character names

Aah, a really old picture today. Annoying thing about this blog theme is that I have to include one picture with the correct resolution to display on the main page, or it stretches out strangely. I'll try and find some good ones.

When I'm developing new characters, one of my favourite parts is naming them. I guess there's a kind of power in names - you have to choose the one which seems most appropriate. My preferred way to go about it is to find a name that has a meaning that fits the character, either due to an attribute they have, for their past, or for their fate.

These are some of my names, for your perusal. All come from my series of novels, the Light Age.

Lilia Parell - the main character, typically referred to as Lily. I chose her first name originally because lilies are the flower traditionally used at funerals - so it's a mournful name, in a way - a name that gives in to death. In the context of the story it has greater significance, I can't exactly say why without giving huge details of the plot away, but she's named for someone else. Her surname is a corruption of the French pareil, meaning similar or equal, as well as the English parallel - and considering who the Lilia she was named for became, this has serious consequences.

Cosette Mauvaire - I like this one. She's the most feared ganglord in the story, guilty of mass murder and just about everything else under the sun, but her real name is Cosette Moray. Cosette is again French, it either means 'little thing' (as in, of no importance) or 'victory'. Moray comes from the eel, a bottom-feeding creature - albeit poisonous.
Cosette originated from a life of poverty, where she and her addict mother were physically abused by her gangster father, Lester Mauvaire. When she chose to become predator instead of prey, after her mother died and her father scarred her face for cheek, she took his name. Mauvaire is a combination of the French mauvais, meaning 'bad' or 'evil' (fairly generic, taken on its own) and faire, the verb 'to do'. It's when all this is put together that her name takes on its full meaning - the bottom-feeder attaining victory, albeit a victory either attained by doing evil or one which will cause evil in itself.
Fitting, since by kill tally she's probably the second-most deadly character in the book, and in my opinion the nastiest. Considering some of the other characters, that's an acheivement.

Cassandra Rossi -  Cassandra actually appears in my short story collection, City of the Damned, as Cassandra Trent. She came to me when I was writing it, and I began to develop her. But I liked her so much, I continued to develop her afterwards and Cassandra 2.0 appears in the Light Age. Of course, her backstory is quite different, but her general personality and traits are similar.
Rossi is supposedly the most common surname in Italy, and it literally means 'red'. Cassandra has scruffy, light ginger hair, so that's fairly simple. It's her first name that's important. Of course, in the Greek myth Cassandra could see the future but was cursed to never be believed. Pretty much everyone came to regard her as insane. In the story, Cassandra is a little different to most people - I basically wrote her with several autistic traits, although due to her low working-class background there is no way she would have had money to go to a doctor and get the correct diagnosis or any assistance. As of such, Cassandra's word was never regarded highly in the first place - most people around her only saw her as strange. Despite her high intelligence, she wasn't always able to communicate her thoughts properly, and wasn't much good at reading social cues. Her father was the only person who was really kind to her as a child - he was an independent software engineer and so Cassandra grew up surrounded by computers. Ultimately she would become adept at hacking and coding, and grew resentful when the government began to restrict freedom of information. She got involved with various hidden online communities and conspiracy theories, and she tried to denounce the Premier (Rosita) as a tyrant to her neighbourhood. However, Rosita's cult of personality was so strong that nobody believed Cassandra, and she was ultimately forced to run from the militia. Her father was arrested for political crimes in her stead.
In the end Cassandra becomes the techie for the resistance effort. I'd just like to clarify that despite what most other characters thought of her, the ones that mattered and I myself do not consider her to be insane. Just a little different, and that's just fine. I hope to write a character with autistic traits realistically and in a positive light, while keeping in with the limits and nature of the Light Age's society.

Alistair Beckett - This one's for those who know English history. He's the Premier's right hand, her only confidant, and the closest thing she ever had to a friend. He was certainly the only person she ever regarded as her equal, since he shared her great intelligence. But I'll let you work the meaning of this one out for yourself.

Sebastian Finch - The kleptomaniac vagrant who Lily falls in with. Sebastian means revered, and so he is - but not for anything good. Finch was taken from the cockney rhyming slang for 'pinch' - half-inch. Essentially his name stands for 'revered thief'. Fitting, considering his talent for liberating things from their rightful owners.

Zeno Parvenu - The crazed anarchist who once plotted to blow up the monorail, with a name that has meaning beyond himself. In the story, he is imprisoned in the Premier's gulags. The Parvenu Affair was a huge scandal and factor in the Premier's rise to power. In short, two people were blamed for it - Zeno Parvenu and Rosita's enemy Renna Banks, and while Zeno got sent down Renna escaped and became the city's most wanted. Ultimately, she leads the resistance effort. Renna was a politician from a poor background, and while the Parvenu Affair was so named for Zeno, it was always a double entendre. A parvenu is someone from humble origins who has risen quickly to a higher social status, but is still unaccepted. Rosita always considered Renna to be a parvenu.
Zeno's first name is a corruption of the Greek xeno - relating to foreigners, aka the strange. Zeno was always strange - even before his years of solitary confinement he was never wholly sane.

I'm quite pleased with them, despite some of them really only making sense in the context of the book. I try to make most characters have such meanings in their names, particularly important ones. That's how much thought goes into them! I think it's more fun than picking a random 'cool' sounding name, although sometimes I'll think of a moniker that simply fits the character for no other reason than how it sounds. What's really funny is choosing a character name at random only later to discover that the meaning of the name fits them like a glove.

I'm not sure the brief descriptions of each character I gave you will have entirely expressed it, but hardly any of the characters can be defined as truly good or evil - just on different sides. By the end, if they haven't died for their good qualities, most will have lost them or become corrupted. There are only a couple of exceptions to the rule. Lilia herself, I regard as an antihero. Although she began her story with her heart in the right place and generally good ideals, the price she and others will pay for them probably weighs that out. She has to cling onto what she's fighting for, even if it's impossible and costing more all the time, because it's already cost her dear and she has to know it was all worth it. She has to see it through to the end. She didn't ask for any of the story to happen to her, and initially it wasn't her fault - she just got caught up in the actions of others, and had to live with the consequences. Even Rosita, the Premier, isn't entirely evil. In fact, at the most basic level, the two are very similar.

That's the kind of thing I like to write. A big moral mess.