I mentioned that I was asked to participate in The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance 2 and I think I said that my heroine was talking to me. She imparted a lot of information, most it helpful, but would not tell me her name. I know she’s switched names a lot over the centuries, but the hero knows her real name and he calls her that name. Only I don’t know it.
Squeezing her got me nowhere. In fact, she stopped talking. But it was getting ridiculous, you know? I can’t move forward without a name. To make it even more fun, it needs to be a name that was used back when she was born, and since I don’t write historical and have no intention of ever doing so, I don’t have resources for historical names. I was toying with using Elizabeth. I wasn’t completely certain, but I thought it had been around long enough, but that didn’t feel exactly right.
Close, but not exactly.
Tonight, I made it my mission to figure out what the heck my heroine’s name is. I found a site that has links to all kinds of names from medieval as well as other historical eras and I started clicking. It didn’t take too long before I found Isabella. Hmm. Was Isabella really around back then? I mean, the site I found was for creating characters in a Role Playing Game and I was a little leery, so I visited my favorite name site: Behind the Name.
They listed Isabella as a form of Isabel and when I clicked over to Isabel (which seemed oh, so right for my heroine), I discovered that Isabel is a form of Elizabeth and that it became popular in England in the 13th century. Bingo!
I knew Elizabeth was almost right, but I had no idea why. Now I do. How cool is this?
I just hope I don’t forget the details by the time I reach those parts of the book.
