The picture here is of Polzeath in Cornwall. The interesting thing about living in Cornwall is that so many of the place names describe where or what they are or were. For instance if a place name is prefixed by 'tre-' then it means 'farm/homestead' and 'chy-' means 'house/home'.I have been musing over the significance of character names. It is easy to pick names that you link with people you have known including all their character traits and quirks. I am having a spring clean of my unfinished novel and have decided to change three character's names. I was feeling unhappy about these original choices, so I decided to research names that could summarise their character or personality. I have had an amazing time trawling the internet for Native American, African, Sumerian, Irish and possible even Middle Earthnames and meanings for inspiration. I have settled on some great names I would not have considered and I am very happy with how the group of characters now looks on paper. Jon M shared with me when he visited last week that a character in his book was inspired by the contents of his curry
