Weekly Geeks – What’s in a name?

This week’s topic is what’s in a name, and it’s all about the meanings of favourite character names and whether they suit the character or not (to paraphrase what was described much better here).

On eof my favourite novels is Family Happiness by Laurie Colwin (long overdue for a re-read) and one of the reasons I enjoyed it so much was the main character with the wonderful name of Polly Solo-Miller Demarest.  So I thought I’d find out what the name Polly meant.

What was interesting was that I found different meanings in different places, I assume becuase Polly as a name in it’s own right is fairly new (in the UK it’s usually a diminutive of Mary). The meanings were “bitter” and “great sorrow”. The second one I can see fitting in the context of the story (which is about a woman in love with two men, a synopsis which doesn’t do justice to how light and well-written the novel is) but bitter didn’t seem right to me at all.

And that makes me wonder whether the author just liked the sound of the name, or whether she had researched and carefully picked it….