What's in a name?
Names are important in novels. They have to have the right fit, sound right, smell right, and be right. Would a Diane kill her husband? Or would a David be more likely to? What about Estelle, would she really fall in love with Damien, or is it more likely that Neal would snag her attention? I almost always initially go through a lot of different names until one seems right--although sometimes, there are wonderful moments when the names just spring up.
That said, today, for reviewing, I got this wonderful huge book of NAMES! 140,000 of them! The boojk, from DaCapo Press, has the great name of The Baby Name Countdown and every page lists names upon names. Some are a little odd. Would you want to name your child DEMONIKA? I think not.
But what a gift for any novelist!
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About Caroline
Caroline Leavitt's 9th novel, Pictures of You, was published by Algonquin Books in 2011 and is a New York Times bestseller. She is the award-winning author of eight other novels: Meeting Rozzy Halfway, Lifelines, Jealousies, Family, Into Thin Air,...
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There is a software app from -
http://www.kitchona.com/
It is called Random Name Generator. It's shareware. The free version can generate 2,000 first and last name pairs, and the registered version can generate 150 million+. You can also add more unique names to its seed file. Pretty cool little tool. I fire up the app, select that I want to generate male names, and then click a button to generate:
Zack Arbuckle, Marcus Jeremiah, Antoine St. Claire, Allen Colton, and Benjamin Reed are the first five names I generated just now. Pretty cool.
Maybe there isn't
Wouldn't Demonika fit in wonderfully with a devilish character? Or could it be de monika?
However, I understand your point. Decades ago when I was in school I had a classmate called Immaculate. Each time she misbehaved - and it was often - the teacher would admonish her, "There is nothing immaculate about you!"