What’s in a name?

Naming the characters in my books is one of the most important jobs to me. Actually, naming anything, be it land, child, dog – you get the gist – is really important.

When we bought our first farm, we named it Cape View – you could see the Cape Arid from out kitchen window. The next property we purchased was an investment one, about twenty minutes from Esperance. We called this Rochden Park – Roch for our daughter, Rochelle and Den from the last part of Hayden’s name. In fact I loved that name so much I used it in Red Dust, as I did Hayelle, which was the kids names in a different form.
We sold Rochden Park to buy McBrae (where we live now). Brae in Scottish means ‘side of hill’ and we live on the side of a hill, so McBrae equals McDonald’s on the side of a hill – a fancy label for something very obvious!

Our dogs have many different names; Law (called that originally because our friend Wal had a bitch who mated with our dog). Law is Wal backwards. But Law is also known as Wally, Willywallywallace, Wallace, a law unto himself and he comes to every one of those names.

I’ve started writing Crimson Dawn without a female character name, I’m happy with. I’ve never done that before. Once I named Tessa, who you will meet in Silver Clouds, her whole profile jumped into my head – dark, curly hair, flashing blue eyes, yada, yada, yada.

So far, Jade (who she is known as for the moment), has been Nicola, Nicole, Lauren and a couple of others I’ve forgotten. She’s still not right.

Have you guys got any ideas for me?