I was named Kristin after my mother's friend and Nickela after my mother, except Nickela wasn't her name. Well, not legally anyway. No, it wasn't an alias -- she wasn't a criminal on the run. Her whole life she'd thought her name was Jean Rose Marie Nickela. The Rose and Marie were for two of her mother's sisters, the Nickela was for a woman her father had met during WW1 (don't ask), and I have no idea where the Jean came from. But Mom went by Nickela. When she retired and registered for her pension, she discovered that her legal name was simply Rose Marie. Talk about identity theft -- hers and mine!
I have always thought of myself as Kristin. My surname isn't important to me except for legal purposes. The way I figure it, if I could give up the name I was born with and take on my husband's for no other reason than that we were married, then it didn't identify me. That's why I have always signed my art simply Kristin.
I can never understand when people don't care what they're called. When I taught, I always asked my students how I should address them. Our names are part of us. They matter. When asked her name, one of my students said it was Leslie. I repeated it, and she said, "No. Not Lezlie. It's Leslie." I respected that and never got it wrong again.
I remember school friends doing all kinds of crazy things with their names. One boy's name was Steve Jacobsen, but he was only every called Jake. I'd known him for a couple of years before I realized his first name was actually Steve. There was also a girl named Pat Rhodes, but she went by Dusty. Another guy was Robert/Bob, but often as not people called him Russ. One of my girlfriends was Judy, but for a while she insisted on Judi, the dot over the 'i' becoming a heart. Another quirky (but brilliant) girlfriend named Sue became Su with a macron over the 'u' to indicate the long sound. She often wore an orange sweatshirt and royal blue skirt (she liked the complimentary colour scheme) and wore her bangs so long her eyelashes tickled them. If a breeze blew them or someone touched them, she would freak out. She couldn't stand the thought of her forehead showing. But as I said, she was brilliant.
I digress.
My sister's name is Sheri. I named my daughter after her. My daughter's name is Sara. When I was a kid (4 years younger than my sister) I called Sheri -- Sara Beany. I don't remember where the Sara part came from, but the Beany bit was because she was skinny. My brother's name was Steve, but when my daughter was little, she called him Deese. She still refers to him that way.
When I started writing stories, it was exciting to think I could finally use all the names I hadn't had a chance to use when I was having children. The thing is it hasn't quite worked out that way. For instance, I like the name Seth, but it's never suited any of my characters. But I have often named characters things I don't like, because the name suits them. I can't write about a person with the wrong name.
I remember moving schools as a teacher and consequently I didn't know any of the students. So with class list in hand I proceeded to guess who was who. They were in grades 4 and 5. Of course I got them all wrong and the kids killed themselves laughing. I did the same sort of thing with a group of grade 9s, but this time I renamed them with monickers I thought fit them. Another time the students' ticket out the door at the end of class was their ability to tell me their names backwards. My favourite was a boy named Dee Lewicky. Phonetically he became Ickywell Eed.
Oops! I digressed again.
Sometimes when I'm choosing names for my characters, I'm influenced by the extenuating circumstances of the story. In my very first novel, The Runaways, the central character was Nick. He had a stepfather he resented and I needed to find some common ground between them, so I named the stepfather Cole. The unabbreviated form of both their names is Nicholas, of course. In The Last Superhero, one of the main characters is an eccentric defender of underdogs. She calls herself Wren, which is really an acronym for her full name, Willa Rae Ellen Nott. Both names perfectly identify her but for different reasons. In the novel, Cairo Kelly and the Mann, the central character, Kelly Romani was named after two grade 9 students who were a lot of fun. Kelly (I've forgotten his last name) was the Vinny Barbarino type and Mike Romani was one of the best-natured kids I've ever met. So I combined them in a character who embodied both of their personalities. Cairo Kelly's best friend and the narrator of the story is a boy named Michael Ridge, but all his friend's call him Midge, partly because of his size and to shorten his full name. When writing historical fiction, I have to be sure to choose names representative of the era and the place the story is set. That can get tricky, since some of the names don't roll easily off the tongue and I don't want to alienate middle-grade readers who can't pronounce a name. So when I was writing The Seer Trilogy, one of the main characters was Enda -- easy to say and correct to time and place. The villain in Bran is more challenging. I needed an uppity name and since the story is set in 10th century Wales, it was almost inevitable that it was going to have some extra 'Ls' 'Ns' or 'Ds'. Enter Penn of Gwynedd.
Sometimes editors intervene and I am asked to rename a character. In Girls Like Me, I had originally called my protagonist, Emma Fox, but the editor deemed this inappropriate for a rape victim. I changed her last name to Kennedy. It was a good call. Christine, the protagonist of Alibi was originally Melanie, but that was also my editor's name and it gave her the willies to see her name in the story. No big deal -- I made the change. Chris of Caching In started out as Brad. I can't remember why the editor asked for the change, but it was no big deal.
Some names I've used in more than one book. Finn appears in The Seer Trilogy and Finding William (this one is currently seeking a publisher) and Annie is the protagonist of The Gramma War as well as a short story titled Waltzing Annie Home. I also have an Anna in Finding William.
So what's in a name? So much! Names have connotation and history. They can jar or attract. They can be common or unique, quirky, or mundane. But we all have them, and whether we like them or not, they are part of our identities.
If you could choose another name, would you? Who would you be?
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