# How do you choose your characters' names?



## kdl121 (Mar 26, 2017)

Do you use symbolism or meaning for all your characters? Do you just do it for your protagonist? Do you make up your own names? Or do you just use names you've seen elsewhere that you like?

I'm just curious, I do a combination of everything.


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## Ireth (Mar 26, 2017)

I go for meaningful names more often than not. Most of my stories have at least some ties to the real world, so I don't make up names very often. I just take names from the culture that fits (i.e. Irish or Welsh names for the Fae).


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## Gurkhal (Mar 27, 2017)

I'm a bit similar to Ireth in that I take names that I find from a real world culture. Can't say that I know what all of them actually means since I'm pretty bad at languages but I try to avoid making names up from scratch as much as I can.


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## La Volpe (Mar 27, 2017)

I make up my own names, usually. Though sometimes I use regular names, depending on how my world feels, if that makes any sense.

But, in general, I try to base each country on a language so that all the names kind of share sound patterns; i.e. that they sound like they come from the same place.
E.g. Let's say I have barbarian wizards at war with elfin archers, I'd maybe base the barbarians' names on Russian sounds -- e.g. Devnik, Olev, Rejna, etc. -- and the archers' names on say, Italian -- e.g. Mezo, Girino, Tellini, etc. (apologies to any Russians or Italians if these names don't match up with the languages; I usually do some research beforehand, but this is just to illustrate a point).


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## CupofJoe (Mar 27, 2017)

There are some very strange [to me at least] way that people get named in the real world.
The place where children can be very unlucky with their names - BBC
If you were to do that to a character in a story, I don't think people would think it believable. But maybe that's just my western mindset.


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## Demesnedenoir (Mar 27, 2017)

I don't get into the meaning of names much at all, unless there's a good reason. In my non Earth work, I do try to keep naming patterns cultural and that sort of thing, but the main thing is whether I like the name enough to read it a thousand times, heh heh.


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## FifthView (Mar 27, 2017)

I don't go for meaning at all—but sometimes I've wondered if this is a weakness of mine. Maybe having a meaning behind the name would help my mind latch onto my character's personality/role/whatever better?

I make names up. I have a few steps and considerations I use.

My first step is to create a name that sounds good _and_ looks good on the page and seems to "fit" the character. I have sometimes been incredibly frustrated when I have a name that sounds great—exactly what I wanted for that character!—but on the page it looks really bad or the pronunciation is impossible to make clear without making the word look bad. I figure readers are going to be seeing the name repeatedly; so, I want it to look nice. I don't go for clunky combinations of letters or arrangements too difficult or ambiguous for pronunciation.

I generally stick with a set of "most common" letters, vowels, sounds for a culture when picking names within that culture. Usually this also means that some consonants don't appear within that culture, like "z" or "w" or "th," whatever.

Next thing I do is run some Google searches to make sure the name isn't common, already used in some popular fiction, a popular brand name, etc.

But I generally create fantasy worlds whole-cloth. If I wrote stories set in our world or heavily based on a culture from our own world, I might go about it differently.


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## Mythopoet (Mar 27, 2017)

I make long lists of names that I get from mythology and history. Some characters just need a name that sounds good to me. (I have a hard time writing for characters if the sound of their name is off.) Some need the right sound and the right meaning, which is a bit harder. But I always know when I've struck on the right name because everything else about the character starts easily falling into place.


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## skip.knox (Mar 27, 2017)

This is a place where having live readers helps. For me, it's my local library group. We get together regularly and the evening opens with people reading passages from the work(s) under consideration. Watching people stumble over names you thought were perfectly obvious is worthwhile. Sure, you don't have to have your readers pronounce "correctly" but when the word or name brings the reader to a dead stop, that's probably bad.


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## Chessie (Mar 27, 2017)

I just pick the ones that sound nice, match the feel of the character, and are historically/culturally accurate. For example, can I envision this powerful faux-European magician as Jennifer? Probably not.


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## Michael K. Eidson (Mar 27, 2017)

I choose names that sound and look good to me. Then I check to see what they mean in baby name dictionaries, to make sure they don't mean something that would be bad for the story. Sometimes I will take a secondary character trait, or a trait in opposition to the character's personality, and look it up in the baby naming dictionaries to get ideas, if I'm having a difficult time with naming a particular character. I seldom use a name whose meaning is in line with a character's primary traits.


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## skip.knox (Mar 27, 2017)

As a postscript to my previous post, I recently used the Presently Assembled to choose a character name. I had two in mind, couldn't decide.

{Aside: when picking names, I "audition" them. That is, I write--notes or actual scenes--using Name A, and write others with Name B. I don't try to do anything rational, I just listen to them, feel them as I write the actual word. Usually one emerges.}

So I presented both, with a bit of background for both, here on Mythic Scribes. People didn't much like either! And this was a good thing. It wasn't so much that I was trying to decide between two good names; I was trying to decide between two names that just did not work in this story.

So Mythic Scribes sent me back hunting. I found a third and the community liked it. I've been auditioning the name and so far I'm comfortable with it.

I guess the point of my combined posts is: get a second opinion.


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## Michael K. Eidson (Mar 27, 2017)

In my WIP, I chose a name for one of the non-POV MCs that means "noble" and "ready" according to some sources, and "battle" according to others. The character is anything but noble or ready for battle. He's pretty much the exact opposite of those things. His parents had high hopes....


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## GypsyTraveller (Mar 27, 2017)

oh goodness, my main is a character i've carried since I was a kid, I'm working to make sense of their name.


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## TheKillerBs (Mar 27, 2017)

Usually I just use a real name and change it up a bit to match the phonology of that culture's language. For the last story, since the early chapters are set in the Oxus River Civilisation, I took Punjabi names and reversed the sound changes all the way back to Proto-Indo-Iranian. That was actually pretty fun.


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## JRHardesty (Mar 29, 2017)

What's in a name? Quite a bit, really, but for the most part, we make 'em up.  Some resemble real-word names because we use real-world languages for inspiration. Some, however, are just flat made up, but no barbarians named Grek, or Brak (yes, I know), Khlahd, etc. Ewwwww. 

All names must look and sound good. Spelling might be fiddled with a bit to make them pronounceable, because as was noted above, if the reader can't pronounce the thing, you have a problem. You need enoug vowels in there to make it possible. I've seen some pretty nsty names that no normal human would have been capable of pronouncing. 

Years ago, I read a book by Lin Carter (please, no comment) that dealt with fantasy (it was a non-fiction work) and one of the things he discussed was creating names. He suggested just sitting down with a pad of paper and start writing down names as they came to you without judging them. Then, when done, review the list and eliminate the ones that don't look or sound right or are truly bad. _Ben Deth Bar_ (one of my early attempts) was not good. My test reader started laughing. That startled me, as the story was serious, or so I thought. His comment to me was: "This Ben Deth Bar guy. What is he, a circus strongman?" Oooops! Changed that one in a hurry! That story is in the dust-bin of history where it belongs, so it no longer matters. It was naught but a bad Conan-type story anyway. *shudder* Leave that stuff to Howard, _et alia._

The next thing is to go over each name and decide whether it was a person, place or thing. I've done that a lot, as has my wife, but now....well names just seem to pop up of their own accord. One of the best names I ever came up with was from back then, about oh, 40 years ago. We are using it now. I dusted it off, presented to Jan and asked her if that one would work. It turned out to be the perfect name for the city my wife had conjured up and it is now enshrined in print. So, you never know when a name will be useful.

Happy naming!

_*Post Scriptum:*_ What we as authors consider easily pronounceable can cause some readers to trip, stumble and fall. My sister doesn't read fantasy, and she had problems with about half our names and wanted to know the "proper" pronunciation. I told her, "Say it your way. That'll get you through the book. Worry about how we pronounce those names after you're dead." She got the point.


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## Darkfantasy (Mar 30, 2017)

I tend to copy reality. Each country has it's own names that fit. But as we've all become more connected we're starting to steal names from each other. It really depends on how connected your countries are. Like Aimee is a french name, but here in England we use it a lot. So I tend to look at how connected the are then I create a name that fits the language that the character uses.


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## valiant12 (Mar 30, 2017)

I like names that exist in the real world and names that could exist.


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## Incanus (Mar 30, 2017)

I love to invent original names, it's quite fun.  For my fantasy world, I create names and place names and a few additional terms.  I've got a list of extra unused names on hand if I need something quick-like.  If I'm writing a real-world short story, I use real world names.  Pretty straight forward I guess.


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Mar 31, 2017)

I have no idea.  

My last main character ended up with the name Temerity. It's a fricking SAT vocabulary word. It's just a word I really like...There's an explanation for it in the story, but I didn't have an explanation for it when I came up with it. I think I thought "Huh, this word sounds like a girl's name." 

I should probably stop naming my characters after my favorite words...A dragon named Pandemonium is a bit weird, is it not? 

Yeah. Last book was just a mess of random names and random words I liked. (Many of which, including the MC's, are unfortunately apt.) 

In the project I'm taking a break from, I was more conservative with naming, which is to say I made up names myself rather than use random words...Unfortunately, lots of the names (including the villain's, the love interest's...) are copied in other books. So...not sure what I'll do about that.

I never seem to think about meaning. With poor Temerity, I think the name helped make the character rather than the other way around. 

(Come on! The word sounds like a name. Admit it.) 

Helpfully enough, in my upcoming WIP, NONE of my characters HAVE names! (I'm going for a kind of distance from the story, as if you're looking at it through the dust of time and memory. I think it fits.) Fun way to circumvent the problem.


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## Michael K. Eidson (Mar 31, 2017)

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> A dragon named Pandemonium is a bit weird, is it not?



Not at all. It would be interesting to see exactly how that dragon behaved, given that name. In a dark tale, a dragon named Pandemonium, who spread fire and chaos everywhere, would be aptly named. In a humorous tale, a dragon named Pandemonium, who squandered her treasure hoard visiting different pubs across the land, buying beer for strangers, might also be aptly named.


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Mar 31, 2017)

Michael K. Eidson said:


> Not at all. It would be interesting to see exactly how that dragon behaved, given that name. In a dark tale, a dragon named Pandemonium, who spread fire and chaos everywhere, would be aptly named. In a humorous tale, a dragon named Pandemonium, who squandered her treasure hoard visiting different pubs across the land, buying beer for strangers, might also be aptly named.



Fair enough. 

My main problem with the name, to be honest, is probably not being able to shorten it to any kind of nickname her rider can use. Five syllables is cumbersome.


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## Ireth (Mar 31, 2017)

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> Fair enough.
> 
> My main problem with the name, to be honest, is probably not being able to shorten it to any kind of nickname her rider can use. Five syllables is cumbersome.



"Pan" seems like a perfectly good nickname for that dragon.


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Mar 31, 2017)

Ireth said:


> "Pan" seems like a perfectly good nickname for that dragon.



Hmm...I've thought about it, but I find it hard to like. It doesn't fit a female dragon especially...


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## Ireth (Mar 31, 2017)

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> Hmm...I've thought about it, but I find it hard to like. It doesn't fit a female dragon especially...



Pande? Panda? XD


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Mar 31, 2017)

Ireth said:


> Pande? Panda? XD



I settled on that for forever, but I don't know how to pronounce the first one and the second is just a bit weird...especially for a dragon that's striped rather than panda'd.


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## Ireth (Mar 31, 2017)

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> I settled on that for forever, but I don't know how to pronounce the first one and the second is just a bit weird...especially for a dragon that's striped rather than panda'd.



I imagine they'd be pronounced the same; the 'e' in Pande is like the one in 'the', just an unstressed "uh" sound.


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## Michael K. Eidson (Mar 31, 2017)

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> Fair enough.
> 
> My main problem with the name, to be honest, is probably not being able to shorten it to any kind of nickname her rider can use. Five syllables is cumbersome.



Maybe Moni?


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## Michael K. Eidson (Mar 31, 2017)

You could also shorten Pandemonium to "Demon" if that struck your fancy.


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## La Volpe (Mar 31, 2017)

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> I settled on that for forever, but I don't know how to pronounce the first one and the second is just a bit weird...especially for a dragon that's striped rather than panda'd.



Are there pandas in that world? And even if there are, it's very obviously a shortened name.

I'm more partial to "Pan" myself. It feels like that would be the natural shortened version. And the maleness of the name shouldn't be an issue either. There are girl names that are shortened to something that sounds/is male without any issues. E.g. Samantha to Sam, Alexis to Alex, Jo-anne to Jo, etc.

But in the end, if you don't like it, you don't like it. Alternatively, the nickname doesn't need to refer to the normal name. It could refer to a feature.



> Helpfully enough, in my upcoming WIP, NONE of my characters HAVE names! (I'm going for a kind of distance from the story, as if you're looking at it through the dust of time and memory. I think it fits.) Fun way to circumvent the problem.



That seems like it can be incredibly confusing. How many characters are we talking about here? And how long is said story?
I've read almost zero stories where name-withholding aided the story. Though _The Road_ managed to pull it off without being confusing, but you should just be aware of the landmines you're setting up for yourself.


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Mar 31, 2017)

Ireth said:


> I imagine they'd be pronounced the same; the 'e' in Pande is like the one in 'the', just an unstressed "uh" sound.



That's what I thought...I don't know if it would occur to readers though...


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Mar 31, 2017)

La Volpe said:


> That seems like it can be incredibly confusing. How many characters are we talking about here? And how long is said story?
> I've read almost zero stories where name-withholding aided the story. Though _The Road_ managed to pull it off without being confusing, but you should just be aware of the landmines you're setting up for yourself.



There are really only three, possibly four important characters. I refer to them as "the boy," "the girl..." I suspect a novel of about 65,000 words, but it  really shouldn't be too confusing. And I think I know what I'm doing. It definitely doesn't feel right to give these characters names in the story I'm going for.


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Mar 31, 2017)

Michael K. Eidson said:


> You could also shorten Pandemonium to "Demon" if that struck your fancy.



I could.


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## Graceless Liar (Apr 1, 2017)

I tend to use real world names, but I choose them from a culture that has similarities to the world I'm building.
For example, my current revision in progress uses a lot of Welsh and Irish Gaelic names and terms. Many of these are real names, but I will make up my own once I get a feel for how names sound in my chosen language/culture. Another WIP takes heavy influence from India, and so the names I chose were Indian or Hindu in origin.

My published work has naming conventions that seem to be all over the place, which is deliberate. Most of the characters have modern names (Audri and Izak, for example) but some have latin based names (Octavia and her mother Septia) because of their heritage, and others still have totally off the wall fantasy names (like Ikarios and Dieos) that follow no real naming system because those characters are so old they predate most current cultures.

As for name meanings...well...unless there is an in-universe reason for it, I wouldn't put too much stock into the meanings. It just seems a tad to contrived if your hero ends up with a name that actually means hero, unless that's the point of course.


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## RedAngel (Apr 13, 2017)

I have somewhat of a system I use.

1: Where is their race?
2: Where are they from?
3: What is their role in the story?
4: Do they require any extra symbolism?

Ex:
1: Human male
2: Small farming community modeled after the celts. Possible name: Shamus
3: Mc in a fall from grace role
4: He will cause harm in the story
Harmus comes to mind when considering those factors.


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## Ireth (Apr 13, 2017)

RedAngel said:


> I have somewhat of a system I use.
> 
> 1: Where is their race?
> 2: Where are they from?
> ...



That seems just a tad "on-the-nose" for me.


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## TheCrystallineEntity (Apr 13, 2017)

I have two name books, two Japanese dictionaries, an Irish Gaelic name book, a Latin dictionary, a Greek dictionary, a thesaurus, and an etymology book. I go through and pick out names/words that I like best, and all the names have some sort of important meaning to the story [Kurea, for instance, is the Japanese pronunciation for Clare, which means 'bright/shining/clear'].


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## Simpson17866 (May 4, 2017)

Brute force. I look at websites with thousands of names, add minimal restrictions based on culture, and then go through as many of the names as possible, each time trying to think of something specific that I don't like about the name.

After I have a few names that I haven't found any problems with, I look at the whole list, try to rule out a few more in comparison with / contrast against the others, then I pick one at random and use it until I like it  I've never worried about trying to get The Perfect Name ahead of time: once I've used a good-enough name for a character enough, it *becomes* the perfect name.

"Harry Potter" and "Walter White" would both be incredibly boring names if not for the stories about the characters, and "James Bond" was picked *because* Fleming wanted the most boring name in the world so that Agent 007 would be emphasized as an uninteresting person that interesting things happened to. The Milwaukee Cannibal was not terrifying because his name was Jeffrey Dahmer, the name "Jeffrey Dahmer" *became* terrifying after being associated with the Milwaukee Cannibal.

The only time I distinctly remember feeling "This is the perfect name" *before* getting heavily invested into the character herself was when I was adding a bunch of extra restrictions that I normally don't: 



Spoiler: Doctor Who fanfic



Two of the characters in Doctor Who / Torchwood were made superficially similar so that the fundamental differences would stand out — one is a heroic leader, the other a villainous loner — and one of the superficial similarities was that the more important character went by the alias of Captain Jack Harkness while his ex-husband went by the alias of Captain John Hart.

When I first came up with my fanfiction, I wanted one of my own characters to fit the same theme as the two canon characters, so I scoured the internet for "girl names J" and "last names H" before deciding that my character would go by the alias of Captain June Harper.


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## Ruby (May 7, 2017)

I usually don't have a problem choosing names for my characters, but I did accidentally invent one name as the result of an autocorrect that went wrong. 

When I wanted a name for a Magic Academy I just closed my eyes and typed until something useful appeared; then I Googled it to make sure it didn't exist in the real world/hadn't been used before in fiction.


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## Antaus (May 10, 2017)

With me I usually find something that sounds interesting, then fiddle with it. It can be totally made up, from a pre-existing word, or combination thereof.

Examples

*Talinchanakaris* - totally made up and an intentional jaw breaker

*Magnox* - derived from the television brand name Magnavox. Magnavox - av = Magnox

*Spartac* - Sparhawk is the name of character from a David Eddings book I read a loooong time ago. Hardtack is a type of biscuit. Sparhawk + Hardtack = Spartac


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## C. A. Stanley (May 18, 2017)

There are so many ways you can do this...

I like to merge names. I tend to translate a few appropriate words into a couple of languages that have similar characteristics (not necessary linguistically, for example, Iceland and Russia are both cold, that'll do for me!), then mix and match and see what fits. Or I translate and use it as a foundation... One of my continents (hot, mainly desert) is called Ahtesk, improvised from the Turkish word for fire - ateş. The god on this continent is name Sham, from the Arabic word for sun - shams.

Or I take inspiration from history, or TV/film... I absolutely love the names Ragnar and Floki from Vikings, and so a lot of the names in one particular culture are Norse-inspired.

Rearranging letters is also an interesting method. Take a name that has letters you like (you may favour k or y or l), then spell it backwards, or swap some letters / syllables around. Probably a poor example, but the first thing that came into my head was Simba; this could become Abmis, or Sabim. Or add letters, Abmissa, Elsabim (I may actually use these names!). Depends what flavour you're going for.

I try different methods, and see what results fit the bill. It can be great fun, and checking out a word's etymology and translations is always interesting.


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## Eric Hawke (May 18, 2017)

Basically switch around/add/change letter in existing names. Consider the character's personality, and give them a name that has the same "feel". Also, don't give main/secondary characters names that start with the same letter, it can get confusing.


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## Crimstone629 (May 18, 2017)

Personally, I typically name my protagonist in one of two ways. I either translate a word related to them into another language and maybe alter the spelling, or I think of names from the real world culture closest to the fictional one my protagonist belongs to. Sometimes I look up names from a specific country or time period, but not always.


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## DragonOfTheAerie (May 25, 2017)

Seriously! Don't listen to me on the subject of how to name characters! Y'all seem to know what you're doing. I've never researched the meaning of a name in my life. (I don't think.) Most of my characters end up changing names, too. I keep naming my characters after words I like. Bad idea? They don't always make much sense...

Has anyone ever had a character that just COULDN'T be named? I have one character for whom I've changed the name like four times and it STILL sounds wrong.


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## Insolent Lad (May 26, 2017)

A few books ago I found I suddenly needed a name for a minor character so I called him Nidanem — pronounced need-a-name...


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## Noxius (May 30, 2017)

First I find out how I want them to sound. Skandinavian, asian, german, or completly made up ith no connetction to our real world? Then I start with any name that comes to my mind that fits there, and write it down. Then I just play with the letters, change them, the constellation, etc., until I have something that I like. 

For example, I have elves in my story, and I want their names to sound fantasy-like and to not be like names in our world, the closest they come to probably are Tolkiens elven-names. 

I took the first name that came to my mind - Sabrina. After ten minutes of changing it around and throwing in some sounds that I felt like they would fit, Sanaera came out, which is now the name of my protagnist.


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## Demesnedenoir (May 31, 2017)

I don't know. A name pops into my head, if it sounds good and culturally appropriate, I run with it, if not, another appears. No real methodology.


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## FifthView (May 31, 2017)

I have an acquaintance whose vehicle license plate looks like a great name. It slaps me in the brain every time I see it. I won't reveal the plate number for privacy reasons. But the problem is, there's only one real probable pronunciation for it, although it has six letters/numbers, and that would be something like "neo." Been used, done before. 

I started reading a book last night in which one main character is called "Sheyne." Looks great; I love the look. But it stabs my brain in an unpleasant way because I know it's basically "Shane" w/ the author trying to be clever. (But then, I'm like that with real world people's names when I know the parents were trying to be clever with the spelling....)


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## Gurkhal (May 31, 2017)

Here's a more expanded post from me regarding names, and in which I have illustrated with an examples in order to show how I do it. The character comes from a story translated into "the captive duke".

The languaged used for the character is Occitan (can't say exactly which dialects so I think that I've mixed between them fairly well). The personal names are from, to my knowledge, historical sources while the family name is from an online dictionary on Occitan where I've pretty much taken a word and corrupted it.

The example character is the following:

Duke *Folquet de Agenara* - With this name I wanted to draw association to being foolish and thus I took an Occitan name with a beginning similar to the English word "fool" and the "Agenara" name is based on "enganar" which is Occitan for "fool". The reason for his name being associated with fool is that, well, the whole story is created by him being played for a fool and regretting his mistakes which have hurt people close to him.

I hope it may help someone somewhere.


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## Garren Jacobsen (May 31, 2017)

Oh it depends. I look at class and culture primarily. For example, I have a lawyer character from a rich family in another world. He is called Bertraud, it sounds all fancy. Then I have a young thief who is the first born of his family. His name takes the first half of his father's name, the second half of his mother's name and smashes them together to get Garren. Then I have a character on earth named Jude. Another character is named Wyet because he is a gunslinger like Wyett Urp and he is an angel of Death in mortal form to boot but was born to a low class family. I just kinda go with my gut more or less.


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## CF WELBURN (Aug 22, 2017)

CupofJoe said:


> There are some very strange [to me at least] way that people get named in the real world.
> The place where children can be very unlucky with their names - BBC
> If you were to do that to a character in a story, I don't think people would think it believable. But maybe that's just my western mindset.



Too true.
I went to school with two girls called Atheeny Sweeny and Iona Pile... Neither of which would be out of place in a fantasy novel. That being said, the F in my name stands for Farndale, so I should hardly cast aspersions...

I pretty much choose my names on the basis of if I like the sound of them, sometimes they might mirror the personality/ function of the character. There are typically sounding good/ evil names. I'd hardly expect a stableboy to be called Drakandorf or a darklord to be called Pip... though why not?


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## Mythopoet (Aug 22, 2017)

I named my oldest son after one of the most unfortunate characters in The Silmarillion and my youngest son after a torturer who destroyed the world... 

One of the ways I get cool names that I stumbled on recently... I went through lists of animals and flowers on wikipedia for their scientific names. I got a lot of really cool sounding fantasy names from that. Like Mezereon or Lerwa. Of course this gives you name with a very Greek aesthetic. Fortunately that works for my world.


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## Thoras (Sep 4, 2017)

I like to look at baby-name sites which includes the meaning of the names - if I find something that sounds good and has a fitting meaning I would use it for one of my more important characters. Sometimes I do this but I mix and match with a letter or two to make them somewhat more unique. I try to make the names sound like they come from the same place/land or at least world depending on the location to make it feel more authentic. Some names however I just like to make up myself as I feel like it have a cool and unique sound to it. The biggest importance is that it's pronounceable though! When I make them up myself I try to make them fit in rather well with the rest of the names in the land though so it still suits. (Meaning if your characters all have names sounding germanic, it would be odd if that one person had the name of a greek god - unless he of course isn't from another land)


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## cjthibeaux (Sep 12, 2017)

I have a rather thick book of baby names from all over the world. I use that to leaf through the names. Sound and meaning matters to me. Sometimes I change the name somewhat. I also look out for cool sounding names when I hear them or think about them, and write them down on a notepad.

Some of them have meaning, depending on how they tie in to the story/back story or world building elements. It can be cool to have a meaning sometimes. 

Some names like 'Hightower' for instance might give you an impression of the character. 

What ever you do choose, building that character to reflect what you want is even more important. This way you get to imprint on the reader like say Joffrey from GOT. Doubt anyone likes that name anymore. 

Mostly have fun with it.


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