Name Changes

After spending so long thinking of my characters with their current names, it pains me to have to change them. Especially when one of them is the focus of so much of the novel.

But some changes are required, not because I dislike the names, but because I wasn't thinking about ways readers might pronounce them. Take "Mero Aramis", for example. He's the main man, the super-hero, and he's noble, kind and self-effacing. Yet his name is a problem. In my mind, "Mero" is pronounced "MARE-oh", yet it's all too easy for a non-telepathic reader to pronounce it "MEE-roh".

Mero the Hero. Ugh.

My reader said that she had a hard time warming to him until that pronunciation was made clear. So change it must, because I expect others will have a similar reaction. Fortunately the only population of readers that might be disconcerted by the change at this point is my happy group of beta readers.

But I still like Mero in its original spelling and pronunciation! Argh! I finally settled on making the spelling more phonetic. Henceforth he will be named "Merrow". Now all I have to worry about is people thinking about bone marrow, which isn't quite as big a problem. Dammit, now that I thought of that, I'll never be able to stop. OK, his name is now "Chuck". (Just kidding.)

OK, so much for Merrow's first name. What about Aramis? Yep, it's changing too. The same savvy reader who had trouble with 'Mero" reminded me that "Aramis" is the name of the most foppish of the Three Musketeers. Damnation! I've read that book several times and seen the cruddy movies. Why didn't I twig to that? Sometimes you're so close to the problem that you can't see it—just like my propensity for using the same distinctive adjectives in consecutive sentences.

So Mero's new name will be "Merrow Eramis". It's not quite as compact, but it still sounds the same. Grrrr. Hell, I might change his first name again to something completely different if it continues to stick in my craw. I'm not quite done with the final draft. There's still time.

There is one other name change that I have to make, though I doubt this will irritate many (if any) readers. Tinren Metter's surname is too similar to "Mettis." I haven't yet firmly decided on Metter's new name, but I'm leaning toward something completely different: Beradon. Tinren Beradon. That's not too bad. Distinctive enough in my gigantic cast.

I realized the other day that I've mentioned in the neighborhood of a hundred names in the book so far, although most of them are bit players. It's getting kind of tricky to keep them all straight.