As you write, choosing character names can be a fun little side-story. In my book, Bentari, I used names from my own family tree (Badollet), a friend’s name (Farley Maxwell who married us—became narrator Max Farleigh), and the name of a personal hero (Wangari Maathai—Kenya’s “Mother of Trees”). But the majority of names were conjured out of my mind in close conjunction with my ear. Does it sound right, I asked? Well, it had to “ring” well in my mind’s ear in order for my pen to settle on it.

Naming the title character (and eventually, the title) became a fun little side-story that bordered on torture. It had to sound right, sure. It had to be right—absolutely right. And I had to know it one-thousand per cent—beyond all question—without a flicker of doubt! It must be perfect. What fun. Hmmm. Flipping through the phone book was no help here. The fun lasted, too, since my version of self-imposed perfection did not permit variation from my own masochistic standard. “Bentari” didn’t exactly come out of the blue like a bolt of lightning. But when it did occur to me, it did sound right—right from the very instant that it settled on me.

In truth, I cannot say from where it came. Romantically, I can assign all sorts of possible derivations—such as my childhood love for movies like “Ben Hur” and “Hatari”. But I do not really think that those memories worked their way into my thought process. It was, after all, merely a matter of my imagination toiling with love along with partners tongue and ear. Voila—it came!

Mbara, the name of Bentari’s tribe, came to me much faster and much easier. I “thunk” it up, goodness knows how, right out of my brain. It hit my ear, check. My tongue, double-check. Done! So let it be written. I did not research the name. It just sounded good to me and seemed to fit. This was in the mid-1980’s.

A few years ago, when I watched a documentary on TV about the human Diaspora coming out of Africa[1], the concluding segment stunned me. In it, the narrator/researcher Stephen Oppenheimer[2] explained how genetic evidence traces human ancestry back to one population in Africa—called Mbara!

The image on this page shows our Badollet family tree—we know the names in part of our family history dating to 1485. My grandmother Genevieve is among the top branches of the 12th generation shown here. Now we suspect that if we followed our roots back far enough into the mists of time, our own family names may well have belonged to members of a society of Africans—the Mbara.

[1] See: http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/stephenoppenheimer/

[2] See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Oppenheimer