How Wembly Became Wembly
“How did you come up with your main character, Wembly’s name?”
This is the question I get a lot, especially from friends and family who know me. For those of you don’t know me or haven’t read my biography, Wembly the Pug is based off my best buddy, Elvis who crossed the Rainbow Bridge in June of 2021.
Originally, I was planning on have the title of my book be The Adventures of Elvis the Pug, but it turns out that there were already two children’s book under that exact title. What are the odds of that happening?! Additionally, in my research I came to find that my pugs name is trademarked. What the heck?! I thought, “Why does it have to be my dog’s name?”
Well, as much as this information hurt me to learn, I couldn’t scrap my book. I had already written my manuscript and was beginning the illustration process. So, I had to change my main characters name, the inspiration for my book could no longer be my characters name!
Let’s Vote…
Understanding that using my best doggy friends name was no longer an option, I thought “What do I do now?” Well, as with every part of my publishing process, I reached out to my support group, comprised of family, friends, & Publishing Mastermind team, for advice. It started with a poll of possible options for the new name that included 14 ideas for names that I came up with. Each name was something that either had a personal connection or just sounded like a cool name. Additionally, I tried to choose names that were not the popular pug names out there (ie: Doug, Pig, Minnie, Max, & Elvis the Pug) so I didn’t run into any SEO challenges.
And the Finalists Are…
Once I received enough responses to Poll #1 from my support group, I decided to narrow down the list to the top 7 of Humbug, Buddy, Peppy, Petey, Wembly, Wiggly (changed from Wiggles) and a popular write-in name of Elmer and sent out a second poll to my support group. One week later, we narrowed the list down even further to a FINAL FOUR to determine who would step-in to the role of Elvis’s alter-ego.
I made it a point to not share any personal reasons or stories about how each name was chosen because I did not want to influence anyone of my support groups choices. Needless to say I was very pleased to see that 2 names (Wembly & Elmer) were still in the running and made it through to the Final Four of dog names!! Wembly, because it is a combination of both of my dogs, Winnie & Ember = Wembly & the name Elmer is my father’s birth name and I thought it would be fun to have the main characters name in honor of my dad. The other two names of Wiggly & Petey seemed to be favorites as well.
As you can see above, Wembly was the clear winner!
I’ll let you in on a little secret… To be completely transparent, I was pulling for Wembly the entire time and was happy to see that a majority of people liked that name too!
Go Wembly go!