How is it that tomorrow is June 1st? It seems like yesterday was May 1st...
I've spent this month wrapped up in name research. As some of you may recall, my current project, The Wolf and the Sheath, is a novel I started writing during NaNoWriMo, lo, these many years ago. When you're trying to squeeze 50,000 words into 30 days, you don't take time to do name research - you throw down a place holder and move on.
But now here we are, coming up on 9 years in, and I still have place holder names for most of my characters. And some of these are acceptable names; probably no one but me cares that Finn, Konstantin, and Markus aren't from the right linguistic background for these characters. But I can't keep calling the antagonist "Whatshisname."
So after how satisfying it felt to pin down names for the major locations, I decided to completely change gears and focus solely on name research and replacement. Now because this is a quasi-fantasy/quasi-historical piece, you would think I could just make stuff up. But for me, I like to ground characters' names in real-world languages. And because I'm... well... me, these names have to mean something or have some significance. And as I've said it previous posts, they also have to be something that the audience will find relatively easy to remember, pronounce, and spell. (Though I have actually given one character a name that is somewhat awkward intentionally, to put the reader slightly off balance with him. But he's had his name for a while...)
Could I not do that? Could I just slap Bob, Jim, and Steve on these characters and move on? Well, no, actually, I couldn't. They don't suit the characters or the world. Could I do this if I were writing a modern piece? Well, actually, no on that one, too : ) Even the modern pieces (what few I have written) have some symbolism in the names. Not as much research goes into it, but I do think about the meanings of names even in modern settings.
So what did I do in June? I sorted through a mind-numbing amount of research for names. But I also named the main character's brothers and father, the most important secondary character, decided on how all these people say "mom" and "dad," and am very close to choosing the name of another major place.
And I'm not saying that every character is getting this level or research; the cook who gets referenced once is not going to be given the name of an obscure Serbian goddess of baking that it takes me hours to sort out. The cook could be Hilda. Except that I already have a Hilda.