The Names of the Characters

The accompanying watercolor I did for this blog is of Tafari, she's a little bee-eater bird native to Africa. Her character is introduced at the Celebration of Youth, where all of the young animals get to demonstrate their "gift" and how they'll use it. It's a celebration held on a regular basis on Carifa. Tafari's name means he who inspires awe. Traditionally, it was a name reserved for males, but I wanted my little Tafari, with her girl power, to inspire awe as well!

Watercolor of Tafari

To explain the names of the characters, I first need to talk about the setting on my fictional island of Carifa. I mostly used the flora and fauna of sub-Saharan Africa. There are exceptions, though. I did need a tree with beautiful, but deadly poisonous fruit, so I imagined and added the Kalaka tree. While working on the illustrations, I created some plant species out of a need for a certain color or shape in an illustration, but I wanted the majority of the plants and animals native to Africa for the setting. 

Most of the names are of African origin, from various languages, and have deep historical meaning and cultural significance. I tried to match the meaning of the names to the characters' personality traits. The name Asha, my main character and protagonist, means life in Swahili. I tried to use as many languages native to Africa as possible. I also kept the names I chose for my characters to three syllables or less, making it simpler for young readers. There is one exception to this, but a nickname is substituted very quickly for that reason. The names for my characters were intentional and given some thought before they were assigned.

That being said, there were some characters that I couldn't find a suitable African name that fit. For example, Stazuri, Asha's auntie, Zuri means beautiful, so I added Sta to the name to give it more meaning in the context of my story. Sta comes from my daughter's name, Stacy. My other daughter, Andrea, in the story became Andrema, mother of Asha. Andrea's oldest son's name is Ashton, so Asha became his character name. I wanted the names to be close to the names of my family since the book was written for them. Ashton's brother, London, became Londrani. Ashton's younger twin siblings, Parker and Emma, became Kato, meaning second of twins, which he is, and Kemmi —  just because it sounds good with Kato and somewhat like Emma.

I also infused bits and pieces of the personalities of my family members into their characters. I wanted them to recognize themselves in the stories that were written especially for them.