What’s in a name?

Thirty-two plus years ago I published a community magazine in the mountain and high desert communities of Wrightwood, Phelan, and Pinon Hills, California.  It was called Mountain/Hi-Desert Guide. I sold it (or more accurately gave it) to one of my employees around 1991, when our family had to leave Wrightwood and move to Havasu Palms, to help my parents with their business when Dad got sick.

I was the publisher and editor of the Guide for about seven years. This was before any of us had the Internet, before Google and Yahoo, and social media. It was even before digital photography.

Mountain/Hi-Desert Guide was a monthly publication, tabloid format on newsprint. It featured local events, a community calendar, interviews, articles of local history, and regular columns, such as one written by our local travel agent, and another by the local sheriff. 

Another one of the regular columns was entitled, “What’s in a Name?”  Each month we’d run an article about the backstory of a local landmark’s name.

Reading my reviews of my recent Haunting Danielle release, The Ghost and the Twins, I noticed a number of comments regarding the boy’s name—since it was not mentioned in the book.

Before I go on—if you choose to leave a comment, don’t mention who the twins belong to, who they are, or what boy remained nameless. That’s for those Haunting Danielle readers who have not read all the books in the series.

Anyway…this got me to thinking about that long ago column, What’s in a name?  Because a number of readers seem to be reading more into the missing name that was actually there. My readers gave me far more credit than I deserve—speculating there was some clever reason I ended the book without a name reveal.

But alas, I must give the truth…I simply could not decide on a name. The girl’s name was easy, I named her after my granddaughter, and her middle name, well, that was obvious. After reading the book and learning why I failed to name the boy, a friend suggested I name him after my grandson. I had to remind her, Haunting Danielle already has an Evan!

I obviously must have the name by my next book, but I need your help.  Leave your name suggestion in the comments!