How do you name your characters?

[ThinkerX]

The main region of my primary world is very roughly patterned after a sort of 'fantasy europe and the middle east'. Most of my names for that area come out of old AD&D sourcebooks I have; they feature lists of common male and female greek, roman, germanic, middle eastern, and scandinavian names. A couple of these books even give lists of names assigned to Dwarves and Elves in mythology, which is a big help.

For my 'created' races, I decided on a few grammatical rules, and made up names at random in accordance with that.

I had to do the same with a one or two 'original' human cultures.

I also put together lists of male and female names typical for India and China for more exotic characters.

 

[rhd]

Very escapist with me: Name generator sites like Rinkworks. I figure names are good as long as they sound good, the rest of time I type randomly on the keyboard and add vowels to fatten them up or chisel off a few accordingly, until the name grows on me, if it doesn't work well I change it to something else. I just realized my names were too Celtic sounding for a world I created from scratch, so I need to change them a bit. Thank goodness for word replacement tools.

 

[Stuart John Evison]

As a fantasy writer and illustrator I gather my names and even some characters from traditional folktales, the old ones are sometimes the best.
Stuart of Ely.

 

[Aravelle]

I don't mean to, but my names have a way of fitting the character meaning wise. The only one that is intentional is my character Ghaelwyn: gwym means white in gaelic, and she's albino. I was just playing with words in other languages and it just stuck. I highly recommend baby books and looking up words in other languages that would fit your character [honourable, flaxen haired, etc].

 

[Cassia]

What I do is look at baby names websites. I was writing an Egyptian set novel and googled Egyptian baby names.

 

[Kenneth J. Ester]

I usually do what my mood directs me to do. Usually it is to make up my own names, but sometimes I take real names and change them up. Making up names, IMO, is very easy. Ferona, Keldis, Vaaros, Ezorin.... those just took me about thirty seconds to come up with. (So, no they are not used. Feel free.) lol

My two favorites I have used, are... Levicus Kane (who is a Battle Priest), and Hel Bragen (a Giant dark skinned warrior with tattoos on his cheeks and back). In these cases, Levicus, came from the bible book, Leviticus, and Kane is a real name that I felt was a good fit. Hel, well, I am not sure. I think I was writing about Hell at the time and I thought of it and liked it. Bragen was the last name of someone I once knew and I just thought it sounded cool.

If I had to give advice, I would say to mix it all up in your book. Use some real names that fit the sound of your world (I used Joshua for one of my main characters), use some names that you change up (Tomas instead of Thomas), and make some up completely, like I did above. The made up names will give the story a sense of originality, but the real names will give a sense of realism because we recognize them as real names. The changed up names are just a good bridge between the two. That's the way I see it all.

 

[JCFarnham]

Well. Looks like this thread is active again. Here are my thoughts.

I name my characters by "the rules of real life" (it helps that I only really write stuff set in from the present to the far future at the moment..). What I mean by this is choosing names by exactly the same methods a normal person living today in the pertinent cultural group. My name as far as I know was chosen because it was a family name (therefore important to keep alive) and "it sounds good", rather than for its inherent meaning.

I don't personally know many people who are named for meanings for example, so that shows in my characters with my habit of using census data to randomise names. I'm sure that kind of thing happens, but it hasn't been common in my experience so far.

If you think about it people are named mostly on trend. Therefore I pick a corresponding decade of census data, randomly generate a set of 20 names, and see what I like. I don't place any massive meaning on my own name, so likewise I don't with my character, they get random names until something sticks. If I want something more out there I usually make a surname into a first name. (eg, Johnson. Though I have gone weirder.)

My favourite name so far is a character called Elkin ben Artzi. Named as such because I felt like having something vaguely Jewish (ish), nothing more, nothing less. I have once or twice twisted a first name into something a bit more odd sounding.. but it depends on the setting doesn't it.

 

[Aidan of the tavern]

I usually do what my mood directs me to do. Usually it is to make up my own names, but sometimes I take real names and change them up. Making up names, IMO, is very easy. Ferona, Keldis, Vaaros, Ezorin.... those just took me about thirty seconds to come up with. (So, no they are not used. Feel free.) lol

My two favorites I have used, are... Levicus Kane (who is a Battle Priest), and Hel Bragen (a Giant dark skinned warrior with tattoos on his cheeks and back). In these cases, Levicus, came from the bible book, Leviticus, and Kane is a real name that I felt was a good fit. Hel, well, I am not sure. I think I was writing about Hell at the time and I thought of it and liked it. Bragen was the last name of someone I once knew and I just thought it sounded cool.

If I had to give advice, I would say to mix it all up in your book. Use some real names that fit the sound of your world (I used Joshua for one of my main characters), use some names that you change up (Tomas instead of Thomas), and make some up completely, like I did above. The made up names will give the story a sense of originality, but the real names will give a sense of realism because we recognize them as real names. The changed up names are just a good bridge between the two. That's the way I see it all.

Levicus Kane is a good name, there are wonderful moments when you get the right syllables in the right order. I have a character who I spent ages trying to build (ironically he only appears in 1 and a bit chapters), it took a while to get his name but I eventually landed with Bandarel Varune. Also you may or may not know that Hel was the name of the Norse Goddess of death?