What's in a Name?

"Names are an important key to what a society values. Anthropologists recognize naming as one of the chief methods for imposing order on perception." ~David S. Slawson

I found a baby names book on the bottom of my parent’s bookshelf. After silently thanking them for naming me the sixth most popular girls name of the eighties (there are 2 other Rachels in my group of 7), I went through and picked out the names of my avatars.

Romantic Traveler: Ava (birdlike) or Chloe (young grass). Which do you like?
Postmodern Traveler: Gipsy (wanderer)
Photographer: Myra (quiet song)
Experiencer: Shelley (“from the meadow on the edge,” a spin off of my own name, and I like that it reminds me of Percy Shelley)
Native: Akau, my name in Twi

And Alma (learned soul)… I am considering a poet. Before I was thinking I would squish my poetry into the romantic and the postmodern, but I don’t know that it is the same. If I decide to do this, it means less show time for the other ones.

So lets iron this out. I am doing research approximately 90 days. But this whole thing could start as soon as I leave, ending when I return from England, maybe even a little bit after with a reflection piece from one of them. Still, I figure my travel time will be about 100 days, about 14 weeks.

If we do a day breakdown on a 100-day assignment… 85 with Shelley taking every Sunday… it is 17 days for 5 characters.

I think I will have Alma. With her, each character will have a run for 4 days, five if I really like a particular one that week, and that way I will be each character 4 times in the field with a little room to grow if I want. Plus Akua probably will just be a voice here and there and not a full-blown character experiment depending on how well that goes.

Also, I have decided it might be cool to add some of the kids writing. Obviously I would claim it to be theirs, but that might be an interesting authentic piece to a totally anti authentic themed narrative that will serve as voices like Akua.

This is exciting!