Today’s featured book is perfect now that spooky season is well and truly upon us – a haunting portal thriller, partly inspired by the author’s fervent childhood desire to track down the wardrobe which would grant her entry to the magical realm of Narnia. Be sure to read Susan’s special piece about how the Irish language inspired the names of some of her characters.

“It’s the week before Halloween and Marina is about to turn thirteen. Her father died a year ago. Her mother has strangely fallen asleep and no-one can wake her. She is sent to live with her mysterious grandmother who tells her that that you can enter a strange world between the ever falling rain in the west of Ireland. Marina enters a haunting watery world full of strange creatures, demons, gods and dream makers. Meanwhile, in our world a strange sleeping sickness has taken over. Will Marina be back in time? Can she survive?”

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The significance of names in The World Between the Rain and the Irish language

When you make up a world you also get to have lots of fun making up names for places and the people who inhabit that world. Marina’s name connects her to the sea and her sister’s name Seri (short for Seraphina) means fiery. Both words have Latin origins, but the biggest influence on names in my novel, particularly for the people and places in the world between the rain, was the Irish language. 

Irish (Gaeilge) is an ancient language, one of the Celtic languages along with Scottish and Manx Gaelic and Welsh, Cornish and Breton. It’s a language closely intertwined with the landscape, a language full of poetry and myth and humour. For those of you who know Irish, you might recognise some of the place names and character names which were derived from certain words or phrases in Irish.  For those of you who don’t, here’s some help.

Place names in the novel:

The town that Marina lives in is called Ballinaday. It’s not a real town, but it’s based on my hometown of Clonakilty in West Cork and the village of Ardmore in Waterford where I spent all my childhood summer. The name I gave this town is also made up, but it could come from the Irish, Baile na déithe (sounds like Bal-ya na day-ha), which would mean town of the gods.

Ishka. This is a floating city in the world between the rain. The name comes from uisce (sounds like ish-ka), the Irish word for water.

Kailta. This is another city in the world between the rain, a very different city to Ishka, This name comes from caillte(sounds like kyle-cha), the Irish word for lost.

Character names:

Tala. A boy Marina meets when she slips into the world between the raindrops. His name comes from the Irish word talamh (sounds like tol-ov), meaning earth, ground, or land

Fiadh (sounds like Fee-ya). Another character Marina meets in the world between the rain. I won’t tell you too much about her as you’ll have to meet her for yourself, but I can tell you that Fiadh is a beautiful Irish first name, which means wild

Cablo and Tuaim are two frogs who run The Office of the Lost and Forgotten. It is not the Lost and Found, because they have never found anything. They only deal with the lost. 

Cablo’s name comes from caibleadh (which sounds like kab-loo), the Irish word for the spirit voices heard in the distance at sea on calm nights  I found this word in Manchan Magán’sSea Tamagotchi series, where he travelled the western coast of Ireland collecting sea words, maritime terms & coastal customs: https://www.manchan.com/sea-tamagotchi)

Tuaim’s name come from the Irish word, tuaim (which sounds like two-im), meaning the sound of the sea banging against land. This was another word I discovered through Manchan Magán’s Sea Tamagotchi series.

Thank you Susan for that fascinating piece. Irish names always seem to have a quite magical, otherworldly feel to them so I’ve loved reading about how the names in your book came about.

Jo.

*Many thanks to Everything With Words for inviting me to be a part of this blog tour*