A name

I've written here before about how I name characters: last, after I know them. I write "the innkeeper" or "the brother" or "BLACKSMITH" for weeks, sometimes months, and the name arrives when I know enough about someone that only one name will do. Naming them early feels like deciding who they are before they've had a chance to tell me.

So this is odd. I have a name for someone, and nothing else. I don't know what she looks like, or how old she is, or what she wants. I'm not even sure what she's for. I have the name, and it's right, the way a key is right in a lock you didn't know you had.

It arrived on a Tuesday, on the bus over the bridge, while I was looking at the water and thinking about nothing at all. I said it out loud, quietly, and the man beside me moved his bag. Since then I've written it on the inside cover of three notebooks in case I lose it, which is not a thing that happens to names.

I'm not going to say it here. It isn't a secret from you, exactly. It's that a name said too early stops being yours, and I'd like this one to stay mine for a while, until I've found out who it belongs to.

Has a name ever come to you before the person did?