What’s In a Name?

Last night I was working on Gabriel’s Redemption. Sometimes a character’s name comes to me out of the blue, but sometimes I have work at it. Initially the female lead was named Sabrina, but I didn’t much care for it, so I changed it to Rhiannon, one of my fave Fleetwood Mac songs. And since there’s always been speculation that the song is about a witch (It’s not Rhiannon was a Welsh queen) it seemed apt for someone who was almost burned as a witch when she was a mere lass. As I wrote the name though, it began to remind me too much of the singer Rihanna. I still liked the name, but decided to change the spelling. This led to thirty minutes of this:

Rhyanon? Rhianon? Rheanon? Rianon? Rhyannon? Rheaonnon? Rheaon? Reanon? Rhyanon? Riannon?

And so on and so forth. Obsessive compulsive much? I had finally picked one, then misspelled it Ryannon, and it is, of course, perfect. As I’ve said many times before, it does what it does. Now if only I could remember that.