Coming up with names for your characters and races and more...

[Devor]

It takes me a lot of time to come up with a name. Sometimes a good name just comes to me, but until it does I use placeholders. I have way too many short stories where the protagonist is still named "Main", "Insert Name Here" or "Some Guy".

I use behindthename.com a lot for ideas.

I like to use placeholder names which still invoke in my mind some of the right personality traits, maybe borrowing names momentarily from some of the books I've read. "Some Guy" would just be so hard for me to write for. I need to be as immersed or more into my writing as I would hope a reader to be.

 

[Stranger]

Some Guy is my silly stock character. He is boring. His life is boring. He has a cat, who is also boring. He doesn't like change, he doesn't approve of "weird" people and he hates fantasy books or anything frivolous. I even have a character alignment for him, "Lawful Boring".

Immersion is wonderful though! I wish I could come up with more creative placeholders, lol.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

I even have a character alignment for him, "Lawful Boring".

That might be my new favorite alignment, replacing "Chaotic Stupid."

 

[DameiThiessen]

My world isn't entirely separate. It's one of those 'MC travels to a magical realm" stories, more C.S Lewis than Tolkien. So my characters have either German, Hungarian, Serbian, Croatian or Italian names, depending on where they came from. I'd like to be able to make-up names, but at the same time I'd like my reader to be able to keep track of which character is which without too much confusion and familiarity is a tool. I find that when high fantasy authors make up complicated names and throw them out there with little to no initial description I get lost and disinterested very quickly. I would rather hear about Adam, Sam, and Lucy than Hungraelgal, Forthusal and Yaurling, because at least I can tell them apart. Of course it can be done well. But when you have 50 different places and creatures and characters with unfamiliar names I think you should really take the time to describe them upon introduction. (No more saying things like "Fairswift hopped upon his Tortural and unhooked his grandoldol sting bow. Kicking off he had just set course for Havenmark when he heard the Drobabel calling. It was the annual Meet of the High Weryl Council, and every Lut and his kin were expected in attendance." without telling me what that means. xD)

Among them the names I picked are Wilhelm, Francesca, Marietta, Damir, Jasna, Cila, Goran and Senka. (Different from English or American names, but one can still tell who is a boy and who is a girl.) There is a household spirit named Scratch and one character is just "The Ferryman" - both of which are still words and titles the reader can understand. I haven't the ability to make up something completely new and different from thin air, so I just twist folklore around until I've decided on something fairly new and simple. I do admire people that can though.

 

[JamesTFHS]

names should always fit the culture of your world. It makes it more believable that names match the culture of your beings versus just character cliches and archtypes.

 

[Jabrosky]

names should always fit the culture of your world. It makes it more believable that names match the culture of your beings versus just character cliches and archtypes.

This. My characters always have names that come from real cultures. Names for countries and cultures are a little trickier, but I often like to use mythological or ancient names (e.g. Albion, Olympus, Shem, etc.).

 

[Wormtongue]

Hey, I was thinking of this question too. How do you name your character..

Same as Cinder, I can't do those names.. I tried, and I seriously tried.. but I came up with weird, hard to pronounce names with no exact meaning..

But I am thinking.. Do I have to use names like Frodo Baggins so that it sounds more 'fantasy'? Or I can just use names like Adam Sanders... haha?

When I originally posted some of my wip on another forum for review I had a character named Jon. I was told that name seemed out of place because it sounded too ordinary. At first I thought that was silly. The name Jon totally fit the character (to me). But then I thought it over and decided that in my fantasy world the names should BE unusual so that they would SEEM usual. So I changed it to Jeron.

As for races, I have Humans, Elves, Trolls, and Dards. I just couldn't bring myself to use dwarves, so I created a new race in some ways similar to, but also very different from, dwarves.

 

[Neurosis]

I draw a lot of inspiration from my medical/anatomical background. Lots of mashed together pseudo Greek and Latin. Another good method is to take a word you like, and do vowel replacement.

 

[jax]

names of people I know mashed up to create something else

 

[PlotHolio]

I find combinations of letters that sound cool when mashed together and turn them into names for everything I have. Here are some examples of names I've created:

Incenzae
Illuveia
Coaltika
Aiyona
Hakkonai
Shisika

Don't even think about stealing these, because I can contest any claim you make to them if I have clear records that I invented them first. Such records are, in fact, in my possession.

Not that any members of this forum would do such a thing, but you can never be too careful.

 

[The Unseemly]

For me? A really, weird, retarded form of symbolism: in my book a vampire is called Alvain. Take the Al, and you've got what? Vain. Otherwise? Vein. And guess what vampire's favourite midnight brew is?

They do this sort of think in Harry Potter. Lucious Malfoy - Lucious is a derivation of one of the names for a devil, and, indeed, Lucious isn't the pleasantest of characters. Likewise, Lupin - he's a werewolf, and (though I'm not 100% on this one), Lupin is either Latin or Greek (or something else) for lunar. And when does the werewolf strike?