What’s in a name? (from another angle)

Candice: So waity Katie didn’t have to wait too long to pop out the royal heir. She’s in hospital at 7am and out it pops at 4pm.  Not bad really. I’m sure there were lots of massages, generally pampering and all the stuff you don’t get in an NHS hospital.

But now we know what sex it is, it’s now all about what it is going to be called.  Names are very important. Its something the child has to carry with them for the rest of their life so Chanel, Chardonnay, Prince and full stop are out (if you don’t believe me they do actually ban names in New Zealand and someone tried to call their child full stop !) Lets face it, Prince Prince would be a bit silly, almost as bad as Neville Neville.   The current bets are on George for a boy, which is actually what a friend of mine has just called her child.  It’s all about the old-fashioned names these days.

When it comes to creating names for characters it can be just as hard.  For our main characters, Kate was always Kate, and Dave always Dave.  Kate, I don’t know where that came from.  Dave because that was the name of the guy I went out with when I was in America.  We’ve struggled with some others, probably because when we have two writers putting together chapters independently they don’t always know what the other is doing, so we have ended up with similar names for two characters. We are still trying to come  up with an alternative for Gareth’s wife who is called Olivia, which is too close to Andrew’s PA Olive.  She needs to be posh and horsey.

But the name can often get across as much about the character as the story.  Kate -strong, sensible, to the point.  Tracey – slightly tarty, abit wayward, could be rough.  Kelvin – geeky.  My favourite is the journalist in the story – Sheldon Bull.  I don’t know where Phil got that from ( a type of beer perhaps) but its a great name for some one who spouts ‘Bull’

I don’t think the Cambridge’s will go too far from tradition, look at how she became Catherine not Kate when they got married but I’d love to see a Moon Unit Windsor on the throne.

Um – someone moved the borders…

 Candice:  I’m sure Phil will explain that somewhere along the way we had to come up with a setting for the book.  There needs to be an office for company it’s about and a suitable setting for HIA – the vegetable research people who are the comedy value of the book.  Office – that’s easy as we were both based in Solihull at one point, with an empty office block next to us – that becomes KOD’s home.

But back in the quango days Phil comes in with the venue of March, described as in Norfolk.  March, strange name but innocuous sounding place so that’s fine by me.

However, this weekend I pop off for a night away with the other half in Cambridge.  We are busily driving down the A14 (within the speed limit, of course) and I see a road sign.  March – this way.  Hang on, says I, we aren’t in Norfolk yet.  So I get the map out and discover that, though in the Norfolk direction, March is in Cambridgeshire.  So, my job for today – changing all references to Norfolk to Cambridgeshire in the book.    Research – it’s an important thing – makes you realise there are so many things to consider when writing a book, not just downloading what’s in your brain.

Its OK though, that’s what find and replace is for, thank god, because otherwise I’d go bonkers typing Cambridgeshire over and over again, it’s bl*ody long compared to Norfolk.