By: Judith Crow
I love naming characters – it’s one of the first joys of writing any book. My parents gave all their children fabulous names, especially us five girls who all got two middle names to sandwich between our forenames and surname. Family is a very important part of my life. So it’s probably not too surprising that most of the characters in my story hail from one of two families: they’re either Devons or Shipperbottoms.
The Devon family
The original surname for these characters was “Dover,” but it didn’t read right, and my brother suggested that I change it. I had grown really attached to the sound of the name. So I wanted to keep it to an English placename. Devon is a place where my mum used to holiday when she was younger. So I just crossed from east to west and changed the family’s name to “Devon.”
Pendragon
The main character, Pen, is named after the legendary King Arthur, but it just seemed too obvious to call him Arthur. Awhile after I had created him as a character, I visited a place called Pendragon Castle in Cumbria, and I came up with a whole backstory for his name. But I don’t remember a time he was ever called anything else; he was a character who appeared pretty complete in my mind, and then I had to take him on a journey through the book. Pen’s full name is “Pendragon Orion” – the king and the hunter.
Napier
The only one of the three main characters (Pen, Marley, and Napier) who I had to think hard about what to name him. He was just called “Uncle” for a while, but he needed a name as Pen drops the title “Uncle” as Napier begins to annoy him anyway. I named him after John Napier, a 16th/17th century scientist and mathematician, who was one of a family of Napiers believed to have been involved in sorcery. The idea of science meeting magic was perfect for the character.
Pen’s mum
I made a deliberate decision never to name Pen’s mum in any of the books which make up The Rite Way trilogy (Honour’s Rest is the first). Pen absolutely adores his mum, and he never relegates her by referring to her as anything other than Mum.
When I made this decision, I had to make sure that she had her own name too though: there’s no point in having a character if they feel nameless themselves! In fact, I see her as almost being reminiscent of the Triple Goddess – a pagan deity consisting of Maiden, Mother and Crone.
I know her names. I’m currently writing a short story prequel about her meeting Jarvis, and, at that point, she had just changed her name to match the adventure she was undertaking.
Jarvis
Slightly bizarre this one… back when I was at college, I had a teenage crush on a boy who was the year older than me. I knew his first and last name and, somehow, I found out that his middle initial was “J.” I decided he was either “Jarvis” or “Jasper.” So here I am paying homage to him. I would be terrified to find out that I was right and that he’s got a son called Pendragon now. It’s a scary thought that he’ll be a similar age to Jarvis at the beginning of Honour’s Rest!
Shipperbottom family
One of my favourite pastimes is wandering through graveyards, and I found the name “Shipperbottom” on a gravestone in Orkney. It’s such a fabulously unusual name. I fell in love with it and immediately stole it for the family in my story who live in my childhood home by the cliffs of Deerness.
Marley
Marley Shipperbottom is The Best Friend. That’s why he’s got the name he does. I have a theory that Jacob Marley, from A Christmas Carol, is the greatest friend in literature because he protects Scrooge with no hope of any gain or improvement for himself. This sums up Marley Shipperbottom perfectly: as the story goes on, he is the person Pen comes to rely on the most because he will do anything to protect and support him.
Bernadette
Marley’s mum happened a bit backwards. I didn’t have a name for her so, after introducing her at the end of one chapter, I decided that I wouldn’t start the next chapter until I had a suitable name for her. Cue looking around my room desperately for any inspiration. And I found my series of books by Bernard Knight.
I decided to call her Bernard, just like Nursie in Blackadder, but eventually she rebelled and became Bernadette. All the Bernadettes I have ever come across were from Irish Catholic families. So she became an Irish Catholic. So much of her character through the series comes from this that I can’t imagine a time when she might just as easily have been called “Ruth” or “Julie.”
Erlend
Erlend is a Norse name which I absolutely love. It’s such a gentle sounding name, and Erlend is a gentle giant in Honour’s Rest as well as being the only person able to reliably reach through Napier’s gruff exterior. Also, Orkney’s very own saint, Magnus, was the son of Earl Erlend, and I think this identity as “father” must have influenced my decision to give the name to Marley’s dad.
Of course, not everyone hails from one of these two families.
The main villain of the story is Isolde, named after the character in Tristan and Iseult. In the legends, Tristan is in love with Iseult of Ireland but marries Iseult of the White Hands. Iseult of Ireland dies for the love of Tristan, but Iseult of the White Hands is responsible for his death. I know these two people were actually two very different women, but I liked the idea of Isolde having these two very different aspects of her personality. Tristan and Iseult is believed to have been based on a much older Persian myth, and that’s significant too.
An excerpt from Honour’s Rest by Judith Crow
As he stepped off the train and the cold air hit his face, Pen’s eyes watered, and he began to think of the warm bed at Honour’s Rest and imagined curling under the blankets and sleeping until the darkness and cold had slipped into daylight. However, he was brought rudely from his imaginings by a hand on his arm, and he spun around to see his uncle, who pulled him out of the floodlights and into the darkness.
“Be quiet, Pendragon,” he said, before his nephew had spoken a word. “You were not the only person to have alighted here. We will have to wait until everyone else is gone before we leave.”
“Look,” Pen said, slightly annoyed and much louder than he had intended, “I’m tired. Can’t we just–” He stopped as his uncle’s grip on his arm became painfully tight.
“You are as impatient as you were when you first arrived, Pendragon,” Napier hissed. “Think for a second. Much as I might appreciate it, I am not asking you to be quiet for my own amusement.”
Pen suddenly remembered that he was back in the world of Just and Knave’s Thaumaturges, and his thoughts leapt to Isolde.
“No,” Napier said absentmindedly, “it is not her.” Then he stopped and looked at his nephew, a look of horror uniting their features. “Don’t let me do that! Have you forgotten everything?”
Pen didn’t need Napier’s anger to tell him that he should have stopped his uncle from entering his thoughts. Throughout the three-week holiday it hadn’t occurred to him that he would forget anything of the Rite, but apparently the things he had started to take for granted had slipped from his mind. His uncle couldn’t have been more furious with him than he was with himself, but that still didn’t explain why Napier was so jumpy.
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Thank you so much for hosting me! I loved writing this blog about my characters.