Princess needs a name?

[ryain]

I need some help naming a character. She is a princess of Faeries, stubborn, strong willed, callous, beautiful, strong . . . Well you get the point.
She has black hair down to about jaw line, black eyes with a black tattoe in the shap of a tear under her left eye and blue skin. I know who she is but her name is evading me. Some help would be great!

I want to have a nice name as she is the main character despite her dubious characteristics.

[scintor]

The one that comes to mind immediately is Sapphire. It would match her coloration, beauty and hardness.

BTW: in tattoo symbolism, a teardrop under the eye means that you have killed someone yourself, and multiple teardrops indicate the number that you have killed.

Scincerely,

[e-mail]

[morganlbusse]

Hey scintor, how did you know that about the tattoos? Is there a site or something? I have tattoos in my book which already have significance, but would love to learn more about what some of them mean in our world...

[morganlbusse]

Sorry, don't mean to hijack the thread lol... as far as a name, I like to go to baby name sites and use their advance searches... you can look up names from ancient languages or that mean the color blue, strong, etc...

Even though I write fantasy, I like to have names that feel familiar to people and I find using baby names sites help to create that familiarity since they are real names.

[journeyman]

I like morwena's idea of looking at the baby name sites. It beats chasing down names in folklore, which I've done in the past. :-)

[scintor]

Mar 23, 2010 12:32:18 GMT -5 morganlbusse said:

Hey scintor, how did you know that about the tattoos? Is there a site or something? I have tattoos in my book which already have significance, but would love to learn more about what some of them mean in our world...

The tattoo lore is part of prison/gang culture and I have picked up some of it here and there as my wife grew up in the Mission District of San Francisco. (the Mission district of SF is extreme gang territory such that young people are either gang members or prey, and walking on the wrong block at night regularly costs people their lives.)

There is not a single reliable source for the meanings of tattoos that I have found since the groups that use them are quite varied and therefore their meanings can vary widely. I found this sight with a good definition for the tear tattoo. www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Tattoo%20Tear

I hope this helps.

Scincerely,

[e-mail]

[waldenwriter]

Mar 23, 2010 14:13:50 GMT -5 journeyman said:

I like morwena's idea of looking at the baby name sites. It beats chasing down names in folklore, which I've don in the past. :-)

I use baby name sites too, and I also own a print baby name book. My current novel's main character's name - Avalon - is from folklore though, although I didn't pick it for that. (It is the name of an island in Arthurian folklore believed to be the home of elves and fairies, where Excalibur is said to be from in some tales, and where Arthur is thought to have been taken when he was dying). One of my faculty consultants at the conference I went to last year really liked the name, and the town of Avalon, Australia, actually started following my writing Twitter.

***

In answer to the main question, if you want to go for a blue theme, you could go with words that mean blue or refer to shades of blue, as morwena said. Like Azul, Azure, Azura, Celeste (which means "sky blue"), etc.

This site provides some good color names: www.babynology.com/colornames.html

[ryain]

Mar 23, 2010 9:42:30 GMT -5 scintor said:

BTW: in tattoo symbolism, a teardrop under the eye means that you have killed someone yourself, and multiple teardrops indicate the number that you have killed.

I did not know that. All my faeries have two sets of tattoes, one on their right arm(this one regulates class and family line) and one on their face( this is a personal symbol). I choose the tear drop because my character has sacrificed everything to become who she is. And that doesn't happen without some damage.

Thanks for the ideas. I have a baby name book (thanks to my 6 brothers) but 1000 names is sort of daunting. Usually I get a letter in my head when I'm designing a character but, alas, not this time.

Since my faeries are a cast system/gang style I have to choose names that will suit. But my liking for wimiscal and romantic names will breakthrough. *sigh*

[Kristen]

My favorite name site is this one: www.behindthename.com. There's an affiliated site for surnames, also.

From a quick look at Sherrilyn Kenyon's _Character Naming Sourcebook_, I find the Celtic names Ardra, which means "noble"; Briana, Brygid (and a bunch of variants thereof), and Gitta, all of which mean "strong"; Carey, "the dark one"; Etain, "a fairy;" Keelia, "comely"; and Kennocha, "lovely." And in Welsh I find Bronwen, "dark and pure"; Delia, "dark"; and, for Scintor, the Welsh spelling of sapphire, Saffir.

Other ways to play off the blue (which you might not want if all of her folk are blue-skinned) would be variations on Azure or Azul.

My favorites are Ardra and Keelia.

[LadyMaie]

In Irish-Gaelic, the word for blue is, "Gorm," pronounced, "Gurum." It's not very pretty at first glance, but I bet you can play with it and come up with something neat.

But getting off of the meanings, most of my characters have names that either popped up in my head or are twisted from other names. The first think that came to my mind for yours was the syllable, "Keen," with which you could go, "Ykeen," or, "Jokeen," or, "Leikeen," etc. I thought you could put an "a" at the end if you wanted, but from what it sounds like, the name will probably fit better without it.

Hope that helps!

[ryain]

Mar 28, 2010 19:04:04 GMT -5 Kristen said:

My favorite name site is this one: www.behindthename.com. There's an affiliated site for surnames, also.

From a quick look at Sherrilyn Kenyon's _Character Naming Sourcebook_, I find the Celtic names Ardra, which means "noble"; Briana, Brygid (and a bunch of variants thereof), and Gitta, all of which mean "strong"; Carey, "the dark one"; Etain, "a fairy;" Keelia, "comely"; and Kennocha, "lovely." And in Welsh I find Bronwen, "dark and pure"; Delia, "dark"; and, for Scintor, the Welsh spelling of sapphire, Saffir.

Other ways to play off the blue (which you might not want if all of her folk are blue-skinned) would be variations on Azure or Azul.

My favorites are Ardra and Keelia.

Thanks! I've always liked Welsh and Celtic names. And yes all the Faeries have skin from blue to light mauve. I'm not sure if I'll use the blue reference but I have some ideas now!

[ryain]

Mar 29, 2010 7:11:21 GMT -5 LadyMaie said:

In Irish-Gaelic, the word for blue is, "Gorm," pronounced, "Gurum." It's not very pretty at first glance, but I bet you can play with it and come up with something neat.

But getting off of the meanings, most of my characters have names that either popped up in my head or are twisted from other names. The first think that came to my mind for yours was the syllable, "Keen," with which you could go, "Ykeen," or, "Jokeen," or, "Leikeen," etc. I thought you could put an "a" at the end if you wanted, but from what it sounds like, the name will probably fit better without it.

Hope that helps!

That's the same way I make names. Usually a name or a letter pops into my head and then I reserch, get some names, pick one I like, and DEVIATE! Other times I pick some words and deviate on them. Lately I used the words "vile serpent" to form a name for a evil priest. The result- Vilsepen.

Thanks for ideas! I belive something is coming together now.