Ashra asked Alwyn Hamilton:

Hi Alwyn. My name is Ashra. And never did I ever think my unusual name would ever show up in a young adult novel. Even though the Ashra from your novels is not a main character, the fact that she is mentioned as a heroine at all was very pleasing... Might I ask you where you discovered that name?

Alwyn Hamilton Hi there! I always love when someone has the same name as in the books! Normally I get all my names from BehindTheName.Com, but a quick search reveals Ashra doesn't come up there in that exact form, so I think it was me combining two names.

It's been a while since I named that character but, what I think I must have done is taken the name Asha and modified it slightly. Asha means "Wishes" which is also what Amani means, and I wanted to draw a clear parallel between the two girls, centuries apart. I also liked her connection with flames having the word "Ash" in her name. However Asha is a name from Game of Thrones, so I wanted to avoid that. So I looked at combining this a little with "Asherah" which is an ancient godess's name, thus tying to her legendary status.

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