What’s with the name change? Why I’m now Cherry Edits.

What’s with the name change? Why I’m now Cherry Edits.

It’s taken me ages to settle on a name for my editing business. Here I am, three years down the line, and I’ve only just committed to buying a domain name.

Why did it take me so long?

Well, I just couldn’t decide what to call myself!

I’m Claire Cronshaw. But I was Claire Cherry for 27 years and some people still call me that. It’s always the full lot, too. Never just Claire. Claire Cherry – like one of those double-barrelled first names off the Waltons. Good night John-boy, good night Mary Ellen, good night Claire Cherry.

I’m happy I took my husband’s surname when we married in 2009. I love being Claire Cronshaw. I have no regrets. We have such a strong bond and I cannot imagine having a different surname to Jon, or to our son. Although, admittedly, it took me a while to settle into it. Jon once overheard me on the phone  giving my name: “Cronshaw, like the fruit,” I said! It obviously took me a while to drop that habit. I wondered why the woman in the call centre was so bemused!

Nine years later, and used to my name, I started my editing business. For several months, I just went by my name and occupation: “Hi, I’m Claire Cronshaw and I’m a proofreader.” But, with short-notice, I needed to print my name – quick – on some business cards for a networking event I was attending. I figured that Cronshaw Editing was a decent name: my surname and line of work. It was only intended as a placeholder, but, in the absence of a good idea for anything else, I stuck with it. After all, I had business cards printed with this name on. It’d be a shame to waste them, wouldn’t it?

But I was never very happy with Cronshaw Editing as a name. It really is rather dull. (No offence to my Cronshaw relatives!)

Family means everything to me. Both the Cherry family and the Cronshaws. And, as I get closer to middle age, (is 40 middle aged? That’s how old I’ll be next year 😬) I’ve been thinking about legacy.

The Cherry name has already been used in a family business but not since the early 2000s. My dad’s haulage firm was J. M. Cherry and Son. J.M. was my grandad, John Morley. My dad was Richard. My grandad passed away in the 1980s and, even though my dad was the ‘son’, he kept hold of the business name. Sadly, my dad died in 2001 when I was eighteen and the haulage firm wound up shortly after. But, here, twenty years later, I’d like to revive the name – or, at least, part of it.

So, that’s the Cherry part of the name. And I’ve known for quite a while that I’d like to use that somewhere in my business name.

But what of the ‘Edits’?

Cherry Editing. Cherry Editorial. Cherry Proofreading and Editing. Cherry Editorial Services. All of these names have been churning around in my mind for quite some time.

Back in February during a rather brisk seafront walk taking my lockdown-sanctioned daily exercise with a friend of mine, it came to me.

Edits.

Not editing. Or editorial.

Edits.

That was it. That’s what Cherry was missing. Edits.

I like it. I like the fact that it works as both a noun and a verb. Cherry Edits – that’s what it is. That’s the noun, the thing, the business. But it’s active, too. Edits as a present tense verb. I’m the Cherry and that’s what I’m doing. I edit. Cherry Edits. Yep, she does. And she loves it, too.

I got in from my walk, told my husband the new name with a smile on my face, and, there and then, I knew it was right. I bought my domain name CherryEdits.com that very day.

Next came the branding and logo. We kept that in the family, too. My sister-in-law Emily Cronshaw is actually a tattoo artist, but she turned her hand to the Cherry Edits logo for me. She came up with the design and, a former Cherry who is now a Taylor (my sister), helped out with the colours. Barbados Red, don’t you know, and that lovely almost teal green.

So, Cherry Edits. I do, I can, I am and I will.