Spiral, sorry to hear about your fire. Was everyone okay? We are just moving home after a fire that burned about a sixth of our house. We've been home a month. The fire was Oct of 2010. Hope everything is getting better. Ironically, I never would have starting writing if we hadn't had our fire. My home business closed, so I had free time and finally time to write. Take care.
Britwriter, how about Aunt Doris or the classic Aunt Martha (Leave it to Beaver). I always think that older characters should have names that older people had when I was young like Maude or Betty. But, these kids have older people in their lives with much younger names.
And think about this, someday, there will be retirement homes full of Heathers, Tiffanys, Ambers, Jessicas. Those will be the old people names. (line from Designing Women) And many of them will have tattoos and piercings. Funny.
Back to names. Naming characters is one of my favorite things to do. I printed a list of popular names and then I go through it until I hit one I like. I tend to stay away from the top 20 because the names could be trendy. Some are classics like Emily or Jacob (okay that one could be trendy now).
I hang out with a very crunchy granola group of homeschoolers and they name their kids things like Rhythm, Clastill, Groove, Sequoia. I had to add those to my list of names.
Sorry, got off track with the name thing. Getting ready to start. Changing my writing time to the AM is going to help. Good luck everybody.