Episode # 226: The Almighty Power Of A First Name

I loves me some flowers. Call me old fashioned, call me quaint, call me appreciative, but I do enjoy the simple beauty of a singular flower. I love how the simple act of stopping to admire a flower allows me to press the reset button on my day thus far and start anew in a slightly different direction.

I've had a very long and quixotic relationship when it came to names of the old-fashioned variety. For many, many decades, I always thought it was very odd for people to be called by their full first name. Whether I was reading old books/articles or watching t.v. shows/movies, it just seemed...odd.

It wasn't until the mid 1990's, when my first state job was participating in a microfilming project, did I start to understand and appreciate the morals/values/reasonings of the 18th, 19th and the early part of the 20th centuries when it came to using proper first names. The full appreciation/understanding of using proper first names really solidified when I started on this writing journey of mine.

I decided to start using proper first names, instead of short versions/nicknames, for the bulk of my characters, because I equated using proper first names, no matter if the character was a protagonist or antagonist, for people of power and intelligence. I know this sounds odd, but this is how I decided to roll with the majority of my stories.

I started off on my journey by using the name "Charles" in my latest novella, The Mortality of Familial Love. I always thought it was a good solid first name, no matter which way I decided to go, so I turned the character into a psychotic antagonist. I wound up using the name "Dmitri" for one of the protagonists, because that was one of the few Russian names that I had respected over the years.

After that novella, I moved on to another novella, which I'm hoping to publish in 2025, by continuing to use proper full length first names, thus the names of Bradley, Melvin, Terrance and Frederick for men, and Alexia, Claire and Xandra for women came into usage. Again, these are the seldom used versions of popular names, thus allowing me to really flesh out the characters for the stories.

For my current project, I went feral hog wild, so to speak. Because I was dealing with a multitude of different time periods and cultures, I had to go down the proverbial rabbit hole to find the proper names that would seamlessly fit in my books series. To whit:

1} I used a little Greek/Roman mythology when I chose the names Nyx and Myla for two of my protagonists; Adeola was a name that was used in the original draft of the story, and since I liked it so much, I simply kept it for this story. Now, as part of an extremely extensive background dump that is peppered throughout the series for the first two, I gave them the names Alexandra and Alicia.

2} Continuing on a theme of Southern European names, I chose the name Thanatos (mythology) and Mateo (Italian for Matthew) for two other protagonists/antagonists. For other male characters, I used Roberto, Armand, Felipe and Silencioso for first names. Again, all proper full length first names, save for the last, which is either Spanish or Portuguese for 'silence'.

3} In regards to using full length first names for the rest of my female characters, I performed a very deep dive of my memory archives and Google in order to find suitable names that would fit with the various time periods being referenced in the story. In no particular order of importance, we came up with the following:

• Melissa: I have an affinity for using names that begin with the letter "M", and I often have a very hard time finding a story to use them in a respectful manner. This is one, of two, is a combo protag/antag that I'm finding an increasing amount of ease in having them jump to and from (like Jekyll and Hyde).
• Emilia and Eleanor: both of these names I pulled directly from an old Bugs Bunny cartoon. The were portrayed as being extremely old fashioned ladies (think Victorian or Edwardian era), and I just fell in love with their portrayal. The former is a sentient being whose host is Melissa, while the latter is a sentient being, albeit a sister, to the Pod Queen.
• Macha: I was looking for a strong warrior type of name for the Pod Queen, and doing some mythology research brought me to the Celtic universe, where I found that Macha was an upper echelon deity in their mythological universe.
• Millicent: the various stories/articles that I've read over the decades have always portrayed women named Millicent as strong, independent and resourceful individuals. So I did the same with my Millicent, but added in the fact that she's a human/sentient hybrid.
• Lady Nordic: I know it doesn't look like the moniker doesn't fit, and I admit it was used as a descriptor for her ethnic background, but by the final volume of the series, I gave her the name of Agnes. Again, very old fashioned, but I'm writing her as a complex character, in that she started out as a fearsome warrior but gradually transformed herself into a reluctant pacifist.
• Isiah: at one point I had three humanoids, two of which had Southern European names (Anatole and Arturo). The remaining humanoid, Isiah, his was pulled directly from the 19th century, when parents had a thing about using biblical names for their children. Because he was created, quite literally, from scratch, he has a certain naivete that is slowly being infused with his real world experiences.
• Chaska and Chasca: These two names were an unusual choice at first glance. I originally had them named Frankie and Nan, but due to the fact that I was using a small chunk of Incan mythology/culture in my story and decided to make them distant cousins to certain others, I needed to change their names. Hence, after a twenty minute walk through Incan mythology, we settled on these two minor(?) deities.
• Ilka and Bella: I will grant you that these aren't strictly old fashioned names, these were two more names that I had kept from the original story. The former is one of those family religious names that aren't really used in day-to-day settings, only on official paperwork; the latter is probably one of the few nicknames I decided to use, at least initially. Once I got deeper into the story and gradually transformed my two protagonists into antagonists, I decided to use two names that fit quite snugly with their increasingly poisonous demeanor: Brugmansia and Atropa Belladonna.
• Supay: Being somewhat immersed in Incan mythology/culture required introducing a deity that would help make one the secondary plots gel smoother with the rest of the story. Since we have a thing about death and dying permeating throughout this series, bringing in a deity that rules the Incan underworld made perfect sense. This particular deity is what they call "an intergender" (?), in that they're portrayed as both male and female in a given mythology.
• Vindictive: This one was also not an old fashioned name, as I decided to use this as a substitute for a real name that does not and will not exist. However, I did use a modified version of it, Vindi, for the sentient being it was attached to.

Using these types of names, proper formal as opposed to casual/nickname, is now an essential part of my writing handbook. For me, it lends some solid cachet to my writing, in that I can explore a deepness to my characters that I haven't done previously. Especially when the type of characters I write about/use (e.g. sentient beings and hybrids) require that type of depth to begin with.

Thank you for coming along yet another side tangent of my writing life that I rarely share with others.

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