Name saga…

Some of you caught the name poll I had up for about twelve hours… and some of you missed it. Basically I created a twitpoll seeing what others thought about names, but I didn’t really give much background unless you were lurking on twitter. So I thought I would give some background information so it made much more sense then just… “Should I change my MCs name?”

The MC of Mandorian Prophecies – The Rings of Time is Emma Dalen. Emma is the most popular girls name on the earth… well okay, I think it’s number two under Mary or Amy or something… but it’s popular. So much so, that in the pitchfest I participated in… Emma came up on EVERY page of both Caren and Elana’s pitch pages.. telling me… I chose the wrong name.

Or did I?

Which is what brought forth the poll. I am about to submit the novel to the Breakthrough Novel contest on Amazon and really don’t want anyone to say, “Not ANOTHER Emma…”

Will it hurt me to have another Emma? Or will my Emma be set apart from the others. I am hoping for the latter because Emma has been my characters name for about eight years… so technically I saw her first people… back off!

Not only does Emma follow my character rules (as a name)… it’s four letters and starts with a vowel. MC-2 is also four letters and starts with a vowel. MC-3 is a male and starts with a vowel but is 5 letters, Aaron…but I have thought about changing his name to Aron for the 4 letter purpose. That is still up for debate. Long story that will be addressed in the third book, or maybe never. Ha!

Ahem… so I thought maybe, just maybe I would change Emma’s name to Estee. Or Este… both pronounced “S-T”. I could drop the second E and it would follow my four letter rule and I could even get someone in the novel to mispronounce and have her correct it, so the reader would know how to pronounce it.

*ponder ponder*

However, I wasn’t sold on the idea… In fact, I was feeling rather sad that Emma might have to leave me. So that is when I polled.

50% of the votes that came in said not to change it… the other 50% said to go for it.

Ahhhhhh! Why are you split 50/50 people? This makes it very difficult to make a decision based on the poll when they are the indifferent!

But, it also makes me lean towards the “who cares if it’s popular”… she has been Emma all her life… and into book three now it might really throw my groove off.

So, I guess Emma will stay unless the agent/publisher says she has to change. Then, we will revisit Este again.