What's In A Name?

[sleepwriter]

Kind of a basic question, but how do you guys come up with your names? I feel like I used to make up names a lot, but these days my mind goes blank every time I try to come up with one. I've imagined up these fantastic places and races, and I've got nothing to call them! Right now I'm scraping by with identifying features such as "water people" or "cliff people", but it totally kills my mojo every time I try to work on my story. I personally feel that names are important so I have a hard time making due.

On a different but related note, have you ever invented languages for the people in your stories? What are your methods or thoughts on this?

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

....how do you guys come up with your names?

I research root words, modern and archaic, and fashion names from them. Or, I will look for name meanings and find a meaning that I feel represents the character.
Did you know GRRM's character names have meaning? There are many but here's a couple.
Bran = Raven
Craster = Woodland camp
If you've read the stories, you'll get it.

...have you ever invented languages for the people in your stories? What are your methods?

Only once, for magical rituals. I did the same as above, root words from past and present as well as foreign words. Then I change some letters to what I think sounds best.

 

[BrokenFiction]

I've used this site before: Fantasy Name Generator
And this one: Serendipity

They're both name generators. I also hit up my favorite etymology site Online Etymology Dictionary and work my way backward from a common object name to something in the original Old French, Old English or Latin, then play around with it a bit.

 

[Shreddies]

I have terrible trouble coming up with names (for anything and everything), but a few things I've noticed are:

1: You can identify and name them by where they're from (Romans being from Rome, etc). This method is great if you already have your world mapped out a bit. So if you had a race of aquatic people living in the Sea of Lyss, for example, they might call themselves Lyssans, essentially 'People of/from Lyss'. If another culture has a different name for that sea, they might call them something else.

2: Another natural method is for them to be named after their ancestor, such as Moabites being descendants of Moab.

3: And finally. Try taking two or more words that are associated with them and smash them together with extreme prejudice. For instance, in my world there's a race of short mouse-like folk so I took two creatures they somewhat resembled, Chipmunk and Chinchilla. I chopped up the words then glued them together to make Chipachin, which was still too close to the original, so I cut off 'Chi' and viola! The Pachin folk were named. Granted I didn't know if I liked the name for a while but it is growing on me, plus I can keep Chi as a tribe's name, so a person from that tribe would be called Chi'Pachin for instance.

 

[stephenspower]

I love how Jack Vance used parts of words: The Whelm for his galactic police force, for instance, so for groups of characters in my novel I took words with the same prefix then lopped off the prefix. Thus, rehearse, reject and reprieve become the names of three generals Herse, Ject and Prieve; and obsolete, oblivion and obtuse become the names of three mates on a galley Solet, Livion and Tuse. It works with suffixes too: Birmingham became a character named Birming. For others, I used foreign words for a character's main characteristic; Scottish is particularly good for this. For some of the galleys in my novel I adopted the titles of REM songs; others I named after Greek obscenities (because of the character naming them). The whole idea is to make a name seem both familiar and unusual at the same time, like you're looking at it in a fun house mirror.

Of course, all this invisible to anyone reading the book. It just makes me feel secretly so clever.

 

[Ireth]

I mainly use real-world names, since the majority of my characters are either from the real world or various mythologies (Celtic and Norse are favorites). For those I use Behind the Name: Meaning of Names, Baby Name Meanings. I've tried to invent my own languages and names for a story or two, but the first story was scrapped years ago, and the second has fallen by the wayside in favor of my Fae novels.

 

[Hainted]

People's Names by Holly Ingraham. Covers over 100 cultures and times from Punic through Modern Finnish Also goes into naming conventions for each culture, so you get it right, meanings of some names for other cultures, AND has a chapter on how to create "Shadow Languages". That's the made up languages people try to pass off as real in fiction. For Races or Places, I look to foreign words or olden words or myth. I have several books in my personal library listing archaic words, funny foreign phrases, or technical terms. Also pay attention to the world around you. Several places in my WIP(Goblintown, Howfager, BrickHaven) are street names in various towns in the area.

 

[Nagash]

I've mainly created names according to the culture i found inspiring in shaping the civilization of the character. It just needs to sound good... Most of the time, it's about some letters being used more often than others, or specific sounds. For example, i have a civilization very loosely based on the aztec culture - come to think of it, the only real inspiration it gave me was a bunch of pretty nice names. I needed names for clans; i came up with : Japaz, Makal, Battalek, Tapioc...

The abundant use of "k", "a", "z", "j" and "t" here and there, is a guarantee for rock-solid aztec names. Now, depending on whatever vibe you want to give to your names, you just need to find the good technique. I'd advise looking up some typical names of the culture you're aiming at reproducing. Because in the end, like Ireth said it, it's mostly about taking real names, and distorting them just enough to make them your own...

 

[Ireth]

Because in the end, like Ireth said it, it's mostly about taking real names, and distorting them just enough to make them your own...

I don't even distort the names, honestly. I use them as they are, bizarre spellings and all. Anglicizing them just doesn't work, in my opinion. It takes away that ancient historical/mythological flavor.

 

[Malik]

I use name generators, but I'm also in the military so I'm surrounded by nametapes. I once lived across from a guy named Julian Deathrage.

There's something about this, though, and it goes not so much to character names as place names. I have read posts and blog entries from authors who talk about the laziness of fantasy writers who use place names such as "Blue Lake," "Silver Forest," "Laughing River," etc.

Personally -- and this is just me -- I tend to use names for people that are in the language of the area, but for the actual places, if there's a translation available, I'll use that. Because when you decipher most place names in our world that are in other languages, what do you get?

You get "Blue Lake," "Silver Forest," "Laughing River," etc.

Plus, it's less crap for the reader to remember. Every now and again, I'll stumble across an opening like this:

Seresnal and Bregsnack started up at the Dragoth Ungthar Gate, the massive sawtooth spires of Thanaloth rising behind it. To the west, the vast misty plains of Urg'than'ungol gave way to the mountain peaks of Herth'an'tarr.

"Reminds me of Lothalian at Sereth Morg," said Seresnal. "I'm really glad we left Gornack and Ula'an back at Thirth."

"You said it," agreed Bregsnack.


I'm three paragraphs in and already reaching for a bottle. This is just me, though. Professional driver on a closed course. Your mileage may vary.

 

[Nagash]

I don't see names built with a composition of word as sheer laziness, as long as its done well. French "traditionnal" names (and probably in other cultures) are mostly simple words glued together. "Dupont", "Duval", "Renard", "Lhermite" - mere words, really. Besides, in many cultures, names originated as a way to label people accordingly to their profession or activity; it's uncanny how some names, such as Pierre, are frequent in specific "milieu", such as the countryside. While the name lost most of its connection with the profession, it was once used to label people doing a very specific activity.

Also, the fact that most, if not every names have a clear meaning in some well known language or god forgotten dialect, clearly seems to show their labeling purpose, in a simpler time. The german name "Gunther" means "warrior"; "Emmanuel" means "God is with us"... Point is, while tossing out some composed names such as "Blue-Lake" or what have you, may seem silly, all in all, its only logical.

Can't believe i got to say this last part x)

 

[thedarknessrising]

Honestly, I probably do it in the worst way. I start out with one letter and add others until I get a decent sounding name. Sometimes I peruse my Dungeons and Dragons Player's Handbook for names.

 

[Ireth]

When in doubt, keyboardsmash, take out any punctuation, then juggle the letters until you get something pronounceable. XDD

 

[thedarknessrising]

When in doubt, keyboardsmash, take out any punctuation, then juggle the letters until you get something pronounceable. XDD

I've done this too. :biggrin:

 

[Jabrosky]

I'm usually content to take names or words from whatever real-world societies inspired my characters' cultural backgrounds. When it comes to place names, I like to rip off mythology or obsolete geography (that is, old names for real places, e.g. Aethiopia for what we now call Sudan or Albion for the Celtic countries).

It's not that I cannot come up with my own names. It doesn't sound hard at all to string together a few syllables. However, I prefer that my names evoke real-world races or cultures, and I believe the best way to do that is research real names from those ethnic groups.

 

[AWAbooks]

I really like method #3. Thank you!

 

[skip.knox]

Complete agreement with Malik here. I've tried twice to read R.A. Salvatore. (Side note: one advantage of physical books over e-readers is, you can hurl it across the room without worrying.) Names tumble at the reader like a landslide, only less interesting.
Takes me right out of the book. Whatever else an author does or does not do, I ask that I not be made to work at it just to get to Chapter Two.

 

[Svrtnsse]

I'm a bit of a name snob and refuse to use a naming generator. I don't think there's an actual logical or sensible reason for this, it just doesn't feel right to me.
In my current WIP I'm trying to put in a mix of regular everyday real English names and made up (and real) Nordic/Scandinavian names.

Some characters have a harder time finding a name than others. Now and then I find that in coming up with a good name the character instead gets stuck with a bad one. It annoys me at first, but eventually I get used to it and then I let it stay. It's not that uncommon for people in the real world to have names I don't like.