I'm doing a lot of reworking of my original ideas for my story, including the main character's identity to be more fitting. I need a nickname that will suit her. It's a female character, but masculine sounding names are not an issues and are actually preferred. She has deep gray feathered wings, and I want her nickname to be based around that. However, while it can be cheesy I don't want anything cliche or pretentious like Ash, Misty, Gracie, Dusky, or related names. It needs to be something that represents her taking on her new life and new chance at life, while also being genuine. The problems I've had so far coming up with names is that they sound fine but when I imagine the other characters screaming her name in a crises, it breaks the seriousness of the scene. Thanks in advance for help!
While sometimes I decide the names of my characters early, sometimes it takes a long time. In my fantasy series, I did not decide the MC name until the development draft of book 2. By that point, the story began to flesh out along with the characters and a great name came to me. I used a placeholder name until that point. I love my MC name, but, it was inspired by actually writing the story. Godspeed!
Ok, the first thing I associated with gray wings was "Heron" as in the Grey Heron. Heron is also a greek man's name, held for example by Heron of Alexandria. It seems there was a bird deity in Egypt mythology that was associated with sun, creation and rebirth and was depicted as a heron. Look towards the end of the Wikipedia article on the Grey Heron.
I don't normally play the 'name my character' game, because I feel it's very personal and entirely up to the author. But this is good. Very good. If I were writing that story, I'd choose Heron. Excellent name. Isn't fluffy or cute, but strong connection to grey bird. Easy to remember. Easy to pronounce, easy on the eye, etc. And it's not a gender-specific name either.
