Image to come: a pansy flower, the heroine's first namesake.
Pansy O'Hara
“Did authors always know what to call their characters?”
Margaret Mitchell spent about ten years writing Gone with the Wind, and for nearly all of that time her headstrong heroine was Pansy O’Hara.
The name only changed after the novel had been accepted for publication. Her publisher wanted something different. Mitchell, worn out by years of work, was not sentimental about it; in a letter to her editor she joked that they could call the heroine “Garbage O’Hara” for all she cared.
She settled on Scarlett, which already belonged to the family: in the novel, the character’s full name is Katie Scarlett O’Hara, after her grandmother. Mitchell also renamed the family’s plantation. Its earlier name, Fontenoy Hall, became Tara, after the Hill of Tara in Ireland.
The book appeared in 1936 and the film followed in 1939. Before then, hardly any girls in America were called Scarlett. Today it is a popular name, which would not have happened if Pansy had survived the final edit.
Look closer: F. Scott Fitzgerald could not make up his mind about a title at all.