What the names don't say out loud
When I was choosing names for my characters, I wasn't looking for something that sounded right. I was looking for something that carried weight.
Every member of the imperial family in my book has a Greek name. Not because the story is set in Greece, but because I needed a certain resonance. Something tragic. Something felt under the skin, even if you don't know why.
Elara — a mortal princess in Greek myth, hidden deep beneath the earth by Zeus to protect her from Hera's jealousy. She gave birth there, to a giant. And in some versions of the myth, that birth killed her. A woman hidden from the world. Carrying something too heavy to bear. Destroyed by the very thing she carried. One of Jupiter's moons bears her name — a celestial body orbiting endlessly around something vast and immovable.
My Elara has been hiding for ten years. Living under someone else's name. Carrying something she can't simply walk away from.
Erebus — the primordial darkness of the Greek underworld. Not a metaphor, not a title — the darkness that existed before everything else. I don't think a reader needs to know that to feel him in the book.
Thalia — one of the Muses, and one of the Graces, embodying bloom and flourishing. A bitter irony for a woman who stopped blooming long ago — and waits still.
Yiorgos — from Georgios, meaning "farmer," "one who works the earth." A man who holds everything together with his hands. A ruler with the strength to hold, but not to change.
I don't explain any of this in the book. But if you've felt something in these characters — maybe the names were doing part of the work.
How do you choose names for your characters? Do you build meaning into them — or do they just arrive?
