I have always been fascinated by names and the meanings behind them, so naturally the names of my characters have some sort of significance – even if it’s an inside joke that only I get. And so I thought I’d shed a little light today on some of the names of characters in my new novel, Fashioning a Romance.
My heroine’s name is Caitlyn Taylor. Since the book takes place in Europe and she’s an American, I wanted her to have the quintessential Yankee name. Despite the fact that I’m American myself, I wanted some outside input on what people perceived as the ultimate USA name, so I turned to (where else?) Facebook. I got loads of suggestions, mostly from my British friends, including several votes for the name Paris, which I shot down immediately, much to the dismay of some of my more wacky pals. Other popular choices were Ashley and Britney, and there were several suggestions of double-barrel-Southern-style names such as Tammy-Sue, Mary-Lou and of course Billie-Jean. Funny how we’re perceived overseas, isn’t it? One of my friends suggested Caitlyn, and all of a sudden, it clicked. I christened my heroine Caitlyn then and there.
My hero, being a posh Brit, needed a posh British name and I chose to borrow the name of a friend of mine from way back when. As a teenager in St. Louis, Missouri, I had a friend called John Harrington. I remember John as an avid skateboarder, an excellent rapper and as a sort of unofficial head of the young St. Louis party crowd. Apart from the fact they both have certain leadership qualities and are very tall, John doesn’t have a whole lot in common with my fictional hero, but somehow the name seemed to fit perfectly. I messaged the real John Harrington first to make sure this was okay with him, but as soon as I got the green light (and a lot of LOLs in his email at the idea of being immortalized in print), I christened my hero John Harrington.
Not all of my characters have particularly significant names. For instance, I named John’s sister Sophie because I needed something that a) was posh and b) sounded good with Harrington. Sophie worked on both counts, so I christened her swiftly and easily.
And then there are some very minor characters who have significant names. In one scene in Fashioning a Romance, John is in a business meeting with three of his colleagues: Andrew, Stephen and Robert. Well, when I started writing this scene and needed to name these three men, I thought it would be fun to borrow the names from my family. I have a brother Andrew, a cousin Steve and an uncle Bob. I know I’m probably the only person who “gets” this and finds it amusing (especially when I consider Robert’s lecherous comment. Trust me. My uncle Bob is FAR from lecherous) but that’s okay. It’s all in good fun.
While on the subject of names, I have a confession to make: Libby Mercer is not my real name. I chose to use a pen name in case I end up genre hopping, and I wasn’t quite ready to commit my own name just yet. Naturally Libby Mercer is a significant name. Libby, I’ve always thought, is an interesting and unusual nickname for Elizabeth, which is both my middle name and my mother’s first name. And Mercer was my great-grandmother’s maiden name. I never knew her, but family lore has it that she was an amazing seamstress, just like Caitlyn. It seemed appropriate. Also “Libby Mercer” was unusual enough that I’d be easy to find on Google. A girl’s gotta think about SEO these days…
On a final note, I thought I’d point out something that I like to think of as my signature – or my fingerprint, if you will. Because Fashioning a Romance isn’t credited with my own name (same goes for The Karmic Connection, scheduled for release on August 31) I decided I would get it in there somehow. My given name is Anna, and in both of these books I have a minor, mostly off-screen character named Anna. I suppose it’s my small way of waving hello to the world à la Hitchcock.
Thanks for reading! I’ll be posting more info about Fashioning a Romance later today, but for now, here’s the tagline:
Faced with a man so smooth he can charm the clouds from the sky, will Caitlyn be able to stick to her strict No Players policy?
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