How Ranleigh Meeks
Got His Name

Ranleigh Meeks wasn't always Ranleigh Meeks.

For the first three or four drafts of Meeks, his name was Raymond. Raymond Meeks.

I needed a name that could be shortened, partly as a way of distinguishing between the character's two lives. In the warehouse, in his real life, he was Ray. In his other life, he was Raymond. That way, readers could tell which life they were in by how I referred to him.

There was also a scene in the original manuscript where, as a child, Raymond was embarrassed by his name and humiliated by a teacher over it. The problem was that Raymond wasn't a particularly unusual name, so the scene didn't quite work.

I'd read an interview with Joyce Carol Oates where she said something along the lines of not having to put everything in your pantry into the recipe.

I kept that in mind, but for the first draft, I put just about everything I had into it, knowing that I would be taking things out later.

And that's what I did.

My first draft was enormous. During subsequent drafts, I started removing things that weren't necessary, including that scene with the teacher.

But Raymond stayed.

When I revised Meeks, I wasn't just making corrections to the existing manuscript. I was actually typing the entire novel out again with each new draft.

And after typing Raymond and Ray hundreds of times, I started to loathe the name.

I knew I was going to get rid of it.

For reasons integral to the story, I needed a name beginning with R, and one that could be shortened. Since the character was born in 1970, like me, I started looking through lists of popular boys' names from that year.

I didn't like any of them.

So I left it. That's usually what I do when something isn't working. I forget it and move on.

During one of the COVID lockdowns, I'd sometimes take my kid for a drive through a neighbourhood in Toronto where I'd lived as a child. We'd pick up a slice of pizza and eat it in the car.

One afternoon, we were driving through the neighbourhood and stopped at a red light.

I looked up at the street sign.

Ranleigh Avenue.

Bang! That was it.

I knew immediately that I'd found his name.

Ranleigh Meeks. Leigh in the warehouse. Ranleigh in his other life.

Thank you very much. I'll take that.

The funny thing is that Ranleigh would have worked much better with that childhood scene I'd removed. It's an unusual name, certainly unusual enough for a kid to be embarrassed by it. But I never put the scene back.

There was another unexpected bonus.

If you search for Ranleigh Meeks online, at least from what I've been able to find, every result points back to my character. I haven't come across another Ranleigh Meeks anywhere.

That's pretty difficult to accomplish when you're naming a fictional character.

And now I love the name because Ranleigh fits him to a T.

And so I found Ranleigh on a street sign while waiting for a traffic light to change.