Kimberly Gardner

From Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, 1594:

“      ‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
      Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
      What’s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
      Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
      Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
      What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
      By any other name would smell as sweet;
      So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
      Retain that dear perfection which he owes
      Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
      And for that name which is no part of thee
      Take all myself.”

But is that really true? How many people would be enamored of a rose by the name of Oscar or Fred or Hank? *g*

For me, in my writing, a character’s name is a critical part of who he, or she, is. I need to know a character’s name before I can write that character or even begin figuring out who he is.

Some of my characters show up with names already in place. Val from Gift of Eros was like that. He just popped into my head in all his blond and blue-eyed glory and told me his name. And that name stuck. No muss, no fuss, and after only a few thousand words of what I call pre-writing, he jumped off the page and danced for me. WooHoo!

Adam from Phoenix Rising, my as yet uncontracted novel, was the same. There was never any question about his name. No endless combing through baby name sites. No googling for names that aren’t on the lips of every other mom at the mall food court. He was just Adam.

But some, maybe most, of my characters aren’t nearly so easy.

In my current WIPs (works in progress) for example, I have Pace and Daniel, a vegan animal rights activist and an assassin. And in the other story I’m working with Kieran and David, an actor and director respectively.

All four of these boys gave me fits over their names. I’m still not sure Daniel will stick. It just doesn’t feel quite right, like the character for whatever reason hasn’t told me his *real* name yet. That’s probably why I keep drifting away from that story. It’s hard to know someone intimately enough to watch them have sex when you aren’t even sure of their name. *g*

And yesterday I found the perfect character name. It belongs to the brother of a friend of mine and she has given me permission to name a character after him. The name is Santos. *sigh* Very sexy, isn’t it?

Now all I need is the perfect man to go with the perfect name.