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What's in a name? A lot, as V.E. Schwab has discovered. Whether it was her liking the name 'Alucard' and putting it in a story without knowing that it was 'Dracula' spelled backwards, and has its own history within vampire media, or accidentally naming her two main characters in her novel after herself, V.E. Schwab is well aware of the hardships that come with naming your characters.  And let's be real here, coming up with fantasy names is a difficult task. But when writers hit their marks, it's incredible - I'm thinking of that one A Song of Ice and Fire character named JONOTHOR.

 At MCM x EGX 2024, Schwab dished on how her two characters in her novel Vicious came to be named after her.

"The only other non-intentional thing is, Victor and Eli are named for me," reveals Schwab. "And I didn't really think about that. My name is Victoria Elizabeth and I wrote that book at a time when I didn't think anyone was going to read it, so I just named these two halves of my personality as 'Victor' and 'Eli,' it just seemed like the right thing to do. And then my editor was the one who called attention to it one day, she was like, 'We're going to use your initials for this book,' because it was my first adult novel and I wanted to set it apart from my YA. And she was like, 'What's your middle initial?' And I was like, 'Oh, it's 'E.'' She was like, 'What does that stand for?' And I was like, 'Oh, Elizabeth.'

"And there was this really long silence on the line, and she was like, 'You mean to tell me, you named your characters in this book after yourself?' And I was like [whispering] 'Oh nooooo...' And at that point it was too late to change my name and it was too late to change my characters, so I just kind of had to go with it."  

Schwab is stronger than me, because if I had to sit through that "really long silence" on the phone with an editor as they put the pieces together, I would have burst into flames. I do think it's really sweet though that she has two characters that stand in for the two initials in her name. And the names she chose are very subtle. It's not like she rolled out with "Vigilius" or "Volutianus" and "Ermenfridus" or "Euplius" (sorry to all the Vigiliuses, Volutianuses, Ermenfriduses, and Eupliuses of the world, I think you can understand where I'm coming from here). Who's to say that Schwab can't dabble in a little self-reference every now and then?

Just like yourself, the Popverse staff spends a whole lot of time with our respective noses in respective books. It's why we've come up with stuff like:

• The hottest upcoming fiction
• Queer romance to add to your reading list
• A reading guide to Cassandar Clare's Shadowhunter Chronicles

...and a whole lot more. Join our metaphorical library, won't you? There are no late fees and you can be as loud as you want, so long as the people you live with are OK with it.