Character names

As I start to plan my novel, it's becoming very clear to me that I need to pick out my characters' names now, or else things will get too confusing.

Like many other novelists, Lewis was very careful with his character names. They all mean something (well, almost all):

• Ambrosio: divine, immortal
• Agnes: chaste, pure, holy
• Antonia: unknown, but someone said something about a flower, so I'm going with that
• Lorenzo: "from Laurentum" (WTF?)
• Raymond: advice, protector/protecting hands
• Matilda: mighty in battle/strength in battle

For the most part, I want more contemporary-sounding names. So I did searches on a couple of name websites to find names with similar meanings. Here's what I came up with.

• Ambrosio: Esmond (? but I like it), Osbourne, Oscar, Oswald
• Agnes: Katherine, Phoebe, Maria, Theresa, Jessabell, Candace, Karen, Ariana, Bianca, Winifred
• Antonia: n/a
• Lorenzo: n/a
• Raymond: Edmund, Jacob
• Matilda: Gertrude, Mildred, Audrey

Hmm. Interesting. Here are my choices, I think.

• Ambrosio: Ambrosio is really the protagonist, so this is hard. My instinct is to go with Osbourne and have him go by Oz for short, but that might be stupid. Come back to this one.
• Agnes: Lots of good choices, but I love the name Phoebe.
• Antonia: I'm going with the flower thing and call her Lily.
• Lorenzo: Tough one, because this name has no meaning to me. So I'll pick randomly. Lorenzo, you are hereby christened . . . Zachary. I picked it because I like the name, but it turns out it also means "God remembers." Appropriate for Lorenzo's character.
• Raymond: Ooh, I love the name Jacob.
• Matilda: Ditto for Audrey.

Still not sure about Osbourne, but the others seem okay. Zachary will be Zach, I imagine. Everyone else will go by his or her full name.

So one more time:

Oz
Phoebe
Lily
Zach
Jacob
Audrey

All the women's names end in an "ee" sound. Might switch Phoebe to Theresa or Resa.