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My characters have undergone the same process of simplification as the colors. Now that they have been simplified, they appear more human and alive than if they had been represented in all their details.

I make up names for people all the time - it's part of writing. Very often, the name comes with the character, along with of a sense of who they are and what they do.

Characters are often revealed by the ways they misapprehend others.

You could have names like Hatred; you could have names that mean something like Suffering or Poverty. So names are not just names: names have real meaning, and they tend to tell the world about the circumstances of your parents at the time that you were born.

There are some characters in 'The Names' who are very much heroes and others who can only be called villains. But generally, as we get to know them, we see most of the characters are, or at least become, quite nuanced.

In real life, there are names that surprise us because they don't seem to suit the person at all.

How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers names.