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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/18390
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/18390
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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/](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](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OneSteveLimit)" - 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'.

Original score: 3