – a blue male was named Dusty and a red boy was Rudy. But the most fun was when we took another of the abandoned cats we had adopted to the vet (a neighbor who had the cat “fixed” told us it was female and the cat was not friendly enough to let me look) and discovered that the female name she had given this cat was not appropriate! I made an impromptu decision on the spot to name the cat formerly known as Genna – and called him GC (Gentleman Cat).
When my family adopted a kitten last year we knew we wanted to change his name from Pluto, so I looked through lists of names online to find one I liked and we could all agree on and we settled on Wrigley. My pets growing up were a dog Cody (my mom liked the name) and a cat Dickens whose name we got from a book at the shelter when we were adopting him. I also have a habit of naming some of the wildlife that visits my yard.
I’ve loved names since HS. I had a ton of fun names picked out before I was even married. Then I got married and my husband had his own ideas so they got refined (and the rejected names became pet names). Unusual names are my favorite. I took one of our sons’ name from a Street sign, another from an adult friend of my husband (which ended up becoming a popular name 2 yrs after we used it – I had heard of no babies/kids with it previously). I kept track of the names of babies being born at our (large) church, to know which names were popular, trying to avoid those. Our kids are now grown, but I still collect names for our “next” pet. :D My current favorite is Beatrix, from a romance novel I just completed. I love it! I also like Simone & Phoebe. Sophia is our kitty’s name, We had 3 boys, so my girl names either never were used or became a kitty/sheltie name. :D
Yes I name our vehicles. Haha I named my children by the meaning. Thank you for sharing.
Hi, I was going to say we don’t name vehicles but our son did have an old black truck and I did name it La Negrita, which means Little Black, it sounds better in Spanish then in English. I did name our daughter , my mom had asked my sister that was pregnant before I was and she loved the name Cindy, well my sister didn’t name her daughter Cindy and so I told my mom, if our baby is a girl we will name her Cindy and we did. Our son is named after my dad and my husbands grandfather, I told my husband I wanted my dad’s name as one of son’s names and I also told him that we should honor his grandpa and also name our son his name, and so we did. I also named our first fur pup, I named him Cinnamon because his fur was the color of cinnamon, after he passed away and so we got another fur pup and I also named him. Actually I wanted to name him Bear and my mom said he should have some sort of brown in the name, well, she had never seen our pup, and our pup is all black except for his eyebrows and part of his feet and on his fur on his chin and so I said o.k. the his name will be Honeybear and we love our Honebear a lot. Thank you for the chance of your awesome sounding book. Have a Great week. Stay safe. God Bless you and your family.
I love hearing about how stories get started. And the vintage seeds really grabbed me. I’m not much of a green thumb (but not quite a brown one, either) and I really want to read this one! Thanks for the chance.
All of our boys have “J” names: James, Joshua, and John.
In my mind Gilbert was a ginger cat. (A friend named her cat Gilbert after my suggestion).
I have to admit that if Libby and Henry hadn’t bonded at the vets waiting for a home I would have just had Henry. I fell in love with the pic and I He’s now a cuddle bunny on his terms. Libby I thought looked like a hyena and the ugliest cat I had ever seen. her fur was course but its so soft now and the more Iooked the pretty she is. My first choice would be a ginger or black and white cat but now have a tortie and a tabby.
How annoying to have to change names. I think Shad is better than Ian. (I think it reminds me of Shaz short for Shannon).
With Hayden I do know the actress but that is the only female Hayden I know. Its like Cameron I think of it as a boys name but then there are so many Cameron’s that are girls. My Niece is Courtney and its also a boys name.
I like Amelia also I think partly from books I read as a child Naughty Amelia Jane by Enid Blyton.
Lincoln—-Thank you for sharing. Charlene Anne is a beautiful name! And I like your name, Lincoln. It’s distinguished. :) And way to go for naming your computer.
Bonnie Blue—-GWTW!! What clever names you have for your cats. Gosh, I’m such a cat girl and could read these stories all day~~ Your GC cat reminds me of my KC cat. Kitty Car.
Jessica—-I’ll tell my hubby about naming the wildlife that come into our yard. We have a lot of it! Fun idea. Thanks for sharing.
Penelope—thank you for sharing—3 boys–I know you are/were a busy momma~ I used the name Phoebe in a story for a young girl. That’s a pretty name.
Lelia–HI!! Thanks for visiting. :) So good to know you’re a car naming girl.
Alicia—Great stories! Keep the family traditions and having a Spanish named car. My mom had the opposite story of you….she wanted to name her baby (my brother) Scott and told the family, then her sister had a baby 2 months before and named him Scott. :) No hard feelings, though. My brother ended up with the name Shawn.
Denise—That’s cool. My kids are Alex and Brenna–I always called them A & B when they were little and said if I had another their name would have to begin with a C. :)
Hi Kathy—I think you meant to respond to yesterday’s post—make sure you go over to do that. Although I will enter you into this drawing as well. :) Have a great day.
We named our kids with Bible names: Joseph Paul, Jeremy Andrew, Rachel Mara and Philip Joel. My father’s name was Paul.
We have the name plaques with the meaning and a Bible verse of each on the wall in the living room.
And my husband’s grandfather was Joseph.
My Mother’s name was Mary as is my middle name, so we kept the variation of Mary for our daughter’s middle name . Her first daughters is Rebecca Marie, keeping that tradition .