I am a name fanatic and have been since I was a kid. I had actually named my sisters before they were born and when I found out I didn't have a say in the matter, I had a temper tantrum. I was five years old.
Today my name fanaticism led to problems. I have the names for the two main characters and managed to come up with the name for a supporting character but that was it. I planned on continuing my character profiles today but the next person on the list didn't have a name yet. This wasn't a problem at first, I figured out the age, occupation (which I had decided on a long time ago), and family members. The next step however was the character history and personality traits and, although I was fairly sure of the kind of person this character was, not having a name made it impossible to have a solid picture in my head. For a while I thought I had wasted my time and I was going to have to return home and search through my baby names book (which I bought when I was sixteen). I really didn't want to waste the effort though. It was pretty big that I not only left the house to write but went somewhere that was open later so I would be able to write more so I took out a piece of paper and just started brainstorming names. After a while, however, I hadn't come any closer to finding a name. I had the brother's name and so I needed a name that was similar enough that you would believe the two were related. Luckily, I have a sister who also writes from time to time and so I called her for help. I must have talked to her over an hour with her giving me lots of names. A few were really good, just not for this character. I had decided by the end of the call that it would have to be a Hebrew name. The brother's name I had decided would be Goliath. I didn't want to use the name David because the two seemed to contrast each other more than complement and the characters were fairly similar. I then tried my mom to ask her if she could look up some Hebrew names for me since I didn't have a computer or smartphone with me. She was in book club and my other sister couldn't help me because she was in her improv class. Finally, in a last ditch effort, I called my uncle. He's a deacon for the Catholic church and so I figured he'd know some Hebrew names. He was willing to help and gave me some more good names and one contender. By this point I think I had spent an hour and a half of my writing time on just coming up with a name and so, without completely selecting a name, I hung up. I finally decided to use Isaac, at least for the time being. After that, writing the profile was a breeze. Who would have thought a name would be so important?
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