...as Reba MacEntire once sang.

Actually that's not true I do want to mention names.  In fact this whole post is going to be about them.

This morning I've been thinking about names for the four main characters of a book idea I have floating around in my head.

When I first started writing I had a serious hang up about creating realistic and believable sounding names.  I used to think of everyone I know and try to work out if I could use a combination of their names in my writing.

It took time for me to be confident in my character's names and their creation.  I started to find sources on line, there's a myriad of name generators out there, to assist me creating names.  Now I also often think about what the name means and what imagery the name will convey with my readers.

Elizabeth and Victoria for example are both quite regal names. Being English it's hard not to associate either with the respective monarchs who reigned over us for so many years.

I also like to think in terms of time period certain names are much more popular now than they were a hundred years ago.  This isn't something I've done a lot of research into but I am aware of it.

Royal Baby Name Popularity

As an aside I've written about a short story I wrote about Wolves.  The name of every wolf in that story means wolf.

One of the pieces of advice I've read is not to have not to have main characters with names that start with the same letter.   So in my case I haven't got anyone named Gary, Graham or Gilbert to get confused with George in my novel.  I do, however, have an Alistair and an Andy.  However, they are known either by their ranks; Group Captain and Squadron leader, or by their surnames; Ford and McKnight.  There are few occurrences in the novel when they are referred to by their first names.

This brings me to a very interesting point while it 'felt' fine to name the male military personnel by their surnames the same was not true of the main female officer in the story Section Officer Caroline King.  I don't think I ever just referred to her as 'King'.  Caroline is always referred to by either her rank or her first name.

I also had fun with foreign names in my book. There are major characters with French, German, Polish and Czechoslovakian names in the novel.

An interesting point about the book is that our heroes' nemesis is called Colonel von Vogler.  He does, at the point of writing this blog post,  not have a first name!  Creating the life story of my major villain including his reasons for being bad etc is not something I have ever considered.

Going back to my original task this morning.  I have four characters they are musketeer-esque in style most significantly they are only know by their first names.

So the first name I came up with was Duval.   But it has little meaning, 'from the valley', and that for me isn't good enough so it will be changed.

This is what I have written about him so far:

Duval - "And yet my time piece still ticks."
He is the Gentleman of the quartet.  Dashing in looks, suited in attire. Never seen without his pocket watch.  Armed with a revolver and a long bladed dagger.  He does not tolerate tardiness in any way.

Next up we have the strong one of the group.  For his name I have chosen Bhaltair.  The name is Scottish in origin and means Strong Fighter.  So I'm quite happy with that, I may even make him a Scott for the purposes of the book.

Now I just have to keep looking for the rest of the group and then the ensemble of characters around them.