Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/40570
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/40570
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Whether a name pops into my head, or I am stuck for one, I use a book, _"The Writer's Digest Character Naming Sourcebook"_. It gives a **lot** of names, their country of origin, and something brief about what the names meant (originally). Or if nobody knows what they mean, the legend they came from or something like that.

I want my characters to have distinct names, seldom sound-alike or rhyming names unless there is a particular plot purpose for that, and I like their names to begin with different letters, if that is possible, or at minimum different first syllables.

Part of this is in case you do an audio-book of your story; you don't want people confusing "Gale" and "Gail".

I try to imagine my characters as much as I can first (without writing anything down, however), and I pick their names before I start writing. At least my MC, I often leave other names until later, and always leave side-character names until I get to the need for them.

To a great extent, it is not the "great name" that makes the character, but the character that makes the name.

You can see that in company names; "IBM" has a cachet but it is really just "International Business Machines", a very unimaginative name for a company. The same goes for AT&T (American Telephone and Telegraph), the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), etc. The cachet for these names is about **_the legendary deeds they have done_** , it is not in the unimaginative, utilitarian names themselves. A similar thing holds for many character names. "Harry Potter" is an intentionally mundane name. But the personality, adventures, skills and intelligence of the character (and the success of the books) creates the air of reverence, respect and affection for it.

Original score: 3