I'm really bad at coming up with names.

Chaotic Shiny - Civilization Generator

This site has lots of random generators for different things, names included. Best of luck!


I happen to know a little about a lot, and a lot about a little.

 

The Everchanging Book of Names (EBoN) is a name generator I've mentioned before. I really love it; it produces lots of good names that aren't too wacky. I first discovered it by hearing it mentioned by Mary Kowal on Writing Excuses.

But I've found that I can use name generators to help with minor characters or background characters whereas with main characters I need to go more with gut instinct, working various sets of sounds over and over until something "clicks" for me. This can take quite some time.

Names for worldbuilding geography (cities, rivers, etc.) are usually a lot easier for me than names for main characters. I recently mentioned one strategy I use: look up lists of ancient cities from an old civilization, then splice halves of two together.

One major problem I had for my latest project was coming up with names for two different cultures. Basically, I have a country dominated by one culture that conquered another country approx. 200 years earlier, but the people of that conquered country still maintain their culture. The culture clash is going to be a major issue in the story, so I needed really good names for both. After about two weeks, I finally settled on two names, but...heh, took a lot of frustration and irritation with myself to settle. The two words I used are derived from words in existing languages–but I had to go through many words, use Google Translate, read some old histories, and basically pound my head against a wall for two weeks until I found the words I wanted to use.

 

One approach might be to type the words that spring to mind when thinking of a character [race, city etc.] in to some thing like Google Translate and pick different languages. See [and listen] to what comes out and see if any thing attracts your attention [for good or bad]. Sometimes what a name isn't is as important as what is is...
You may want/need to tweak what you find.
If that starts to work for me, I try to stick with one language per group, as that may give the names a certain cohesion.

My big tip is not to force it. Use a place-holder and carry on until some sticks in your imagination.

 

I would suggest you find a real world culture that correspsonds to the kind of culture you are writing about and take names from the real world, or at least use it as inspiration. That will save you lots of work and you can use reader expectations to essentially make them fill in the blanks in your world building.

 

Please don't feel bad about asking someone who's better at something for help!

Generators are nice, but you still have to wade through all the crappy words just to find the one that might suit.

Whether it's names of cities or geographical features, personal names, a naming language or even a language sketch or complete language, one thing you can consider is engaging the services of a conlanger --- someone who loves inventing languages. The Language Creation Society (conlang.org) does maintain a jobs board and can serve as an intermediary if you'd like to go that route. It's not a daunting process at all, and there are benefits to such a service. You'd actually be working with a person. If you have ideas for how the names should sound, a language inventor can offer you a much higher grade of output than a generator. They'd be able to communicate with you as needed for a simple job or a longer term project. God grant you great success with you book --- if the project pans out or grows in the future, you'd already have a contact who can pick up and expand upon the names and words you've got already.

I'm not knocking word generators, just noting that there are pros and cons and better options to explore.

 

I rarely use them as such, mostly because they do tend to be very "typical" when you are looking for names. Like getting "Herrod Stonebeard" for a dwarf... even if the culture or naming convention isn't even close to what you want. I think it is useful more for inspiration rather than actually using the name it gives you.



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Coming up with names is one of my favorite part of world building. One tip I could give you concerning character names is look up a whole bunch of fiction names and then change a few letters here and there, switch the order, add one or take one away. For example the name "Lea" is pretty basic. I played a little with it and ended up with Le'ah -which can be a nice name, one I'd use for a secondary character or something. Another example would be the name "Alya", which I transformed into Aaliyah. For a male name, an example would be Cal: I tweaked it and came up with Khal, and from there decided it would be a nice nickname for Khalden. Those are just a couple of examples, perhaps not the best names in my list haha (and my list is prettyyy long).
For cities/countries, I do admit having a bit more difficulty. I might even write a thread asking for help haha. But I'd suggest inspiring yourself from the nation's history, its culture, the religion even.
For example, I'm trying to come up with a name for the capital of the main empire in my story. The royal imperial family is descended from the Goddess of the Sun (who is the source of their magic). So I'm thinking of Solaris for now, derived from "Sol" (Soleil in french, meaning Sun). See what I did there?
So yeah, hope that helped a little

 

Character names are only as difficult to come up with as you let them be.

Firstly, consider language. Do the people in your world all speak "common tongue", or do they use different languages? There's absolutely nothing wrong with having the people in your books who mostly speak common tongue have sort of normal names that resemble names used today in our own world.

Secondly, consider naming conventions. For last names, many regions in the world simply use occupations, things you find in nature, titles etc as bases for lastnames. Smith, Mason, Turner, Woodman etc are names based on occupation. Stone, River, Shore--well, you get the point by now. These can obviously also be used as first names (Taylor Swift for example, where both names are occupations).

If you have a human-sorta race, who speak "common tongue", I wouldn't think a name like Parker Woodman would seem out of the ordinary. Character names are only as difficult to come up with as you let them be.

 

I feel that pain...just thinking about it is sometimes enough to bring on a migraine.

 

The Meaning and History of First Names - Behind the Name

Another good source for those who read this thread.

 

In my current work, Magic causes the user to die young. When considering History, there would be a lot more names because they die so fast.

So I decided anyone who lived before the time of book one will have a random Greco-Roman sounding name to indicate they are historical figures.