The hardest thing is finding a name for the character. He takes shape in your
head, he moves and speaks, he shows his potentials and capabilities. You learn
to know him, to manage his personality, to imagine his reactions, to read his
mind… but you don’t know his bloody name! I don’t know about you, but as far
as I’m concerned I find it a real struggle… to give you a vague idea of the
trouble we went through, some of Nelshael’s characters have had, for months, names taken from space coordinates… it is true that the origin of names is extremely ancient; people at a certain stage got fed up with “normal” names, with the result of christening a lot of Italian babies with ridiculously silly names… Believe me: even finding a name for a fictional character is a real headache !
Yoon
has always been Yoon. We took the name from an artist of Korean origin, called Joon, who published some very nice drawings on a magazine..
Jas is named after Jasbinder Mann , singer of Babylon Zoo… does anybody remember them? Anyway, it’s an adaptation of his real name (Giacomo), so there you go.

Irene used to be called… do you really need to know? Well, her name was Yeriki, but I cannot be held responsible for this ugliness (right, Leah?). Her name has been recently changed to Irene, but she did not suffer from this, especially because her peculiar characteristics are all concentrated on her breasts…

Kylieis a long story. Initially, Ophy decided to call her Kirie, from the title of a videoclip they were showing while she was
sketching the character. Later on she decided to be a little less mystical and settled for the better sounding Kilie, from that cute girl who sang "Where the wild roses grow" with Nick Cave. Yes, we are talking about Kilie Minogue. No, we do not like her music that much… anyway, Kylie is her middle name (her mum was a sucker for names taken from soaps and tv series), her first name is Barbara (her dad was less keen on tv names), but if you try to call her Barbie, she will chop your head off. With her teeth. So Kylie it is, then!


Eblis makes no sense whatsoever, trust me. I found it on a dictionary of Angels and Demons, I liked it, I decided to use it. Any mystical reference is completely unintended, regardless of her awful personality. Fact is, we don’t know what her real name might be, everybody calls her Eblis, she must have a veeeeery bad sounding name…

One of the first officially given names was Tristan, after Ophy highly droolling over the screen while Brad Pitt, his long blond hair and inflatable lips, was playing his role on Legends of the Fall. Any eventual graphic reminder of his heritage is purely coincidential…

Sheerin has been among the last to receive a name (don’t ask me where it might come from, because I just can’t remember), and we still have the occasional doubt about the spelling… Alema was originally called Spectra (a name picked at random from products for sale at my optician’s), but then somebody pointed out that in the Beautiful soap there was something or other using the same name, therefore we immediately decided to change it. Her princess status implies that her name is extremely long (Almea Spectra Astarbe of Goran), but Hysterical Princess suits her quite right…

Othar has always been Othar; Liam is Yul’s creation: she always said it was a nice name. Zemira was the name Ophy’s mum choose for
her third born, who thought better of it and decided to be a male.
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Characters’ page
translated by ANDY