The importance of names.

My name is Aubrey, which everyone tells me is a pretty name. I choose to believe them. However, when people ask what it means I'm sure they're expecting something just as pretty. Maybe God's grace or Snow falling on white cherry blossoms in the fog. I don't know. But what my name does mean is "blonde elf ruler".

Yep.

Elves. They're all mine. Dibs especially on the blonde ones. Or maybe it's because I was born blonde. Whatevs, I have a ridiculous name. I'm named after a park where my mother was when she met my dad (aww, romantic!) What I'm trying to say is, names can be important because they carry stories and images.

One thing I like to think about is what would happen if Jacob Black and Bella Swan got together with a hyphenated name. They'd be the Black-Swans.

I think that is totally awesome! Swans are actually fairly nasty creatures, uppity and territorial. I kind of like the extremes of the bird, looking so pretty and yet being so mean. And black swans (barring the psychological ballet drama) are even more fabulous. I love unconventional beauty and all the ripe symbolism that comes with a black swan.

But now that I'm re-writing this clustercuss I can't use the same names. I'm combining some of the characters (they were meager to begin with) and I'm throwing plenty of my own pizazz to make this mine, but I have a response and it needs to be heard. Even if it is only heard by a dozen people.

But I'm stuck on the names. I like Adam for Jacob, because "adam" means Everyman and I want to write this from his perspective as a human representative in a wacky world (poor sap). I thought Jacob was a good choice for the original series because it means usurper and I was always rooting for Jacob to usurp Edward's position in the triangle!

But I'm stuck beyond that. I have ideas and hopes, little symbols that I'd like to pop in for added depth without making them too obvious or clunky. My vampires choose their own names and so they will be significantly more symbolic (I'd like to name the family Nuvola, Cavogente, or Mancanza. These have meaning for me but I don't want the difficulty of the Italian name to cause the reader to stumble. Originally I thought to name them Mangiapane but I like that name too much and I also don't think anyone can pronounce it*.

What do you think? Are names important or secondary? Can I just name them all Bill, Bob, Jane and Missy or should I really put care into their titles?

*mahn-ja-pahn-A!