I’m going through a list of fairytales and deciding what to name the characters within them. For example, I have a version of Little Red Riding Hood which is honestly a little more similar to The Way Past Winter than anything else… but ‘Red’ is Rhoswen, and the protagonist is younger sister ‘these red capes are a literal curse, mum, third time wasn’t even a charm if you count Dad’s red boots’ Eira – ‘snow’. Basically the ‘retold’ factor is instead of a wolf for Eira it’s a literal magic forest, so faeries. Or fey. Something along those lines.
It’s pretty confusing, and explaining would basically spoil The Way Past Winter as well so… not gonna properly explain that.
Anyway, next comes ‘Snow-White and Rose-Red’. Not even gonna start on that, but since it’s the same town, it’s the same woods, and a similar problem. The characters there are Snowdrop and Rosamond Finn, who just simply go by Snow and Rose the whole time. There’s also added sister Bluebell or, you guessed it, Blue. Who ends up with hardly-a-nickname-Bluebird by the end of the tale.
And then we have Cinderella! Which… issues. I’ve got it under the working title ‘The Ashen Twins’ (boy-girl), and that’s as far as I got in terms of names. I don’t want to just straight up call the girl ‘Ella’, but I’m not sure what to call her instead. Also, the stepsisters… I mean, every important character there, really.
On the plus side, I do have a name for a character in a far more obscure tale than Cinderella (at least in my eyes since I forgot I knew the darn thing until I looked up a list of princesses in fairytales and realised that a lot are just ‘Princess’) – Lisette, for Elisa from ‘The Wild Swans’ (about a princess whose eleven brothers are turned into swans or something along those lines). Don’t know if an actual retelling is necessary but there’s a name.
So. Cinderella names, and other tales to twist would be great too! Not Snow White, though. I’m debating what to do with that since I already have a Snow and also Eira.
