Do any of you watch the series Longmire? My mom got my husband and I hooked on it, and we really enjoy it — there’s suspense (each episode is a murder mystery) and romance, and a lead actor that I think is perfectly cast (and I recently found he’s Australian, which amazes me, just like Hugh Laurie in House and Renee Zellweger in Bridget Jones’ Diary — brilliant at hiding their true accents!).

But the names are what I wanted to share with you — I’ve been loving them!! Starting with Longmire (whose first name is Walt)’s daughter. When I first heard her name I thought it was Katie and I didn’t have much thought about it. But when I found out it was Cady, I was much more into it! Spelling makes a difference!

One of the deputy sheriffs is Branch Connally. As far as nature names go, if I saw Branch on a list of possibilities, pre-Longmire me might have secretly scoffed and thought What next? Twig? But guys! He is SUCH a Branch! Hearing this hunky cowboy sheriff called Branch totally makes it feasible for me. It does have a little soap opera feel to it, but I definitely don’t think it’s as silly as I would have before.

The other deputy is Vic, short for Victoria, but Vic so suits her, and far better than Vicky or Victoria ever would. She’s a tough girl!

Other names that I love hearing:

Henry (played by Lou Diamond Philips!)
Mathias (police chief on the reservation)
Mica (criminal)
Barlow (Branch’s bad-guy dad)
Lizzie (Walt’s lady friend. It perfectly suits her.)
Dacus (a character’s son, said DAY-kuss)
Fiona aka October (!)
Vehoe (sounded like Vio)

And those are just the characters I’ve encountered already … the full cast list shows these treats as well:

Malachi
Eamonn
Trot
Jeremiah
Hugo
Owen Bennett (what a great first+last combo!)
Duncan
Zip
Daxner
Rosco (what do you all think of this name? I came across it in some research I was doing of names popular in the 1890-1910 time period [spelled Roscoe] and I thought huh. It doesn’t seem to have any saintly connection though …)
Gus
Merwin (!)
Gareth
Dunston

Those are just the names that jumped out at me from the really long list of characters. Interesting right? (Zip and Trot!)

I thought it was so awesome and totally unexpected that one of the episodes I watched recently involved a Basque family that had moved to Wyoming and were sheepherders! And St. Ignacio’s feast day played a role in the episode! There was all sorts of info about Basque culture and history (Walt explained. He knows everything.), it was really cool — Mary (skimac)’s our Basque expert — have you heard of this show and that episode Mary?

The series is based on The Longmire Mysteries book series by Craig Johnson, and usually I love books more than their TV or movie counterparts, but I don’t know … I’ve really fallen in love with the characters as they are on TV as played by the actors that play them.

Have any of you read the books? And seen the show? Can you compare them?