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I was nosing around the internets the other day, looking for names for my Phistos. I've been fantastically vague so far, and have toyed with the idea of just using initials, as happens in some old books.. but that doesn't allow for any real character creation, you won't remember a handful of vague references to "N" or whatever, but Nila, you might recall.

I had NO idea what fantastic resources I'd have - there are lists floating around of a hundred names of the fallen angels. (And further motivation to get my hands on this - I've had my eye on it for awhile, and it's referenced *every* time I go researching anything angelic/demonic in origin.) Some of the names, I'm not sure where they turned up, but a good bunch of them come from the pseudepigraphal Books of Enoch - which I'm most definitely going to have to read, it gives a really interesting account of the Fall of Lucifer&co. (And though its origins are murky and it's certainly non-canonical... I listened to a lecture series recently on the origins of Christianity, and what's actually *in* the canon is a pretty motley assortment, most of which is pseudepigrapa itself, and there are things outside the canon that are really on equal ground with what is in it. There were some churches which took the Books of Enoch *as* canon for a good long while..)

Which brings up another interesting point I've found - I don't think anyone really agrees on which angel became Satan. Some lists give Satan as the name of one of them, but popular opinion is that Lucifer = Satan, though that I know has been disputed, and other sources earmark different angels entirely... the Book of Enoch, however, assigns a bit of personality to a handful of the angels, and gives Semyazzah as the leader of the bunch, in a story which compliments that tricky little bit in Genesis, just before The Flood, where sons of God come down to lie with the daughters of men and have offspring.

Wiki really is a phenonmenal jumping-off point for so much research, obviously you should only cite it where it's cited itself but, really, for story research on random things, it's fantastic.

And I think I have a real name now for the Phistos - the Grigori, the Watchers. That's who they are, it really is...only I doubt they'll call themselves that. I've written into the stories that they've been on earth so long that their true names have been lost, even they can no longer remember them. It turns out that many of the names of the fallen angels end in "-el", which is a suffix referring back to God - and I'm sure a bunch of rebellious angels leaving Heaven wouldn't want the constant references to a God they've turned their backs on, so, that's an excellent motivation for the beginnings of name changes. From there, it's really a natural thing, look at how much families' surnames change over the centuries. And many of the names are bulky Hebrew things, so of course there would be nicknames, and I'm quite happy with how clever a few of them are, hee.

CRAP I need to drag myself out of the research, I have three pages to type and a shower to take before Tom comes back for his lunch break (either at 11 or 12) - I'll hitch a ride with him when he heads back, and hang around Tim Horton's again and probably write until I head over to work at 4.

And I REALLY need to decide now who wrote the desert-letter, I left it an initial before but now I want a name and I haven't decided who yet...