Help me name my next heroine!

I turned in the manuscript for my next Carina book, An Infamous Marriage, less than a week ago, so I’m taking the first half of April off from writing. But that doesn’t mean a break from thinking about my next (as yet uncontracted) project.

I’m still in the earliest research and brainstorming stage, but I’m planning to write a novella, working title Widow’s Choice, set in the same milieu as my debut book, The Sergeant’s Lady--i.e. with Wellington’s army on the Iberian Peninsula. Only this time neither the hero nor the heroine is an aristocrat.

The hero already has a name--Elijah Cameron--and as soon as I thought of it I knew I couldn’t possibly call him anything else. The heroine remains nameless...but you can help me change that!

I’m still working out the details of her backstory, but I know she’s an English country girl, possibly a farmer’s daughter or a former dairymaid. She’s very pretty in what I think of as a classically English way--chestnut hair, blue or gray eyes, and rosy cheeks. She’s the kind of woman you’d expect to meet walking down a lane like this, if you happened to be walking down it 200 years ago:



So I want her name to capture that essential Englishness, and in a way that sounds distinctive without sounding upper-class. Here are my ideas for her first and last name. The last name list is much longer because, as I sometimes complain to my critique partners, The Big Book of Historically Accurate Regency Baby Names is more like a pamphlet. Let me know which combination you think would best fit my character, or feel free to suggest alternatives. Right now I’m waffling between Jenny Steptoe and Rose Longshaw, but I’m willing to be persuaded.

First Names:

Sarah
Jenny
Rose

Last Names:

Barnshaw
Fairbrother
Hawcott
Holyoak
Hopcraft
Lamborn
Longshaw
Lovegrove
Maycock
Mellidew
Merrifield
Narroway
Snowhouse
Steptoe
Wellstood
Dowsing
Oxborrow

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Susanna Fraser writes Regency romance with a focus on the Napoleonic Wars. The Sergeant's Lady and A Marriage of Inconvenience are available now from Carina Press.