At the Beginning

My intro blog talked about how The Messengers of Yesh series began and how in December 2007 I named the characters and worked out the final concept for the series. The actual writing would begin Jan 1, 2008, but before getting to that and the weirdness of life afterward, I want to spend a few minutes on the character names. Nearly every name in the series was chosen by meaning except for very, very few minor characters. At first I used various sites to choose them but finally settled on babyhold.com as my go to site. For surnames I went elsewhere. Here are the names of the main characters with the meaning in parentheses.

Adina(slender) - She's a cheerleader, so I had fun with this one.
Marion(bitter) - He's an ex war vet still trying to shake off the experience.
Deirdre(sadness) - She's a rape victim who's still struggling.
Kayley - Kayley was named for somebody in RL and was originally something else. I had to change it to Kayley. She's the only one of the main characters who is "normal". In the beginning Messengers was a practice writing project, which is the only reason I used the name of someone I know.
Ben/Benjamin - Ben was named after Hawkeye in MASH. The meaning wasn't looked at.
Joe/Joseph - Joe is the every man name. The meaning wasn't looked at. You should never name the main character Joe. It's one of the rules. The original first line was, It was a dark and stormy night, but I changed it after an agent with a very outstanding reputation told me in so many words to go to a fiery afterlife. Maybe breaking two rules was too much. ;)

In the Bible there are two brothers named Benjamin and Joseph. The names had nothing to do with that. There's nothing there to read into my selection of those names. It's just the way it worked out.
Etan(steady, strong) - He's a priest but not like priests on our earth. He's a good guy.
Ceinwen Flannah - Ceinwen, an attractive redhead, becomes the love interest of one of the characters. The name means lovely redhead. This one made me laugh. Sometimes, it's the little things in life that are so much fun.
I should note that even though a couple of characters were named for people in RL they were not based on those people. Ben doesn't live in a tent and make jokes all day, etc.

I had more fun with the minor characters such as the shepherd named Schaffer, which means shepherd. Sure, most people don't know what names mean, but somewhere out there someone is going to know at least one and either laugh or go hmm, what's going on here.

In addition to the names, there are various inside jokes and references throughout the series intended for different audiences. If something is phrased strangely or doesn't sound quite right, it might be that there's a joke behind it or at the very least a deeper reference.

http://www.messengersofyesh.com/