What's In a Name?

Would Chase be as sexy if he were called Run? A Midsummer Night's Dream is sexy as hell--what about June-eve Reverie?

Names might be more important in fiction even than reality; they have to convey so much to the (potential) reader...


An interesting title, they say, is among the factors that influence purchasing/reading decisions. Doesn't that make it marketing, rather than writing? --she says, hoping to off-load the task to someone else.--But, no; as with children, it's the creator's responsibility.

I hate naming stories, usually go through half a dozen versions of a title before I pick one. My recent AMP release began life as "A Phone Romance"--yeah, groan away!--before I settled on Reach Out and Touch Someone.

Not fond of naming characters, either. (Or pets, and any kid of mine would be "you" for the first half of his or her life, I'm sure.) Names are too important to be taken lightly. And in fiction, I feel pressured to find a name that will say something to the reader, as well as to me. I often try three or four names before I find one that fits.

Except for Reach's hero; his name, I had from the instant before I started to write.

His last name, that is. When an editor once referred to him by his first name, I honestly thought she had me confused with another of her writers! Bill? Bill who? Oh, you mean Muir!

For the final version, I cut the first name entirely in favor of an initial, just to make sure no one else could do this. (Though I still don't understand how she did, when the first name appeared exactly twice in the submitted draft!) The heroine latches onto the last name in an instant, because it means something. To her, and to me. And maybe to the reader, depending.

Muir. Pronounced just like it looks--which means that if you're a Scot, it's a syllable and a half something in the neighborhood of "myewer," and if you're a Californian, it's Meer. After John Muir, who's a local (and national) hero, often called the father of the national park service, and for whom Muir Woods is named.


Why is that my fictional hero's name? Because the man's a redwood walking. No, this isn't a paranormal, I just mean that he's huge and stable and large enough to climb and...and I should shut up now before I start squirming in my very public coffeehouse seat. Besides, he's Jackie's toy, not mine.

Muir the redwood.


But that's not all. I have a fondness for obscure jokes--as folks on my not-a-newsletter list the e-Garret can tell you--and there's another reason why this yoga practitioner hero has the name he has: it's because Muir studies yoga.

There's a relatively new trend in yoga teachings called "tantra," "New Tantrics," or "yoga for lovers," where the point is to use yoga techniques for sexual connection and pleasure, interpersonal connection as opposed to purely universal. Happily for me, it so happens that one of the pioneering couples of tantra share his name.

Muir. The redwood who walks like a man, bends like a pretzel, and makes love with his whole being.