Sub asked A.K. Caggiano:

Why is your female lead named Amma? Curious because it means Mother in Tamil!

A.K. Caggiano Hello! There are a few reasons that Amma has her name and most of them are kinda dumb (lol) so bear with me!

I've always really liked the name Amalie, and knew I wanted the FMC of Villains & Virtues to have both a full first name and a shorter nickname, so that left me with "Ama" as the shorter version, but I didn't like the way "Ama" looked on the page. I'd recently read "Sharp Objects" by Gillian Flynn when I was drafting V&V, and even though my Amma is *nothing* like Flynn's Amma, I was normalized to it being a first name, just the same as Anna is treated in American English.

Honestly, by the time I started calling her Amma, I just kind of forgot that everybody doesn't use it as a common first name! I really liked the way both "Amma" and "Ammalie" looked written out, they had a whimsical, fantasy feel while also being pretty and sweet sounding, so they stuck!

It was a little later I realized "Amma" is used in Tamil and Ghanaian (and I think some Native American languages as well) as a term for mother. "Amma" also means "breastfeed" in Swedish I think?? So it's a very mother-centric name, and I bet there are loads of other languages that have something close. I considered changing her name at one point, but I think the argument can be made that the way Amma loves and accepts those around her (Damien included) often feels unconditional and selfless and all that is very maternal. So it was an accident at first, but it ended up sticking because it was right!

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