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name could roll off your tongue like desire, shimmy like the belly of a practiced dancer, or itch like a grain of sand in your sneaker.
    Always her mother’s daughter, Sia took to naming things at a very young age. When she was only two, she named her favorite tree “Jack,” in hopes it would grow as tall as the beanstalk in her favorite fairy tale, eventually leading to sweets and riches, and just eight months later, she renamed her favorite book. Its original title,
A Golden Walk
, bored the heck out of her, so she renamed it
Tussle and Run
.
    As time passed, Sia took on bigger, more serious naming projects, ones that could and often did determine the fate of her subject. Three weeks after getting a puppy for her seventh birthday, she announced her name during dessert.
    â€œBernadette,” she said, cradling the wriggling pooch like an infant.
    Her father was incredulous. “Your dog’s name is Bernadette?” he said. Dogs were supposed to be called Rex or Midnight or Fletch, not Betty or Bitsy or Bernadette.
    M smiled.
    â€œYes,” Sia said. “I read that many years ago there was a famous English bulldog named Bernadette who saved three children from a sinking raft. My Bernadette looks exactly like that Bernadette. We live close to the water, so someday maybe my Bernadette will have to save some children too.”
    Sia’s father shook his head. He didn’t think this silly pooch would be capable of saving anything, but when three years later Bernadette dragged a toddler from a snaggle of rough waves, he patted Sia proudly on the back and scratched Bernadette behind the ears.
    In college, Sia inherited a guinea pig from a friend who drank away too many Tuesdays and failed out of university after only two semesters. She pondered its name for five weeks, considering the usual criteria: color, markings, gender, size, habits, quirks, genus and species, and so on. But it wasn’t until she focused on the obvious that she discovered the animal’s true and proper name: Pig.
    Sia was delighted and from that experience learned a whole lot about trusting the process and letting go of weighty expectations.
    Henry was Sia’s favorite plant.
    Gramma, her spider plant whose hundreds of babies hung like dreadlocks on a Rastafarian, required the least amount of care.
    She had a goldfish named Clever and a statue of Shakespeare she called Herbert because she needed to reduce the brilliant writer to a nerdy, normal, everyday kind of guy so that she could believe that someone like her could eventually write something like he had. Something that would be read for millennia to come.
    Most importantly there was Gumper, whose name she’d heard in her dreams many years before she met him.
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    During her twenties, Sia published two novels:
Bolt
and
Girl Has Wings
, both of which demanded excruciatingly painful naming processes, the first lasting three weeks and the second, three months.
    â€œOh, for Pete’s sake, Sia,” Jilly said, rolling her eyes during the first rigmarole, “here’s a short list. Pick one.”
    â€œIt’s not that easy,” Sia said and tossed the short list in the trash.
    During the naming of
Girl Has Wings
, the pressure was on.
    â€œYou’re famous, Sia,” Jilly said. “Your readers love you. They’ll buy this book no matter what you call it.”
    â€œWhat kind of editor are you? Doesn’t it matter that the book has the right title?”
    â€œSia, I’ve got to give my boss a title . . . today. It’s been months. Each of the titles on this list has been approved. All you have to do is pick one.”
    â€œYou’ll get a title when I have a title. Tell your boss to stick it.”
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    A few years after Sia left for college, her father confided to her that although he hadn’t shared his wife’s fear that they would lose