Stephenie Meyer New Moon Q&A: On Names

Stephenie Meyer has posted her answers to a host (sic) of fan questions at her web site. As promised, they are mostly about New Moon, but, sadly, they are almost all about New Moon the movie, which doesn’t tell us much about the books. I did find five questions worthy of our discussion here and I will post one every day this week along with my ‘Top Ten Things To Know about New Moon.’

Today: Character Names. Mrs. Meyer deftly avoids the question of meaning in much the same fashion as Ms. Rowling has.

How did you come up with the Twilight character names, were they random or did you have a reason behind them? – Carly

I’m not a huge research junkie, because I’m always more into creating the fantasy than the reality, but names are one of the things I do spend some research time on. For example, for Jasper’s name I searched roll calls for the confederate army in Texas. Both “Jasper” and “Whitlock” are on those lists, but not together. The name Cullen exists on seventeenth century English headstones. Other names I find by time and place of birth—I look through the most baby popular names from that year or census records from that city. Some things are more random; if I’m really stuck for a surname, I’ll flip through the phone book. For Edward, I wanted a name that had once been very romantic, but had fallen out of use (See: Edward Rochester, Edward Ferrars). Bella was the hardest for me to name, because I needed a modern name but nothing seemed to encompass her personality. I tried a lot of things that didn’t fit at all. In the end, having just surrendered the hope of ever having a daughter, I gave her the name I would have given one of my children if any of them had decided to be a girl.

Three quick thoughts:

(1) Telling us “how” she finds names is not an explanation of “why” she chooses to use a name. There are thousands of names on Civil War rolls and on seventeenth century English headstones; the question is not where did you find them, but what struck you about these names that made you decide they were apt for the character. Are we to believe that “Bella Swan” which means “beautiful swan” wasn’t a deliberate choice in an “ugly duckling” hero’s journey climaxing in apotheosis? C’mon.

(2) The importance of seventeenth century England for the Cullen family founder and his vision is central to the Mormon allegory going on in the Twilight Saga (and is discussed at length in the second part of Spotlight).

(3) Mrs. Meyer elsewhere has said that the “Edward” name choice came from favorite Bronte and Austen novel heroes. Obscuring that here by saying she was just looking for a Romantic name fallen out of favor is a bit disappointing, if characteristically self-deprecating (no small part of Mrs. Meyer’s charm).

Your thoughts?