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Q&A What is a good way to name characters?

Personally, as a reader, I'm not great fan of authors trying to match the name to the character's personality traits. It often feels very force fed and well, immersion breaking if used too much. On...

posted 7y ago by Mer‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

Answer
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T06:13:51Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/27152
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar Mer‭ · 2019-12-08T06:13:51Z (over 4 years ago)
Personally, as a reader, I'm not great fan of authors trying to match the name to the character's personality traits. It often feels very force fed and well, immersion breaking if used too much. One starts to think "the parents named this Feisty McFeist when s/he was few hours/days/weeks old, or even before s/he was born. They had zero idea if s/he would be feisty or not". Nicknames are different thing, those quite often do describe personality or what the character (or person) likes.

Personality or occupation related names do work if you write about society where "real name" is something adults get when they have proven themselves and their character has been examined.

In society where parents name the babies, don't think about the character, think about the family and parents. What kind of people the parents are? Old hippies? Pretentious? Upstarters or old, well-to-do family? Warriors? Workers? What kind of hopes they have about the child? Is the child to be the great warrior to lead the village to freedom? Next in line to inherit the family business? What do the parents value? Kindness, grace, power? This also offers you angle: does the character end up matching their name, if there was some meaning to it.

If your setup is in real world, think when your character was born. Different names were in use in the fifties than nineties. As somebody mentioned, one can often find lists of popular names during different time periods.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2017-03-14T13:24:26Z (about 7 years ago)
Original score: 5