Character Names

Never just because. Sometimes for the meaning. Sometimes for other reasons. Usually, the characters let me know what their names are.

Unless "fate" is a big theme, I think it's best to choose names without a general meaning. What a huge coincidence that Sirius Black turned into a black dog. Either his parents could see the future, or his name had a mysterious power that affected his abilities. Both destroy the realism. Equally, if your heroin is named Virginia Huge-heart... well, nuff sed.

However, if the name means something to you personally, then sure.

I think about sound, meaning, and repeat-ability. If it gets annoying to say over and over again, then I just won't use it. [bats down a few bad names trying to get out of the basement.]

I also think of things like possessives. Names that end in 's' can be problematic.

My characters seem to name themselves. In my last story(i can't bring myself to say novel until anything is published though i have nothing published yet) the name of the character which had just sprung up initially came to be very important to the story.
In my current WIP my characters named themselves except for one who wanted the name of a character ina previous work. The two characters are nothing lik eeach other so i don't know why she was so determined. Eventually i came up with a name that pacified her.

I choose a name that fits the character. How you define what fits is up to you. It is hard to do, because characters are named differently than real people are named. A person may "seem" like her name is Jackie, but her parents would not have noticed that personality in her as a baby, when they named her. I don't usually consider the character's parents, and what they would have called their kids, though. The only time I would do that is if I want the character name to be an interesting quirk, like the character hates his/her name and knows it doesn't fit.

One of my favorite books A Clockwork Orange, has a great significance in the main character's name. Alex means "a lex" as in "a language," referring to nadsat, his own language. "Lex" also means "law," and the prefix "a-" meaning "without law." Alexander has its own meaning, and refers to Alexander The Great. He refers to himself as "Alexander The Large," his last name being DeFarge. Anthony Burgess was fascinated by language, and stated that he considered all of this when he named Alex. I think this is cool, but the name also fits the personality of the character. If it did not, it would be incredibly distracting throughout the book.

I'm not crazy about using names that give the character meaning either. Caver used to use names that were minimal in his minimal stories (like "Bud"). I'm sure it furthered what he was doing, but I'm not crazy about it.

My characters, like most have said, name themselves. This is one of the things I love about writers. To other people this is so mundane, but writers live for it in many ways. How many times have you thought: "Would someone named Kevin really beat that guy with a brick?" Then you notice after a while that every name has some traits applied to it. You look for meaning and find that all people named Max seem to be cool or wild, and everyone you know who is named Tim likes ketchup on their eggs. It's all really weird stuff. There is a lot in a name already without giving it more meaning.

I was very interested in this awhile back. I have a very very common name, so I started looking up people with the same name and sending them emails just to see what would happen. I sent out 100s of emails and found that many of these people were much like myself. Many were writers. Some told me their life story in one email and some even invited me to their houses if I was even in town. I won't take them up on it though, I'm too freaky, and I trust few people with my name.

I try to use character names that people can look at and pronounce without any ambiguity. Sometimes, especially in SF, characters' names are so odd or long that pronounciation becomes confusing or annoying. Another thing to watch out for is character names that can easily be confused with each other, for example love interests named Will and Bill, or Jane, Jill and Jan. I also try to avoid the cutsey, but that is simply personal preference. Unless she is a stripper, I don't want my women characters named Misty Dawn, Sunrise Delight, etc. I also avoid stereotypical ethnic names - Jose the Hispanic, Ali the Muslim, LaToya the African-American Woman, Pierre the Frenchman.

I just go with names I like the sound of. I say them out loud to see if the forename goes with the surname, then I check initials - no VD or KKK or BJ for instance - and if it's all okay, I run with it.

I find that I can't get into writing a tale if my character names don't fit.

By way of example, I've been struggling with the beginning of a new fantasy piece. It was coming out all wrong, and I hated the direction it was going. Then, I run across a name I like, and think to myself, I should use this in something I write someday. Last night, while trying to go to sleep, BAM! It hit me like a ton of bricks. That name fits perfectly into the piece I've been struggling with! I proceeded to, within my head, write quite a bit of the opening of the story, and then dream about my fella as well. I got up this morning, and after a little (well, quite a bit of) coffee, wrote it all down. The direction's there, the flow's there, the characterization's there...all things that were missing before.

All because I didn't have the "right" name.

I try to go with names that fit the characters' personalities. Sometimes the name has a meaning to it sometimes not. Sometimes I just like the way the name sounds or the way it looks spelled out across the paper. I do like unusual names though and toss them in when I can. Like someone above said, the characters usually name themselves.

However, sometimes I randomly name the characters by just opening the phone book and randomly pointing to a name or taking the 5th first name on a roster sheet and the 24th name on a magazine staff sheet etc.

I also have some books on baby names and I flip through them and look for good character names.

There is a website that pulls up names at random from a census list. You can pick what percentage of common or uncommon name your looking to find. You will have to search for the site on your web browser but look for it by typing in: Random Name Generator.

Hope this helps. Naming characters is fun to me.

I have to research names. Roman naming patterns are complicated, the Pictish king lists only mention men and I have to construct Pictish female names from the material I have by using my Ancient Celtic grammar book, the Goths kill every reader by having all names in a family start with the same word (Iffamer, Iffaswinth, Iffamuth), the Roman army, esp. the auxiliaries were a rabble from all over the Roman world, and Medieaval Scotland is a mess of three cultures. Just well I like that sort of fun.

I just look on baby names websites and keep narrowing it down; first from meanings and/or origin that are appropriate, then down to my favorite(s).

DamaNegra said:

How do you chose your character's names? Do you chose them because of the meaning of the name, because you like the name or just because?

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I used to make up character names just by closing my eyes and typing them up on a keyboard. The problem with that is that they became so hard to pronounce, the work was no fun to read.

I've since gone with simpler names, and generally I make them up by closing my eyes and forming words in my mind that I'm pretty sure don't exist, yet are easy to pronounce.

Choosing names in this fashion is probably one of my favorite things to do in creating a world and its people.

Since I write fantasy, I generally create my names, so they have no meaning other than as that character's name.

Otherwise, I just choose names I happen to like. Names that I internally associate with certain qualities but wouldn't create the same association in the reader because they don't have the same life experiences as I do.

I've never liked writing that uses names as foreshadowing.

I see naming people as arbitrary. I just make up names. I go to http://www.babynames.com and peruse it. I use this to make up place names which you can put alot of meaning behind it all.

Cassandra means deciever of men or prophet of doom. For those of you who think all meanings are positive.

I'm pretty arbitrary in naming people. For secondary characters many times I've just opened the phone book and found a last name that sounded fine and just assigned a first name completely at random. For main characters many times the name will just pop into my head and I'll jot it down for future use. Maybe I'll see a last name on a mailbox and suddenly there's a character in my head, so I'll write it down and keep it.

I try to make sure none of the names rhyme (unless it's part of the story) and that not too many of them start with the same letter. Other than that, the characters usually let me know what their names are. Quite often the name I thought would work turns out to be so-very wrong for the character.

My wife was preganat at the time that I was writing my book, so I looked through a baby names book that she had, and picked out names that I liked. I also did some googling and found a couple of character names that way.

I have a ton of software/game manuals containing long lists of credits. If I'm stuck, I reach behind me, pluck one off the shelf, scan the list, and construct a name by taking a first name from one person and a last name from another.

My characters name themselves. Sometimes I don't like the names but they stick and they fit. When I have a character whose name I really hate I keep sticking them in situations where they can die. Two have turned out to be d*** heroic, they are still around, and i may stop trying to kill them off. The third has avoided two political smears and an assasination attempt, but I'm going to get him, he's a creep and he MUST DIE. (It's the name, you know. Things would have been different if he'd been named Hiro.) He'll have to go within the next 90,000 words or I'm a dancing pink striped badger.

I think it's fine to have names with meaning or names that imply something ("Snidley" as someone mentioned) especially in genre work. If you are setting something in a world unlike our own, being able to relate right away when Snidley shows up gives you some grounding. I think these associations with names can be very useful. Also, they can't be ignored. You can't name a character 'Buffy' and treat it like it's 'Jane'. The name has implications that the reader will pick up on.

I often don't name my characters until I'm well into writing. I don't know why. And a lot of times when I name them upfront I'll just start typing letters. I'll think of letters or dipthongs that represent my character. Like if they're a princess 'a' and 'l' come to mind.

But yeah, it's a strange process. For a recent WIP, my characters needed to have ethnic specific names (because it takes place in the past, when people wouldn't have names from other cultures) so I had to look up native French names and in that case I just picked what suited the character best. My character was young and naive so a 'ette' name seemed to fit (like the character Cosette in Les Mis). But yeah, I guess I just try to find names that fit the character.

I've always had horrendous trouble with this. One of the characters in my WIP was meant to be incidental, only appearing in one scene, so I went with the first name that entered my head. Unfortunately, she had other ideas and not only survived the night but proceeded to steal the story from right under my nose. I now have a female lead with a name I really dislike, but changing it now would be ridiculous because... well, it's her name.
Since this happened, I've been firmly in the habit of plucking names at random and, most of the time, it seems to work. More or less.

my characters name themselves. recently i introduced a new character named "ludovico". i have never known a ludovico in my life, nor could i name a famous person with that name. but for some reason he is vico and that's that!