How to create good character names? [closed]

What I do:

I start with either a last name or a first name. Which one I start from depends on which one the narrator uses to identify the character, because that is what the reader will read most often. Katniss Everdeen is Katniss first; Dr. Henry Jekyll is Dr. Jekyll first.

With this starting point, and the knowledge of the character's cultural background, I go through a list of first or last names from that culture. There are books and websites that list these. I have collected extensive lists from the web using a self-coded crawler.

I also educated myself on how sound of names are perceived. The meaning of names, that some writers go by, is usually meaningless to a reader. Unless the meaning is obvious, as in Brewer or Shoemaker, the meaning is unknown to the reader and does not influence their perception of the character. What does, are the sounds of the name, and there is a small volume of literature on that, some by linguists, some by marketers specializing in brand name creation.

So, with this knowledge of my character, of the "meaning" of the sounds of names and with whaterver gut feel for language I have, I go through my list of names and weed out all the names that don't fit. I do this in a good text editor that allows grep search and replace. Usually there are certain first letters and name endings that I can exclude right from the start. Often there are also letters or letter combinations that I don't want in the name, so I delete all those names from my file.

The rest of the names I go over one by one until I have either one clear winner left or a handful of contestants. This process takes a couple of days, because after some time I lose all feeling for names and have to do other things before I can come back to my list.

Once I have a (few) first (or last) name(s), I do the same for the last (or first) name. The only difference is that I use search and replace to add the first name I found to every last name in my list and then go over and weed out the combinations.

I find the name of my protagonist first, then the love interest, then the antagonist and then the other characters in descending order of importance. I make sure that every character's name begins with a different letter from the alphabet and that the names sound and look clearly different. Somtimes one or more names are known to me for some reason, then I start with these.

My fantasy names are usually real world names or real words from a foreign language or variations thereof, so I use the same process only with a different corpus. For place names I use lists of placenames from all over the world. Sometimes I translate these. I chose place names by meaning. My favourite place name is "Lost Boy River" (in the US).

posted over 9 years ago

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System‭

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Personally I avoid picking names based on their "meaning" it's lame and highly unoriginal. Also names don't affect your personality at all, so why would it define your character.

What I do is just collect names/surnames when I read a name somewhere I find interesting I just save them in a document. Then when I need a name for a character I just browse through them.

posted over 8 years ago

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Kitsune‭

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I too am having problems with this.

My way of solving the problem is to start with the setting. Is your plot set in a real place? If so, you can look for names from that region. If you like, you can do some research about the origins and meanings of those names, so you can be sure they fit your character. I usually use http://www.behindthename.com/ for this.

If you're writing fantasy, you can still use real names. Diana Wynne Jones did this all the time. "Harry Potter" is also a regular name. G.R.R. Martin horribly misspells names (Eddard, Jaime) but you can still recognise them. Those methods work particularly well if your fantasy novel is set somewhere that is inspired by a particular RL place and period.

If you're writing science fiction, there's no reason for earth characters not to use the same names we do. Names like "John" and "Michael" have been around for several thousand years, they aren't going to disappear.

For somebody who is non-human, or deliberately not any of our cultures, it might work best to device some naming convention, and then follow it. It might be, for instance that male names always start with 'S, end with 'k', and have five letters, while female names follow the pattern of 'T'-consonant-something'. (That used to be Vulcans in Star Trek: Spock, Sarek, T'Pau, T'Pring.) At the very least, you can pick some phonemes that would be more common, so it would sound like all the names are from the same language.

You can use Latin to create names that don't sound too foreign, and have a hidden meaning as a genius bonus. Plant names and flower names are also great (Katniss being a famous example), and you can use them for hidden meanings as well.

Or you can just take a Scrabble set, put it all in a bag, and pull out letters at random until you find a combination that you like. That has worked for me too, when all else failed.

You should remember that you don't have to enforce a "One Steve Limit" - several characters can have the same name. It's realistic, if you think about it. And you can forget everything about meaningful names if you like - names are given by the parents, to a baby who has no defining characteristics yet, and half the time they don't know what a name means. At least, that's how it works in RL.

Most important, don't let the lack of character names stop you from writing. You can always use temporary names, and run Ctrl+r when you come up with something better. Frodo used to be 'Bingo' in Tolkien's early drafts, and Aragorn started out as a hobbit named 'Trotter'.

posted over 9 years ago

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Galastel‭

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