DEVOTION: Significant Names ~ Shirley Corder

It's crazy the amount of time and effort we authors can spend trying to come up with a suitable name for our Work In Progress, especially when we know it will almost certainly undergo a name change if it is bought by a publisher. 

For example, my book with the working title of Rise and Soar above the Cancer Valley, has as its key Scripture, Isaiah 40:31: They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up on wings as eagles. The beautiful cover portrays a woman with her arms outstretched, apparently preparing to rise and soar, and there are a number of meditations that refer to eagles. Yet the publishers changed its name to Strength Renewed, Meditations for Your Journey through Breast Cancer, still based on the same Scripture, but emphasizing a different part of the verse. That’s how it works in the publishing world.

As parents, we agonize over names for our babies when they are still in the womb. In our case, this was before the days of scans where you could learn the baby’s sex (which of course gives away my age) and so we had to be prepared with a boy’s name as well as a girl’s. A number of the young women in my family have given their unborn babies cutsie names, knowing they would change them after the baby’s birth. So we have had a Rosebud, a Sweetie Pie, a Strawberry, and even a Frog. In these cases I was more than a little relieved when their names were changed after birth.

Have you ever gone on a road trip or studied a map, and wondered why towns are named as they are? Here in South Africa, we have a small town in the Northern Cape called Pofadder, the Afrikaans translation of Puff Adder, which is one of our most venomous snakes. Did someone get bitten by a Puff Adder there? Who knows?

Klein Mier Nommer Een is a tiny town, also in the Northern Cape, which translated from Afrikaans means Little Ant Number One. Now where did that come from? It’s hard to believe there were so few little ants in that dusty little town, they started to number them!

On the West Coast, we find Tietiesbaai, which literally translated would be something like Boobies Bay, probably named after the many round smooth boulders dotted on its beautiful beach.

75 km from Cape Town we have a quaint farming town fittingly called Darling. Then in the North West province, some 200 km west of Pretoria, we have a dot on the map with the incredible name of Tweebuffelsmeteenskootmorsdoodgeskietfontein. Translated into English this means Two- buffalo-shot-dead-in-one-shot Spring. Really? 

Traveling through the Small Karoo Desert, you may stop at the little town which is a popular pit-stop for heavy trucks and holiday makers, called Leeu-Gamka. This is obviously so named because this is where the Leeu (Lion) River joins the Gamka River.

Then we have Ogies, which translates into Little Eyes, an old coal mining town in Mpumalanga, This apparently derived its name from a nearby farm, Oogiesfontein, or a fountain with many eyes (or springs).

If we turn to Scripture we see a similar pattern, where places were named after actual events, such as Jehovah-Jirah, meaning Jehovah will provide, the place where God provided Abraham with a ram for sacrifice in the place of his son, Isaac. Then there’s Beth-El, meaning House of God, at the place where Jacob dreamed of angels ascending and descending a ladder to Heaven. There are also places named after emotions such as Esek (meaning contention) and Sitnah (Enmity) where the Philistines fought with Isaac for the use of watering holes.

Dene Ward, in her devotional guide, Flight Paths, asks what we would call our homes. 

It's a good question. Would we name them after an emotion? Or after an event? What would be a good name for your home? Could you call it Beth-El, House of God? Or would it be more aptly called, Esek, because of the emotions that fly throughout the day?

If you were to give the place you live a new name today, what would it be? What title could you hang on the door that would give visitors an idea of what to expect when they entered into your home, whether it is a beautiful mansion or a one-roomed apartment? I dare you to share it as a comment below. Maybe your home already has a name. Please share it with us, and tell us how it got its name.

SHIRLEY CORDER lives on the coast in South Africa with her husband, Rob. Her book, Strength Renewed: Meditations for your Journey through Breast Cancer contains 90 meditations based on her time in the cancer valley.

Sign up here to receive a short devotional message from Shirley in your inbox once a week.

Please visit Shirley through ShirleyCorder.com, where she encourages writers, or at  RiseAndSoar.com, where she encourages those in the cancer valley. You can also meet with her on Twitter or FaceBook.  

The continuing saga of choosing those names


Choosing just the right name, whether it be for a real child or a ‘book child’, can certainly be a torturous journey. A couple of weeks ago, Marion Ueckermann posted her blog ‘What’s in a Name?’ here where she shared the journey of choosing her new grandson Liam’s name and also that of her novelette, Helsinki Sunrise. I was so interested to read her blog, as our daughter was then days away from having her second child and still struggling with choosing a name. Now it is all over and she and her husband are the proud parents of a new baby girl, but watching their journey reminded me of my own struggles in choosing the titles of some of my books.

Maxine and her proud Nanna!

Because our son-in-law Kofi is from Ghana, there are added complications when choosing a baby’s name. Often, Ghanaians are named after the day of the week on which they were born—and these differ according to whether the baby is a boy or a girl. ‘Kofi’ means ‘Friday’, the day our grandson was also born. However, to avoid confusion, Kofi and Tina opted to call their son Zain Kofi. Already they have various friends called Kofi as well, except one is called ‘Kofi Plumber’ and another ‘Kofi Junior’ and so on! So when it came to their daughter, they chose not to use the Twi word for Tuesday. Instead, along with the names Maxine Marie, they decided to include Kofi’s mother’s surname—which is different from Kofi’s because, in Ghana, you can choose a different surname for your children!

Phew—so you thought choosing book titles was complicated?! Compared with that, naming my books was nothing really. My first novel had to be Heléna, the name of the Czech migrant we had known years earlier who inspired the book. I then decided I would use another girl’s name ending in ‘a’ for my next novel and chose Laura, soon to be followed by yet another, Jenna. But then it was decided my first novel needed to be divided into two, which put paid to my little plan! Eventually, I called this second half of my first novel All the Days of My Life, from Psalm 23:6, since I felt this verse encapsulated the attitude of my lovely heroine Heléna.

Having messed up my run of names ending in ‘a’, I decided to abandon that idea entirely. I called my fifth novel Heléna’s Legacy and my sixth The Inheritance—despite the fact that there are umpteen books out there already entitled The Inheritance! I still felt it summed up key issues in the book—the ungodly inheritance of anger and bitterness passed down to the main male character from his family, along with his material inheritance, with all this contrasting to our heavenly inheritance. With my memoir Soul Friend, I was well aware another book with that title already existed but went ahead anyway. The ancient Celtic term ‘soul friend’ describes my lovely spiritual mentor Joy to a tee and seems to have captured the hearts and minds of many of my readers, for which I am very grateful.

How have you fared in your own book titling journey? Maybe your publisher has the final say—and I did listen to my publisher with my last two at least—but I’m glad I had the final choice. They are my babies, after all! 

Jo-Anne Berthelsen lives in Sydney but grew up in Brisbane. She holds degrees in Arts and Theology and has worked as a high school teacher, editor and secretary, as well as in local church ministry. Jo-Anne is passionate about touching hearts and lives through both the written and spoken word. She is the author of six published novels and one non-fiction work, Soul Friend: the story of a shared spiritual journey. Jo-Anne is married to a retired minister and has three grown-up children and three grandchildren. For more information, please visit www.jo-anneberthelsen.com or www.soulfriend.com.au.