I’m currently doing Jen Storer’s fabulous Scribbles course. And there’s a whole section about naming your characters.
I’m pretty lazy when it comes to this. I go through my kid’s friends and pick the one that most closely matches the character I’m thinking of, or the syllable count I want or the alliteration I’m hoping is sweet not overdone.
Anyhoo, Jen’s got me thinking I should lift my game.
And then… one of our blue tongue lizards needed her nails clipped. I spoke to the local aquarium. They said just cut them. It was terrifying. If ever you’ve had a baby, you know what I mean, except you CANNOT lose your nerve and decide to bite your lizard’s nail instead of cutting it (other people do this right?).
So, then I rang our dog’s vet. “Umm… yeah, we could PROBABLY cut your lizards nails.” Hmmmm… they suggested a different vet eventually.
So, we visited the lizard expert vet.
“Who’s this?” he asked when we walked in with 2 lizards in shoe boxes, pointing at box number 1.
“This is Dante. He’s our boy lizard.”
Lizard expert vet gives us a look.
“Or so we were told….”
Another look. Hmmm…
Turns out, Dante is a girl, and Esmerelda a boy.
Not a big deal. Except, well it is. The names don’t match. The kids think we should switch their names around. “No way!”
Seems I do have opinions on naming stuff after all. Names are important.
For the moment, we’ve adjusted a little…
Esmerelda now answers to EZZ! or Ez Mereldo and Dante to Dainty, Dantea, and Daints. Not sure what will stick there.
But yeah, Jen Storer is right. Time I put more effort into naming stuff.
