What’s in a Name?

I have been thinking about names a great deal over the past few years.
As a writer the subject of names comes up repeatedly.

How do you pick the name for your main character (or characters)? Or for that matter how does your villain (assuming you have one) come to have a name that is just right?

How on Earth do you name a novel?

Perhaps names are something that are easy for some people. Perhaps they are something that seem to leap out of nowhere.

Not for me.

Names are something I have struggled with. A lot.

My soon to be published book Veiled in Shadows is a perfect example. I didn’t finally pin down a name for the book until I began submitting it.
I was at a total loss.
Deb suggested a few names which didn’t grab me, I couldn’t hit on anything.

Then I read the manuscript again and the name finally came to me.
My book features a number of main characters, on both sides of the conflict in WWII.
Naturally, most of the characters believe that their side in the war is “right”. But one of the main characters is, so to speak, “caught between the lines”.

At one of the turning points in the book she describes how she sees the choices she has to make: ‘I don't know anymore. I have lived so many lies. Nothing seems black or white any longer. I live in a world veiled in shadows.’

I had my title.

Some of my characters were no easier. For a start many of them are from non English speaking backgrounds. Picking non-English names is a minefield. I wanted their names to be authentic, but they couldn’t be so unusual that readers found it hard to identify with them.

Some names were easy. Danny Parnell for example had his name chosen by me pulling Christian and surnames out of a hat.

Another, Peter, had a name as soon as I thought of him.

Yet others like, Katharina and Ebi my most central characters (and who feature in my back cover blurb) had provisional names for most of the time I was writing the book.
Ebi was “Erich” and Katharina was “Katrina”.

I knew them intimately, but it was almost as if they hadn’t yet trusted me with their names.

Oddly, I don’t remember how I eventually came up with Ebi’s name (a contraction of the name Ebert).

Katharina came to me from, of all things, a cemetery. I wasn’t happy with “Katrina”, but had just as much success picking a name for her as I had with the book. Desperate, I went to one of the best places for authentic names I could think of. A cemetery.

In the Lutheran section of a large cemetery I had a huge database of names of people born in Germany from about 1870 until 1950.

Being somewhat of a nerd and loving cemeteries I compiled a list of men’s and women’s names of people born in Germany and did some very basic statistical analysis. In this particular cemetery the most popular German male name was Heinrich and the female name – Katharina.

Katharina, a German form of Katherine was very like my provisional name, but unlike “Katrina” it seemed right.

It felt like Katharina finally trusted me enough to share her name.


While on the subject of names, at a loose end on Sunday afternoon Deb and I went on one of our usual lightning trips

This time we drove about 130 km (around 80 miles) to the North West. We ended up in Bendigo, in what was Victoria’s largest goldfield.

Like my characters and my book, Bendigo seemed ambivalent about its name for its first forty years of existence. According to Wikipedia “Although the goldfield was always known as Bendigo, the first official name was Castleton, which was quickly replaced by Sandhurst, after the British military establishment Sandhurst. The city was not officially called Bendigo until 1891”

Like Melbourne, Bendigo shows signs of the immense wealth that flowed into the town from the gold diggings.

In the main street the original Post Officeand former Crown Lands Office.A pub, The Hotel Shamrock. Something tells me there must have been an awful lot of money in beer in the gold rush days.

In the gardens on Pall Mall Queen Victoria averts her eyes, from the nudity on the Alexandra Fountain, which stands slap bang in the middle of Charing Cross (what was that about names?)
I think this fountain is a classic case of the fact that money does not necessarily mean good taste!
Within a few hundred metres of the main street is a reminder of what gave the town its wealth.
The Central Deborah Gold Mine.
A metric tonne of gold was dug from this mine, while it was operational from 1939 until 1954. The mine was bought by the town council and preserved for posterity in 1970.

A Different Kind of Dawn Start, Emma Again and Disappointment.

Over recent weeks I have seen some really beautiful dawns while driving to work.
Now though, dawn is late enough that I miss it, by sunrise I am too close to the city and the roads are too busy and by then I am facing west not east.

I have photographed dozens if not hundreds of sunsets over many years.
Yet I have realised I have never taken piccies of a dawn.
So a few days ago, one morning I had off, instead of sleeping in I got up at my usual time.

Not being an absolutely dedicated photographer, I headed to the nearest location I could think of where I could get an uninterrupted view of the eastern skyline.

This spot happens to be one I have posted about before, the Arthur's Creek Cemetery.

So there I was setting up my tripod and camera in the dark.

Of course I thought of the people buried there. My thoughts once again went to Emma who bought a plot next to her young husband. Yet as far as I can tell she was never buried at Arthur’s Creek.

As a writer I feel almost compelled to weave a similar story into one of my tales.

Someday.

So I stood in the dark and waited for the sunrise.
My first photo of the day.This piccie is very misleading, this was a very long exposure. So what seems a light eastern sky was in fact very dark.

But there was a problem.The dark bank of clouds in the above photo was advancing very quickly from the south.

I turned my Camera to face south where the sky was by now almost completely covered by cloud. The lights in the centre are some of Melbourne’s suburbs twinkling in the distance.

By the time the sun actually rose above the horizon...this was all I could see of the dawn colour.

So I packed up and drove home feeling somewhat disappointed.

As I drove I was given some consolation. The sky decided to relent just a little and I stopped briefly to catch this before the world was completely flooded by daylight.

Sarah, India and Dawn Starts

No it is not quite déjà vu.

But oddly my post tonight shares a great deal with a similarly titled post of a month ago.

Like last month, and despite the heat of the day, there is a curry simmering on the stove.
Like last time I am going to ramble about my Indian heritage.
And like last month I am going to finish by talking about some graves.

As I have said before, one of the pleasures of early starts, is early finishes. This means that I have time to cook properly before the evening meal. Assuming that is, I am in the mood.

Well tonight I have taken the time to grind the spices (the lemony smell of fresh ground coriander seed is heavenly) and make a proper curry.
I don’t use a recipe but if anyone is interested I could write one out and post it another time.

With the curry simmering I have time to write this post.

As I said last time my Russell ancestors used to live in Jabalpur, MP, India. The world really is small and blogging seems to make it a whole lot smaller.
As a result of my previous post I was contacted by a gentleman by the name of Byram.

Byram lives in Canada but like me he has family ties to Jabalpur and he has an interest in genealogy. He asked If I had heard of Valmay Young’s Indian ancestry website and if I had any relatives left in Jabalpur.

I responded to Byram that my family (the Russells) were in Jabalpur by the 1850s but that if we were related to Russells still living there it was distantly. My Father left Madhya Pradesh in the 1950s (he came to Australia).
My Aunt also left in the 1950s initially to Calcutta, then Bombay and finally Australia in 1980.
The last direct tie my family had with Jabalpur and Madhya Pradesh was when my Grandparents left there in 1967 (also for Australia).
My Grandfather was fairly unusual in that he did not leave India at the time of independence (1947). Although he thought of himself as British he had no other home but India (he was born in Jabalpur, as were his father and grandfather) and he stayed there until after he retired.

The next email from Byram was fairly brief and I quote it in full:
“Hi Allan,
Does this grave in Jabalpur belong to one of your ancestors? Regards Byram”

Byram attached these photos:I responded to Byram - “I don’t know for certain, I would guess that it is very likely to be my Great-Great-Grandfather’s grave.”

William and Anley are family names (which fit the initials). I don’t remember my G-G-Grandfather’s name, but I do I know he was killed outside Jabalpur in a hunting accident at around that time. {As a by the by I posted about my ancestor William Anley who liked playing with matches a while ago }

My Great Grand-Father William Anley Postance Russell, was made an orphan by his father’s death, he was raised by his Grandmother. Interestingly our family has had a strong tradition of including both William and Anley in their names.

My Great uncle was William Anley Rupert Russell. My Grandfather was Arthur Anley Rupert Russell and my dad is Rupert Anley William Russell.

Anley and Postance are surnames from other British families that married into mine, that habit of including relations names is a real boon when tracing family histories.

But the plot (please excuse the pun) deepened.
Spotting the name Postance.
Byram shot back this email.

“Hi Allan.
Very interesting. I wonder if the enclosed grave of Sarah Postance is an ancestor of yours. Regards Byram”
And finally Byram posted:

Hi Allan.
The W A Russell and Sarah Postance graves have the same pattern. They are the only two graves that have this pattern. I photographed the other side of SP's grave but the writing is not visible.

So it seems that, by rambling about curries, India and graves I have more than likely found my distant ancestors.

What a small world.

Emma, India, and Dawn Starts

You are going to have to excuse me but I am in a rambling mood tonight.

One of the things that is nice about the work I do is that there are early starts. And no before you all say “is he mad?” I do not enjoy getting up at 5:00am any more than the next person (except of course this has the big plus that my commute time is less than half what it would be if I was going in at more normal hours).

The nice thing is the early finish and time in the afternoon and evening, this gives me the opportunity for all sorts of pursuits.

Often they are mundane, like hanging out a load of washing or mowing the lawn.
But as often as not I am able to use the time more creatively. Last week for example I went exploring with my youngest.

Yesterday, I worked on formatting my book before the house got busy in the evening.
Tonight I am in a culinary frame of mind. I am putting the time to cooking a decent curry. Oddly (or perhaps not oddly in this day and age) although I am an Aussie I also have a large chunk of Indian Heritage . My father’s family took a rather long (over 150 years) detour via India on the way to Australia.

As a total by-the-by, if you ever walk through Russell Chowk in Jabalpur a city in Madhya Pradesh India, you are close to some of my family history. If you do a Google you might discover that the Chowk (square) is named after Bertrand Russell, but in fact it isn’t. It was named for one of my ancestors considerably before Bertrand was famous. But that is another story, one I might put into a book… someday.

In the spirit of rambling I am going to jump to an entirely different topic. On Saturday as is our wont we went for a drive. This time we struck out along a road we haven’t used before though Arthur’s Creek. Up on a hill before you reach the village is an old cemetery.
I love cemeteries, they are such a vivid store of the culture of their time. Such a prompt for imagination.

This grave for example speaks of a tragedy, a young woman burying a much loved husband. Clearly at the time Emma, no doubt in love and grief stricken at the loss of her Harry could not imagine resting anywhere else. She has bought a double plot so one day she could sleep alongside her dear one.
Yet a hundred years later there is no sign that she was laid here. No headstone for Emma here.
What happened, the writer in me wonders. As her grief passed did she come to love another? Does she now rest alongside a second husband?
Who knows, but my mind races away across the valley below, thinking of other stories that perhaps one day I could write.Too many books not enough years.

Bless you Emma, I hope the rest of your years were joy filled.

Writing Lost.: A Guest Post

Now while it is still Remembrance Day, and as a slight change from my usual fare, a Guest Post!

I am privileged to host the following guest post by Canadian blogger Rebecca Emrich of Living a Life Of Writing.
Rebecca Blogs profusely about blogging and writing in general.
Rebecca has also chosen to write with a theme of Remembrance for this post. By the way the piccies are my selection Rebecca deserves no blame for them. They are from Wikimedia Commons. Without further ado take it away Rebecca...

Writing Lost

The War to End All Wars? Not really the First World War ended the golden age of literature in my line of thinking. The result in the States was the 'Lost' generation of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and many others. A similar thing happened in other countries, but I'm not going to write about them but of the writing lost.

Writing Lost You Say?

In one particular battle, budding writers took bullets in the head, were blinded, maimed and countless others lost, not physically but mentally. It is impossible to even begin to count that loss. A Poet, unable to write anymore, his body broken, or dead in the mud of countless fields in France, in Russia, in Germany. It is impossible to imagine the loss of a single writer in their youth, perhaps with countless stories that they would write.

I think of The Russian Army and a young prince, Oleg Romanov, who if not for blood poisoning and death would have become a more powerful writer than his father the great Russian writer Konstantin Romanov.

Oleg Romanov

Of Two young German Princes who knew what war was about before they saw it, and still died. Hundreds of others dead or dying.

A Generation Lost, a Generation of Writers Lost.

Do we forget them or do we praise them, by continuing our writing, and recall their sacrifice to the old cry of King and Country?

To all these writers lost: We Shall Not Forget.

The Canadian War Cemetery at Dieppe.

London Bridge: Uncle Harry’s Revenge!

London bridge is...

This image (Circa 1988) is from Panoramio by atiiota

Falling down…
“Enough of the kid stuff!”

Uncle Harry…

“No son, the blokes reading this blog thing of yours are adults, not a mob of screeching galahs.”

I’m not treating them like galahs…

“Don’t come the raw prawn with me.”

Are you quite finished?

“Only for the moment.”

Right then, I’ll go on.

The coast here is being continually carved by wind and wave. London Bridge lies eastward of Martyrs Bay. Until 1990 it was a double arched formation, when the landward arch collapsed, two unlucky (or perhaps lucky) walkers had to be rescued by helicopter.
Nearby this set of stairs…
leads down to the Grotto.
Back in the car we drove on, stopping in Port Campbell for lunch.

The next place we stopped was at Loch Ard Gorge. This area is named for the clipper ship the Loch Ard which was wrecked here in 1878. There are a number of fascinating sights here.
First we walked along to the Blowhole.
The cave in the picture is the mouth of a tunnel that leads to the ocean about 200 metres away. The spray is from a wave that has come all the way through the tunnel before hitting the wall.
To give some idea of scale, it is about 20-25 metres down to the surface of the water.

Also at the Loch Ard Gorge is Thunder Cave seen here looking into the mouth of the cave.
And from the cave mouth out to sea.
Above the cliffs is the Loch Ard cemetery. Of the 54 people on board when the Loch Ard was wrecked 52 perished. Only four bodies were recovered, they are buried here at the cemetery.
This grave contains the remains of two members of the Carmichael family, the bodies of five more were never found. An eighth member of the family Eva Carmichael, was one of the two survivors of the wreck.

Our final port of call on our way along the Great Ocean Road was The Twelve Apostles. Originally called the “Sow and Piglets” they were renamed in a brilliant piece of marketing back in the 1950s. They must be one of the most popular tourist attractions in Victoria, if not Australia. It has never been possible to see 12 stacks from one place at the Apostles and it is getting harder, the boulders in the front are the remains of stacks that have collapsed from erosion in the past few years.
The height of the cliffs can be judged by how small the people look at the top of this lookout near the Apostles (click on the picture and you'll see what I mean).

By the time we had reached here it was getting late and we elected to head straight for home, bypassing places like Cape Otway (so at some point I foresee another trip down the Great Ocean Road).

We stopped for fuel at Apollo Bay which is really beautiful, although nowhere near as rugged as further west.
Now what do you think Uncle Harry, are you happy now?

Uncle Harry?

Death and Other Minor Problems

A long, long, day at work today. I had to start early at a breakfast program for homeless people, before going over to anther program that provides emergency relief for homeless and other marginalised people. I couldn’t leave there until I supervised the cleaning this evening.
I know I sound like a real whinger but that is the space I was in when I finally got home. No research tonight, no work on the book, an early night tonight for me.

Ructions at home tonight, our eldest daughter is studying for a degree in speech therapy at Latrobe University. She realised today that her first “wet-pracs” in anatomy are coming up shortly. In other words they will be dissecting and examining human bodies. The poor thing is really struggling with the idea, back in high school she could barely cope with dissections of rats in biology classes.

She is facing a real dilemma she wants to go on with this course, she sees herself making a positive contribution to people with speech difficulties, particularly kids, down the track. Yet, she just can’t see herself getting over her (natural) queasiness. I just hope she finds a way to go on with what she wants.

Also on the subject of death a photo from a lonely graveyard.

This these are graves in the Kiandra Cemetery in the Australian Alps. Started in the 1860’s about fifty burials were recorded here. No trace remains of most graves in the cemetery. And there is even less trace of the town. A goldfields town with a population of up to 7,000 people today it is gone, leaving almost no trace other than these lonely graves near the Snowy Mountain highway.

Just to finish on a brighter note a fiery sunset.