Naming Characters

Duchessprozac

Duchessprozac

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Quite a straight forward question, this.

How do you guys and gals create names for your characters?

I have always wondered how to come up with original names that fit in the world as I often struggle and was wondering if people have any ideas at how I can improve.
 
I went to a website (I think I just Googled it, I don't remember where) that had names from all across the world and their meanings. I just went through and picked out names, trying to make each name start with a different character and sound different from the others. I printed all the names out and stuck it in a 3 ring binder; I think there were about 300 pages...
 
For the majority of my characters, the names come straight out of my imagination. I tend to use names that reflect the characters' personalities, and it's not uncommon for me to have a list of names to use that I've written ages ago, with no set characters in mind. I'm probably not the only one to do this, but some of my names in the past have originated or been derived from botanical terms, ie latin names for plants as partial inspiration.
 
I keep a Word doc where I tuck away interesting names I come across (amongst other things). I tend to keep away from the out-of-this-world kinds of names that tend to populate fantasy, and instead give a slight twist to common names, or else use names that have an 'older' feel to them.
 
It depends. What types of settings are you talking about? Real world names are the easiest. If the setting is simply the relatively near future, then names from our own times should work. Distant future names would be harder, the farther distant the future. Fantasy names can either come from your own imagination, or from real world historical settings. Try the SCA, especially their College of Heralds for more info.(I used to be a pursuivant in the SCA.)

Alien names can be difficult, unless you have a concept of language and culture. There are lots of resources out there. Just be willing to do some research. (If the character name is for a RPG, sometimes bad puns work, but only among good friends.Peaches Delite comes to mind.)
 
Culhwch said:
I keep a Word doc where I tuck away interesting names I come across (amongst other things). I tend to keep away from the out-of-this-world kinds of names that tend to populate fantasy, and instead give a slight twist to common names, or else use names that have an 'older' feel to them.
Click to expand...
That's exactly what I do. My time on world of warcraft had me constantly alt-tabbing to an open notepad file where I'd scribble down cool names when I came across them.

Not very original, I know. Names have always been my biggest roadblock, and at some point, I think I just said "screw it" and started yoinking them from various places. It beats going the Lord Prince Me'Eetin Mu'Cho Troff'De Hoggenslop route. ;) It's also why I rarely bother with last names.
 
That depends on what sort of world it is. The fantasy world I'm working in right now is very detailed and in-depth, so I have a lot of things to consider when picking names, such as social status, home region, historical family connections, ancient legends, religious beliefs, any languages in your world etc. For example, my main antagonist, whose profile is posted on McMurphy's profile excercise, is named Anaroch Ciocras for a number of reasons. Aonarach is an irish celtic word, the meaning of which I can't seem to find right now, and one of the languages in my world is loosely based on irish celtic. I changed it to Anaroch so that it wouldn't seem too exotic when compared with the other names. Anaroch was originally only the name of a figure in the legends of my world, but due to some of the above stated reasons, I decided to make it also the name of the main antagonist. The name 'Ciocras' has similar background. Of course, not all names need to be planned so throughly. I just happen to like names, so I spend a lot of time choosing them. One thing I like to do to come up with names on the spot is flip through poetry anthologies, from historic poets, like 1700s, 1800s, or so. Just mismatch first and last names and you can get really good sounding names with an older feel for minor characters.
 
<- is the girl who named one of her main chars "Peach Cobbler". Maybe not the best person to answer ;)

you could also find name generators online like at Seventh Sanctum
 
I just don't like reading names that I can't easily pronounce. If that's the case, then I skip over the name without pronouncing it.
 
I don't really write fantasy unless urban SF/F in similar style as Buffy counts, so I'm usually just concerned with finding names for humans. For this, I've found the random name generator over here to work well: Random Name Generator

The difficult part is to come up with names for alien life forms, both species and individuals. Then it's mostly my imagination, maybe inspired from various sources, maybe not.
 
This is the best name generator I have found so far. I have used it for numerous characters. One of the truly great features of it, is that you can build your own templates for the creation process. In other words, you may make a template that create names in a certain style. A bit tricky to use this feature but there are a bunch of predefined templates you can use instead.

Fantasy Name Generator
 
Fantasy Name Generator

This namegenerator have a neat feature where you can make your own template, to help you generate your own kind of names, in addition to the templates they already got.
 
I watch movie/drama etc credits for weired [sur]names and rearrange a few letters. The dictionary is pretty useful too. Other times I just make it up or use words that aren't supposed to be names, such as Stitches.
 
It depends. For the most part, I invent the character and then go onto babynames.com and find names that match their character or story. For example, for someone who had power over light, I woudl look up "light." It comes up with about fifty names, and I would choose one.

In other cases, I come up with them. Most of the time, I only do this wiht place names. Some of my favorites are Raihe (RAY), Muriabae, Lukisiar, Siethen, Rogarth, and Haazar.
 
I collect names. I have a bad habit of LOVING names that end in "a" or "ah" (same sound). So I am always on the lookout for names that don't. That means if you are a server at a restaurant or checking me out at the grocery store I am going to be reading your name tag first. I live in the Deep South, and it is amazing how many creative names we have down here. In fact, several years ago I asked one of my book customers how she came up with the names for her children, since I had never heard names like that before. And she said she made them up, that all the women in her family do that for their kids. Well, there you go! So I am always looking at name tags and then thinking: how could I tweak this name to make it fit in one of my novels?

When I come up with some good ones I write them down in a little notebook I keep just for names and words I like. So whenever I am introducing a new character in a novel or need a word that is different from the ones I usually use, I go to this book and start flipping pages. Works great for me. Actually, I introduced a new character into my current novel-in-progress today. And her name came from this notebook. Best of all it ends in an "e." Yes, I'm really proud of myself for that one.

Hope this helps!
 
For last names, I use those of my ancestors. I also find names that I thing sound interesting, and use them. Naming conventions also come in handy when creating a race.

Take a name you know, and change the spelling;
Example:

Drake-> Drayke->Draice->Draeck
 
I try not to use familial, or what in the west we think of as last names--gets too complicated. Most of my characters are first name only, especially in my fantasy series. In the epic fantasy, I searched for names that fit the place. However, since this is a whole world, each culture had it's own type of names, just as they do in our world. You could tell where a character is from by the name he or she has.

My YA coming out and my current WIP both take place in the real world. The book coming out next April also takes place on another world for the last third of the book, so I needed names that fit that world for some of the characters (the alien characters) who were in our world and returned home. Those I simply made up with a naming scheme in mind.

My current WIP uses the Norse Gods, so i focused on the main characters having Scandinavian names, although I looked for some that wouldn't sound "old" for the teens. In fact, they're kinda cool, at least IMHO. Those I searched for on a couple of internet sites specifically in the Scandinavian names. Other characters have names that ar contemporary and just sounded right.

In summary, I do whatever is right for the story. The interesting part is that for more than half the place names in the epic fantasy, I took the names of towns in my state and altered them slightly so they fit the scheme I wanted.

A name can say a lot. IMHO, a writer can't just arbitrarily pick. The right one can say so much about a person, place, or thing.
 
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