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This week, Anne Cherian, the author of The Invitation blogs for The Postscript on how to find the right names for her characters. The Postscript series is a special peek “behind the scenes” of a book. It’s a juicy little extra something to add to a book club’s discussion and a reader’s understanding of how the book came together.
To “host” Anne at your next book club meeting, request her through JBC Live Chat.
TS Eliot famously wrote, “The naming of cats is a difficult matter,” and
where once I had thought it was charming doggerel, I discovered its general truth when I was writing my novel, The Invitation. I had the entire plot in my head, and knew my four characters, but had no idea what names to give them. I was so desperate that I even Googled common Indian names, only to stare at hundreds and hundreds of names – in a country of billion, what did I expect?
All that remained were the two girls. One, I had always known, would be from Kerala, my father’s homeland. Most people from there have a baptismal name reserved for school, and a ‘pet’ name used by family and close friends. Lali goes against tradition by using her pet name alone; indeed, her baptismal name never appears in the novel. Such a character, I thought, would continue to be rebellious, and so it makes sense that Lali marries Jonathan, a Jewish doctor. The last character is based on girls I knew who came from Goa, all Catholics, of Portuguese descent – except that my character isn’t rich. Some people, like her, try to off-set poverty by using anything to make themselves look good, and she even uses how she was named. When her mother was pregnant with her, her father kept telling everyone that this time, after four girls, he was finally going to have a son and had already picked out Francis, the name of some forefather who may or may not exist, since the family likes to show off their Portuguese ancestry. When she turns out to be another girl, he simply changes the ‘i’ to ‘e’ and so Frances, from her very beginnings, has a story about herself, and as the novel shows, also starts her life being a disappointment and is constantly trying to appear better than she is.
To “host” Anne at your next book club meeting, request her through JBC Live Chat.
TS Eliot famously wrote, “The naming of cats is a difficult matter,” and
where once I had thought it was charming doggerel, I discovered its general truth when I was writing my novel, The Invitation. I had the entire plot in my head, and knew my four characters, but had no idea what names to give them. I was so desperate that I even Googled common Indian names, only to stare at hundreds and hundreds of names – in a country of billion, what did I expect? So I sat down and thought about the characters, hoping they would name themselves. One male character, I knew, would come from a rich family, and would have gone to all the right schools. In the novel he is described as a “colossus, able to prosper anywhere in the world, east or west.” So I suddenly thought, Jayant, which means victorious in Hindi, and which, handily, can be shortened to Jay, a western name that is easy for my readers. The question the novel raises? Is Jay, indeed, victorious? The other male character is his foil, born to a poor family in a village, who pulls himself up via his brains. He would have to be very tough to withstand the discrimination he would encounter in India, which, like England, is class-based. Vikram means strength, and again, can become Vic, and in this case, also provided me with the name of his computer company, VikRAM Computers. I confess that I know nothing about computers; I am aware, however, that ram isn’t just a male sheep.
All that remained were the two girls. One, I had always known, would be from Kerala, my father’s homeland. Most people from there have a baptismal name reserved for school, and a ‘pet’ name used by family and close friends. Lali goes against tradition by using her pet name alone; indeed, her baptismal name never appears in the novel. Such a character, I thought, would continue to be rebellious, and so it makes sense that Lali marries Jonathan, a Jewish doctor. The last character is based on girls I knew who came from Goa, all Catholics, of Portuguese descent – except that my character isn’t rich. Some people, like her, try to off-set poverty by using anything to make themselves look good, and she even uses how she was named. When her mother was pregnant with her, her father kept telling everyone that this time, after four girls, he was finally going to have a son and had already picked out Francis, the name of some forefather who may or may not exist, since the family likes to show off their Portuguese ancestry. When she turns out to be another girl, he simply changes the ‘i’ to ‘e’ and so Frances, from her very beginnings, has a story about herself, and as the novel shows, also starts her life being a disappointment and is constantly trying to appear better than she is. To read more from Anne, see her blog posts for The Visiting Scribe.
Born in India to an American Jewish mother and Indian father, Anne came to study comparative literature (English, Classical Greek) at Berkeley and meet her American family. She stayed on to pursue her dream of being a writer. The Invitation, her second novel, features Lali, an Indian, who marries Jonathan, a Jewish doctor, the couple being a reverse of her parents.
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