Naming a Character - An Alternative Technique

[Map the Dragon]

I started a new thread, as this might apply to a few trains of thought in the forum - anywhere from using the name of someone you know to being too cliche.

When I wrote the first few versions of my novel Firesoul, the character who ultimately becomes a villain had a very bland name. I couldn't think of what to name the guy. Do I villify an enemy, or draft a name that's sinister and typical?

So, I named him Evan. I've never known an Evan, and can't even recall a time, movie, or book that mentions an Evan. But, for some reason, I named him Evan.

Here then comes the beauty of today's simple technologies. When I renamed the character, I just had to do a find and replace all on Word for "Evan" and "Evan's" and I was done.

So, a bit of advice if you're caught up on names. Just pick something and write the story. You can then go change the name or names to fit the character, the setting and culture of your peice, etc.

I remember hearing from my publisher after she got done reading the first draft I sent in. "There's one thing I don't get. All your names of characters and places are so different. You're not going to keep this guy's name as Evan are you?"

I didn't.

 

[SeverinR]

Cool, I didn't know that.

find/replace/goto(click one they will all be there)

Find what-Sword
replace with-sabre

 

[TWErvin2]

SeverinR, you have to watch out for capitalization, such as at the beginning of a sentence if it's a common noun.

I've never had a problem with names--sometimes I get close but by the end of the scene or chapter, I have the name for the character. Not that I take naming character's lightly. It's a big part of characterization--how the reader's view/think about a character. But then I sometimes stumble over other areas a bit, that slow me down.

 

[JustSpiffy]

Personally I have a sort of naming system, sort of anyway. All my characters belong to one of 8 different nations, all of which have different sounding names... For example the Agchak are a tribal sort of people, so I might go for... Hotar, for a character's name... I like that name, I might use it. Or another culture, the Folicians are a beautiful people, even the men, who tend to be quite small and have fenimine features... So for a male Folician, maybe Golsan or Sorfon, they've got to be smooth, pretty sounding names, no sharp sounds. Then I have the sorlorns, who have typical old english names, Cooper, Jack, etc... Then the Hysnians who have very snakey sounding names, Nysar, Sartan, etc. Or the Talsarin, who have very sharp sounding names, Garak, Sartok, etc. There's deffinately some overlap, but for the most part I think they're pretty recognizable.

I take my time coming up with names I like, and usually I don't start until I have the names of the characters involved. Although I'm not against changing them later on if I feel the need.

 

[drkpyn]

Ah yes, I remember my first time discovering the find/replace features of Word. Such a magical time! As for naming characters, I like to research the country of origin and meanings of a name to try and fit both to the character.

 

[Chilari]

...

I just go on the Rinkworks fantasy name generator, decide what structure I want for the name in the advanced section, and then pick one from those that are generated that I like the sound of and that fits. If none of them do I refresh until I find one.

 

[Jester]

Ah man, my name actually is Evan; I never thought of it as a particularly evil name. I've always had a horrible problem with being unable to break out of naming groups. Like, if I have a civilization based on the early catholic crusades I have a lot of biblical names. Its a bad habit.

 

[Map the Dragon]

Ah man, my name actually is Evan; I never thought of it as a particularly evil name. I've always had a horrible problem with being unable to break out of naming groups. Like, if I have a civilization based on the early catholic crusades I have a lot of biblical names. Its a bad habit.

My apologies Evan/Jester. No harm meant in dealings with your name. I chose Evan because I didn't know any and it would thus be easy not to attribute any unintentional character qualities. The replacement names is a far cry from Evan.

I think some narratives with 'naming groups' are actually more clever (if done right) than stories full of names with no other context or thought.

 

[Addison]

For some reason my find-replace isn't working. The minute I push the replace button it looks like it starts up but then freezes and the only way to close it is to close the entire program. Any thoughts?

 

[Kevlar]

For some reason my find-replace isn't working. The minute I push the replace button it looks like it starts up but then freezes and the only way to close it is to close the entire program. Any thoughts?

It would help to know operating system, as well as program and version, but try this: (Windows)

Right-Click the shortcut you use to open the program, click properties, choose the compatibility tab and turn on compatibility mode. Play around with what version of Windows. You'd be amazed at what sorts of problems this can solve.

---

Anyway, on topic:

I have a list of names I made up for certain cultures, though I do need to expand it and specialize it. This because the country the first chunk of my planned story takes place entirely in has a huge mix of languages that have been spoken in the area at any point in time. Five in one country I think is about the size of Spain. Either way, what's really funny is that a ton of names I thought were original are completely legitimate names from the real world.

 

[JCFarnham]

The find-replace dialogue does really rather interesting when I use it.

As far as I can tell, it searches the document for any and all instances of each and every individual letter in the word I'm changing things from. Once it's found some (ie, a lot) it changes them all to the replacement word. So you get something like:

Bob was walking Bob the Bob Bob day when he happened upBob his friend Amy.

Lovely, lovely OpenOffice, oh how I love you...

 

[Zero Angel]

Find/Replace is great, although it's a little sketchy if you use placeholder names that are actually objects -_-

For instance, I had a character where I was using "WARLORD" as the placeholder--then when I went to replace, legitimate uses of WARLORD were replaced as well -_-

I recommend code-like words (for instance, FeVult1, FeVult2, War0, etc) if you use placeholders. Eventually, these might even develop into names. For instance, I got so used to FeVult that this eventually developed into Felora.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

The find-replace dialogue does really rather interesting when I use it.

As far as I can tell, it searches the document for any and all instances of each and every individual letter in the word I'm changing things from. Once it's found some (ie, a lot) it changes them all to the replacement word. So you get something like:

Bob was walking Bob the Bob Bob day when he happened upBob his friend Amy.

Lovely, lovely OpenOffice, oh how I love you...

You can tell it to match whole words only, or a variety of other options, including matching styles and such.

I'm using LibreOffice (formerly OpenOffice) for my NIP but I'm not going to use it again after I'm done with this. Too inflexible. I'm just going to write everything in vim and write scripts to merge the chapter docs together and format them.