Names and attributes

[skip.knox]

I stumbled across this site today.
Looking for your Purpose in Life, the Meaning of a Name, Meaning of Baby Names, or how to Make a Name Change?

These Kabalarians, as they call themselves, believe each name has its own attributes, rather like numerologists with numbers. It's all a bit silly, imo, but it provides an interesting way to think about your character. Just do a search on name + kabalarian and you'll get a link to the results.

Here's what returned on my name. Searching on "skip" yielded no results; then I remembered that my nickname is also a diminutive, so I searched on "skipper" (name origin: schiff+herr = ship captain)
Skipper - First Name Meaning - What does Skipper mean?
(notice they think Skipper is feminine; ghost of Barbie!)

Having seen those results, I decided to search on my given first name, ellis, and got this:
Ellis - First Name Meaning - What does Ellis mean?

Just to give you an idea of the variety. I then spent a fair amount of time plugging in names of various characters from my various books. As I said, it's all rather silly, but some of the items did get me thinking about new angles on some characters-in-development. Don't forget to check diminutives and variants. E.g., "fritz" returns different results from "frederick".

 

[FifthView]

Well.

I entered my first name, read the results.

Then I thought, eh, why not see the results for the name of the MC of a project I've been brainstorming.

I received a NOTE saying that the name of my fictional MC "has the same mathematical combination as" my own name that I'd "previously looked at" and "so the description below will be the same."

This is funny because:

• my real name has 6 letters, MC's name has 9;
  
• they only share two consonants in common and no vowels in common.

Must be fate.

 

[skip.knox]

Sounds like they may be using the logic of numerology behind the names. Eh.

 

[FifthView]

Sounds like they may be using the logic of numerology behind the names. Eh.

This was my thought, too.

Using that site is like an old suggestion I once read for helping with characters for romance stories. Create a real-world birthdate for your characters, then research their astrological signs in a decent resource. This will give you some ideas for their personalities, especially potential negative traits or flaws. (We typically conceive the "good" traits or basic traits on our own very well?) Also, I suppose you could use astrological predictions about how two characters might interact with one another. Food for thought.

 

[skip.knox]

Astrology is on my to-do list. I posit that it is real in Altearth, but in what way is still up in the air. Hah! I want it to be something more than just predicting the future. Not sure quite what. Same for numerology. It will be something of a fad, being all that for two or three centuries, then falling into disrepute.