What's In A Name?

 RHYS BOWEN

My latest Royal Spyness novel (GOD REST YE ROYAL GENTLEMEN) ends after Christmas with happiness and puppies. Georgie and Darcy give each other a Labrador puppy and go to fetch them from Sandringham. But by the end of the book they haven’t named them. Why? Because I couldn’t come up with good names for them. I wanted the names to be clever and funny, but my mind was a blank. So we’ve left that for the next book, which I have now started and need puppy names asap.

                I’m afraid I’m not very good with animal names. Growing up our dogs all had boringly sensible dog names—a black spaniel named Sooty. A spring spaniel named Brownie. You get the trend. The only dog we’ve owned since marriage was an English Setter we called St. John (as pronounced sinjun, the English way). Why that name? I chose it to prevent my husband calling our next child Sinjun. Can you imagine being saddled with St. John (pronounced Sinjun) through school? So I nixed this by naming the dog.

                Names are very important to me in my writing, especially in the Royal Spyness books. I love having my aristocrats with silly nicknames and choosing appropriately funny names for other characters. In the book I’m writing now I have the worst sort of American tourist in Paris called Mrs. Rottenburger. I once had a French detective with big squeaky shoes called Lafite (pronounced La Feet)

                I was asked at a recent interview why British aristocrats had all those silly nicknames—you know: Boy and Binky and Bunty and Froggy.  I assume it was because their names were often long and ponderous. You can’t call a small child Alexandra Constance or Marmaduke Archibald or even Albert. So pet names came about through the child’s personality (Foggy) or appearance (Tubby or Shrimpy) But now I think about it the other reason is more of the Us and Them syndrome. Only the inner circle know and can use the nicknames.  In my books Georgie’s sister in law is Hilda, Duchess of Rannoch. To those who know her she is Fig.

And in case you think this strange custom is a thing of the past. John’s family has cousins called Fig, Dudh, Puff. His brother’s children Were Victoria Alexandra, Jemima Kate and Michael James.  Growing up they were known as Bumpy, Mim and Mini Mike. Now they are Vicki, Mim and MJ.  I remember calling our own girls Tootsie, Podgy and the Basher. Luckily those names didn’t stick.

So I have no problem with silly nicknames, appropriate character names. It’s just those blooming dogs. My granddaughter called her big male cat Cupcake! My brother had a brindle bullterrier called Patch, and later a white bull terrier called Patchless. But me? I got nothing.

Suggestions please. 

ps: I posted this on my Facebook page and got 650 suggestions. Some brilliant. But I'm still not quite sure....