What Names for Waterfolk?

What Names for Waterfolk? Names and Naming Post 14 

When I started writing the Fairy in the Bed series, I dealt with just one kind of fay. As

the series expanded, I brought in more. To justify having them different (they're all fay or fairies, but many of them categorise themselves beyond that) I came up with naming systems to suit each group.

Part of the fun, if not making up the names from scratch, lies in adapting existing names and finding enough that fit recognisably into a culture.

The Waterfolk, who term themselves maids and lads, are like the treefolk in their taste for short names. Unlike the treefolk, they don't use surnames or clan names. Some of them choose classical names from Greek or Roman mythology, but whether they take them directly from that source or from some intermediary source is not yet established.
Hector and Poll are two who have classical names. (Poll's full name is probably Pollux.)  Then there are Niss and Plie. Niss is another classical name and Plie is a French dance term. Lilla uses a modified version of Lily.
Hector and Lilla have a daughter named Kin.
Another family group includes Tia and her granddaughters Sha and Mari. 
Fee is a boisterous redhead, and Hula an elderly water maid who appears in the short story Feeling the Waves.
Janus is another water lad with a classical name. Then there's Tam,  who has six children, none of whom is fully waterfolk, but all of whom have waterfolk-style names. Tam's children are Tane, Becca, Whim, Rye, Finn and Lee. Kishie, a pixie maid, has a "water grandad" so it's possible her name is also following the waterfolk mode.  Ku is Hector's mother, but we haven't met her yet.


The Fairy in the Bed series is showcased at Larksinger while the books can be purchased from the publisher.

About the Blog

Sally is Sally Odgers; author, anthologist and reader. You can find you way into her maze of websites and blogs via the portal here.(Sally is me, by the way.)

The goal for 2017 was to write a post a day profiling the background behind one of my books; how it came to be written, what it's about, and any things of note that happened along the way. 2017 is well behind us, but I ran out of year before running out of books. As of June 2018 I STILL hadn't run out of books, but many of those still to come are MIA by which I mean I don't have copies and remember little about them. There are more new books in the pipeline, and I'm certainly showcasing those, but in between times, I'm profiling some of my characters, places and objects. Thank you so much to everyone who's come along on this journey so far!