Be Thankful "Offred" in "The Handmaid’s Tale" Wasn’t Called "Ofkeith"

Blessed be the fruit.

The reliably candid author Margaret Atwood has revealed how she came up with the name of her Handmaid’s Tale hero. And no, she wasn’t exactly struck by divine inspiration.

According to the Guardian, Atwood told a crowd at the Hay Literary Festival in Wales how she initially listed a bunch of men’s names and put the word "Of" in front of each of them, finally settling on Offred, which handily included the key colour "red".

(In the book and resulting TV show’s future dystopia, the enslaved "handmaids" lose their birth names and are given new names indicating to which male commander they belong.)

Among the other options that didn’t make the cut, because they sounded ridiculous: Ofkeith.

You can probably assume the runners up were Ofglen and Ofwarren, seeing how they were eventually given to other characters.

Of course, pretty much all of these options are horrifying, given the context. (It's also worth noting Offred prefers her real name, June.) But still, Ofkeith is particularly bad.

Elisabeth Moss plays Offred in the TV adaptation of the show, now playing on SBS and available to stream on SBS on Demand.

In the same talk, Atwood—who has “no control” over the show—said they’ve done a "tippety-top job" with her classic text.

She also reckons fans who are upset with the second season, which has taken quite a divergent path from her novel, should remember: "It’s a television series."

"If you’re going to have a series you can’t kill off the central character and you also can’t have the central character escape to safety in episode one of season two. It’s not going to happen."

The Handmaid’s Tale has already been renewed for a third season, so expect the bad times to continue for a bit longer.

Photo: Hulu