[name_m]Hi[/name_m] everyone, first time here.
[name_f][/name_f]The dilemma is that I’m reworking a very old story from when I was younger, and up until now the plan was to always have my protagonist be a 17-year-old boy named [name_m]Nickolas[/name_m] “Kole” Jacarei. That’s been his name for as long as I can remember.
[name_f][/name_f]But recently, I had the thought of… what if he was a girl, instead? What would this change for my narrative? I’d always had this mild disappointment that my cast was very boy-heavy (I myself am a woman and the representation of female characters has always been important to me), but something in me just said “okay, but. you can change that if you want”, so here I am. The problem is I’m just not sure what to name her.
Here’s the important criteria:
[name_f][/name_f][name_f][/name_f]— I need her name to have two possible nicknames [name_f][/name_f]— one that she uses for herself now, and one that other adults would have used for her when she was younger. To use her old name as an example, [name_m]Nickolas[/name_m] was called [name_m]Nicky[/name_m] as a child, but started to distance himself from it and went by [name_m]Kole[/name_m] instead when he was older. The two nicknames are also important to a character reveal later on.
[name_f][/name_f][name_f][/name_f]— her name is a reference/in honor of another person (her father or paternal grandmother). The parental grandmother would likely have a full name that skews more vintage.
[name_f][/name_f][name_f][/name_f]— not super picky about nationality/era of the name but I will note that the protagonist, her father, and parental grandmother are [name_m]Black[/name_m] and the story is set in the 2010s (so she would have been born in the very end of the 20th century).
Thank you so much for your help in advance, sorry if this is coming off as kind of picky, but I’ve been looking at names for a few days and haven’t found much I liked and wanted another person’s perspective.