How do people decide what to name their children? How do writers decide what to name their characters? It depends on where you (or your characters) live. It depends on when.

For example, in China, naming schemes often employ a generation name. That means every child in a given family’s generation shares an identical character when the name is written in Chinese characters. But English is taught in China's secondary schools, so many Chinese teenagers acquire English names, which they may keep and use. This sometimes leads to teens choosing English names like Chlorophyll, Candy, Devil or Whale. Periodic fad names like Aoyun ("Olympics") also appear.

In England, babies traditionally were named after relatives of both parents in a fascinating pattern that was popular in England from 1700 to 1875. This naming pattern definitely influenced my choices for character names in the JEM books. Here's how it worked:

    The first son was named after the father's father
    The second son was named after the mother's father
    The third son was named after the father
    The fourth son was named after the father's eldest brother
    The first daughter after the mother's mother
    The second daughter after the father's mother
    The third daughter after the mother
    The fourth daughter after the mother's eldest sister

Going by these rules, in the JEM books, Margery’s eldest sister, Nessa, was named for Margery’s father’s mother. But if you’ve read the JEM books, you know that Margery’s grandmother is named Kestrel. What’s up with that? Then, as now, people call themselves what they wish to be called; in this case, Granny Kestrel chose to honor a bird with which she shares a magical bond.

But Granny couldn't have done that in Malaysia, where the names of all animals, fruits and vegetables are banned.  

Other countries have naming rules too. New Zealand bans names that might offend a reasonable person, including King, Major, Knight, Prince, and Princess, although other names have been allowed in the country, including Number 16 Bus Shelter and Violence. In New Zealand’s defense, a 9-year-old girl named Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii was allowed to change her name, and parents who tried to name their children 4Real, Fish and Chips (twins), Yeah Detroit, Keenan Got Lucy and Sex Fruit were turned down.

In Saudi Arabia, forget about naming your child anything that offends religious sensibilities, is affiliated with royalty, or is of non-Arabic or non-Islamic origin. Morocco is a tad more lenient, allowing you to pick a name not on the approved list if you pay a fee, although Moroccan dads living outside the country have to be careful: babies given a name not on the approved list may have trouble entering the country to visit their relatives.

Germany and Japan have naming rules, too. In Germany, you can’t use a last name as a first name. German law dictates that first names must be gender-specific, may not be a trademark, and cannot endanger the child. Italy won't let a parent bestow an embarrassing name.

Even in the freewheeling United States, some rules apply. Many states ban obscene names or limit the number of characters in a name because of the limitations of record-keeping software. Some states ban the use of numerals or pictograms. "Black" sounding names have been shown to minimize the likelihood that a job candidate will be interviewed, but from the beginning, black Americans have had unique names, according to Salon's David Zax, who writes, "the folklorist Newbell Niles Puckett turned up thousands of such names culling records from 1619 to the mid-1940s, names like Electa, Valantine and Zebedee." The practice of choosing a unique name for a black child skyrocketed after the 1960s, Zax says, when Black Pride and Islam began to influence parents' choices—but creating unique names doesn't happen in Iceland.

Iceland has strict rules; for a story set there, I spent half my research time hunting appropriate names for the characters. Why? Because Iceland doesn’t use family surnames. A spouse cannot take his or her spouse’s name upon marriage. If the couple produces a child, they must choose a given name from a limited list.

It works like this: The last name of a male Icelander usually ends in the suffix -son (“son”) and that of a female Icelander in -dóttir (“daughter”). So a boy and girl in the same nuclear family won’t share the same last name. When it comes to first names, Icelanders often don’t name a child for its first three months so the parents can get to know the child (before it is named, a child is called stúlka, “girl,” or strákur, “boy”). When it’s time to pick a name, the parents have to stick to a list of legal first and middle names, none of which contain the letter “C,” which isn’t in the Icelandic alphabet—sorry, Charlie. Currently there are about 1,712 male names and 1,853 female given names on the list. If you choose a name that isn’t on the list, your child will have problems, like being denied a passport.

This summer, online magazine Parent Society listed some of the more unusual baby names out there, but for names like “Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116,” go here. The article doesn’t explain why parents would do that to their own flesh and blood.

For writers, the naming rules of the countries in which our stories are set should figure in when we name our characters, but we also want to embed meaning into their names, right? So, do you name your female romantic interest the name you wish you had been given? Do you name your action hero something short and dashing? How about last names?  How do you decide?

One author who is good at crafting names is Nora Roberts. In THE SEARCH, the hero is Simon Doyle [Simon=sigh man, which is what he does because he keeps getting yanked into doing things he doesn’t want to do]. The heroine is Fiona “Fee” Bristow [Bristow=bristle, which is what she’s about, at least initially]. The villain’s name is the most perfect of all, but if you don’t want to know it, don’t click here because I don't want to spoil it for you. It could be I’m reading into Roberts’s choices, but I don’t think so. Roberts is an intelligent, successful writer; she knows that names are important. So do most writers. (Tangent: You can answer ten short questions to find out which Nora Roberts character you “are” here. Me? Margaret Mary Concannon. Thanks for asking. )

A name can suggest personality. A character name you initially dislike can grow on you if the character does; conversely, if you initially favor a name (or are at least neutral), when it is bestowed on the bad guy, you may dislike it forever after.  A character named after your eighth grade nemesis may even keep you from fully engaging in the story.

My JEM character names (at least, the ones not culled from history) were chosen deliberately based on a number of factors including literal meaning, geographical accuracy, mouth-feel, pronounce-ability, and so on.  When I was in the process of crafting a surname for the bad guy, "Patch," I wanted something that would suggest his Darkness, but I didn’t want to minimize his power or his danger. (I chose “Duncan,” which means brown warrior—a name that also suits his geographic origins).

Using the British naming rules above, it took an entire morning to name Margery’s siblings and near-family relations, including the name of Granny Kestrel’s husband, Dylan, who crossed the moor from Wales to find her.

A good source for name discussion is an oldie titled TREASURE OF NAME LORE by Elsdon C. Smith, which includes sections on American Indian names, anagrams, names in other countries, extra-long names, and names popular in different religions.  Smith writes, “In writing fiction, since all the author has to put his ideas across to the reader are the words he uses, he cannot waste any by selecting names for his characters that do not have connotations that help to describe the character. Even the sound may be used to convey an impression of the one named . . . Dickens was an expert in selecting names that contained a subtle half-suggestion of other words in our language which are associated with the traits embodied in the characters he delineated.”

There you go: let the great Charles Dickens be your guide. Use the magical power of names to boost your story’s impact.

America's gun control laws are the loosest in the developed world, and its rate of gun-related homicide is the highest. A 2013 study that correlated gun ownership rates to homicide rates here between 1981 and 2010 found that "each 1 percentage point increase in proportion of household gun ownership" translated to a 0.9 percent increase in homicides. According to the study, gun ownership mattered even when race and poverty were accounted for.

We Americans love our guns but our guns don't love us back, even though gun shops outnumber grocery stores in the United States by nearly 15,000. 

You want to talk about the Second Amendment to the Constitution? The Second Amendment says, "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." That Amendment was included because the brand new United States of America had just whupped the Big Dog in Europe, England, but there was no guarantee she would stay whupped. Farmers and merchants and coppersmiths had to be ready to defend the new country.

But some of the writers of the Constitution who saw a potential problem with this Amendment proposed on September 9, 1789, that the Amendment should include the words "for the common defense" next to the words "bear arms." That proposal was defeated. According to an essay by John Paul Stevens, associate justice of the Supreme Court from 1975 to 2010, published in the the Washington Post in April 2014, five words similar to the defeated proposal ("when serving in the militia") would make the Second Amendment adhere more closely to what we think the Founders intended when they insisted on the right to bear arms.

Five words in place of 30 murders a day? I could get behind that.

Some gun proponents say that if more good guys carried guns, they could stop the bad guys. But that isn't true, according to Dr. Stephen Hargarten, a leading expert on emergency medicine and gun violence at the Medical College of Wisconsin. In an article in Mother Jones, Hargarten says that armed civilians attempting to intervene are actually more likely to increase the bloodshed.

The Second Amendment isn't going away. Guns aren't going away. So how about we consider going in the same direction as other civilized nations that have decided a person needs more than a trigger finger to own a gun? How about stricter laws concerning who gets to own a gun? Even a majority of National Rifle Association (NRA) members support that.

According to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, 84% of gun-owners and 74% of NRA members support universal background checks for all gun sales; 76% of gun-owners and 62% of NRA members support prohibiting gun ownership for 10 years after a person has been convicted of violating a domestic-violence restraining order; and 71% of gun-owners and 70% of NRA members support a mandatory minimum sentence of two years in prison for a person convicted of selling a gun to someone who cannot legally have a gun.

Laws that are more restrictive would be particularly helpful since nearly 80 percent of the killers in the Mother Jones investigation obtained their weapons legally. What might happen if we tightened our rules?

Guns aren't illegal in Australia, but you can’t own a semi-automatic rifle or a semi-automatic or pump-action shotgun. Gun ownership has been tightly restricted for the last 20 years. Since the laws were changed in 1996, Australia hasn’t had a mass shooting and firearms-related deaths have plummeted. In that time, the United states has had 52 mass shootings with 408 dead.

In Japan, citizens are permitted to possess firearms for hunting and sport shooting, but only after submitting to a lengthy licensing procedure. To get a gun in Japan, you have to attend an all-day once-a-month class and pass a written test—and you have to repeat the class and pass the test every three years. You must take and pass a shooting range class. You must take and pass a mental test and a drug test, which you'll file with the police. You must pass a background check for any criminal record or association with criminal or extremist groups. Once you get your gun in Japan, you must provide police with documentation on the specific location of the gun in your home, as well as the ammo, both of which must be locked and stored separately. Once a year, the police will inspect your gun. Do strict measures like this make a difference in gun violence? In 2006, Japan experienced two firearm-related homicides; in 2008 there were 11—compared to 12,000 in the United States the same year.
Guns aren't illegal in England or Scotland, but after mass shootings in the late '80s and '90s, the U.K. in 1997 banned semi-automatic and pump-action firearms, introduced mandatory registration for shotgun owners, and banned private handgun ownership in mainland Britain. The government launched a $200 million buyback program, which led to the collection of 162,000 firearms. By 2010–11, gun crime had decreased by 53 percent.

A Swede who wants to own a gun needs a license. To get one, he must be 18. He must be a member of an approved shooting club for at least six months or have passed a hunting examination. Gun deaths in Sweden are 1.47 per 100,000 per year compared with 10.64 per 100,000 here.

Switzerland has one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the world. Switzerland ranks fourth after the U.S, Yemen, and Serbia in the number of guns per capita. Every Swiss man of fighting age is issued a gun so he can defend his country. But to keep his gun after military service, a Swiss citizen needs a weapon acquisition permit, issued by the police. He can’t get the permit if he has a criminal record, an addiction, or a psychiatric problem. Heavy machine guns and automatic weapons are banned, as are silencers. If a Swiss man wants to carry a gun in public, he needs a permit, which he’s likely to get only if he works in security—and only if he’s passed theoretical and practical exams. Yet the violent-crime rate is low in Switzerland: government figures show about 0.5 gun homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2010. Why? For one thing, the gun culture there emphasizes responsibility and safety. Kids as young as 12 belong to gun groups. In addition, Switzerland’s gun ownership is deeply rooted in the country’s tiny size: the Swiss see it as their patriotic duty to be able to fight their way to their regiment’s assembly point because an enemy could invade the country quickly. The Swiss see gun ownership as a duty rather than as an inalienable right.

You get the picture. Other countries handle gun laws differently. The United States isn’t as violent as some countries in central America where drug cartels operate or Africa where countries are ravaged by civil wars—but isn't it shameful to even be making that comparison?

Pry your gun from your cold, dead hands? Nobody wants that. We just want lunatics to stop killing college students and children. Mmmkay? Can we agree on that?

For an overview of gun ownership laws, go here. For a chart of gun-related deaths country by country, go here. For articles on both sides of the gun control issue, go here.

I don’t read bestsellers when they’re hot and all the cool kids are talking about them. I figure, a book isn’t a banana. It won’t spoil, so what difference does it make if I pick it up when the ink is still wet or pick it up later at Goodwill for a couple of bucks?

So the book I just finished is Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible (1998), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1999. It’s about a Baptist missionary family, the Prices, who in 1959 move from Georgia to the Congo to win souls to Christ. The chief agent of this move is Nathan Price, who drags along wife Orleanna, teen-aged Rachel, 'tween twins Leah and Adah, and five-year old baby of the family, Ruth May. The book is divided into seven sections, and the five females in the family, all of whom respond to Africa and to their enforced missionary status in different ways, tell the story alternately. Nathan Price never gets to narrate; he just gets to be narrow-minded, stubborn, abusive, and crazy as a bedbug. He’s about as far from true Christian charity and kindness as a person can get. And yet, as patriarch, he’s the boss, and the hapless Price females follow him like ducklings.

Full disclosure: I have mixed feelings about missionaries. I grew up in a church with missions at its heart and a banner on the wall that read, “Go Ye Into All the World and Preach the Gospel to Every Creature.” One Sunday a month, all of us Sunday School kids turned in little wooden barrel-shaped banks stuffed with loose change for the Boys and Girls Missionary Challenge. We were doing our bit to evangelize those poor brown, yellow, and red children all over the world, about whom we knew very little other than that they needed our pennies, nickels, dimes and dollars. We wanted them to have enough food to eat and nice clothes to wear! We wanted them to sing, “Jesus loves me / This I know” and mean it! It is not a bad thing to foster generosity in a child’s heart. It is not a bad thing to teach a child to care about the welfare of other human beings.

But I’m not a child any more. I’ve studied and traveled and learned a few more Bible verses, one of which is “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” I certainly would not want foreigners who know nothing about me or my country or culture to plunk themselves into the heart of my town and start telling me I was lost and stupid and had earned eternal punishment just for worshipping my own god instead of the big pumpkin they set up in the village square. I’d avoid the strangers and join up with anybody who wanted to give them the boot.

Cultural arrogance as demonstrated in this hypothetical is at the heart of The Poisonwood Bible. Kingsolver’s book reminds readers that barging into a place that has evolved its own way of living in a specific environment and attempting to force change is disrespectful at best and dangerous at worst, to both parties. Somebody, perhaps everybody, will suffer. Of course, in Kingsolver’s book, they do. The Prices, the only whites for miles around, do learn from the blacks, and vice-versa, but the lessons are wrought from pain far oftener than they are wrought from acceptance of a better way.

Woven into the fictional domestic events of the Price family in The Poisonwood Bible are the real-life events of Congo’s struggle for independence from Belgium. Congo had been appropriated first by Belgium’s Leopold the Second as a private enterprise his country did not support. The “Congo Free State,” established in 1885, used forced labor, mutilation, and murder (some reports say as many as ten million Congolese were murdered) to increase rubber production. So horrible were conditions that international pressure forced Belgium to take over Leopold’s private colony in 1908. The abuses were curbed, but segregation continued along with a paternalistic attitude (“dominate to serve”) on the part of whites that they knew best what the Congolese needed.

Of course, the Prices don’t know this history, nor does it matter to single-minded Nathan. The Price females, though, begin to realize they aren’t in Kansas anymore just as Congo’s struggle results in independence from Belgium (June 1960). Congo elects Patrice Lumumba as its first president, but the departing Belgians foment rebellion in the southern region of Katanga, source of Congo’s mineral wealth, in order to cling to its hold on the natural resources of the Congo (diamonds, rubber, copper).  Lumumba asks the United Nations for help. It refuses. He turns to the Soviet Union, which sends aid. Lumumba is labeled a Marxist, and the United States masterminds and funds the assassination of Lumumba. In his place, the U.S. in 1965 sets up Joseph Mobutu as leader.

Mobutu has been described as the "archetypal African dictator." Mobutu embezzled between four and fifteen billion U.S. dollars during his 30-year reign. He owned a fleet of Mercedes-Benz vehicles that he used to travel between his numerous palaces, while the nation's roads rotted and the Congolese starved. Public service workers went months without being paid. On trips across Zaire (Congo’s new name), he appropriated the droit de cuissage (right to deflower) local virgins; this practice was considered an honor for the virgin's family. The United States propped up Mobutu for 30 years.

This history comes out in bits and pieces because the novel’s focus is on the tragically misguided and misinformed Price family. Nathan Price refuses to accept that western ways do not—and should not be expected to—work in Africa. For example, he plants a garden just like the one he had at home to show the Congolese that they can grow their own food, as though they are too stupid to have figured that out for themselves. Nathan doesn’t even suspect there might be a very good reason the Congolese don’t have gardens—in fact several reasons, such as flooding, army ants, drought, and so on. Nathan’s garden flourishes at first but then withers away without producing fruit because African pollinators cannot fit into the blossoms of western plants, just as Nathan’s mission makes a big show but produces no saved souls because white ways cannot be shoved into native hearts. The failure of Nathan’s garden parallels the failure of the Prices to evangelize the Africans, who, despite Nathan’s offensiveness, do all they can in secret to keep the Price family alive in a beautiful but dangerous environment.

The Poisonwood Bible is a story of the small and the vast ways humans misunderstand one another at a cost of misery and misshapen lives. The book doesn’t present Africa’s people or politics as inferior to Euro-American people and politics. Kingsolver, like the whites murdered in Congo’s violent struggles and the blacks murdered daily in American cities, knows that skin color matters. To many. But Kingsolver tries, and succeeds, in showing that skin color doesn’t matter to nature. Nature succors and annihilates evenhandedly without regard to race—or even to species—and nature is Africa’s beating heart.

My take-away, apart from seeing yet another dysfunctional family inflict scars on one another, was this: in Africa, western “civilization” blundered in to perfectly balanced systems that had become that way over thousands of years and ruined them. Missionarying has been going on for hundreds of years and will go on forever; it occurs any time one human being disrespects another human’s choices. As Kingsolver says, “everything you’re sure is right can be wrong in another place.”

Good book. Screws on your head a bit differently. Educational and surprising and worth your time. Can be bought for the price of a cup of coffee at a used book store near you.