Choosing names for characters & locations

hdawg06 · Apr 14, 2008

This is probably one of the hardest areas for me. People seem much easier, but many times I have to use much more common names than I would like, for I feel the last names I some times come up with are rather awkward.

Places on the other hand, are extremely tough, and I can take 10-15 minutes some times to just get a quick little name.

Any help is appreciated.

eleven · Apr 14, 2008

I keep lists of place and people names. Whenever I come across an interesting name I add it to the list, then when I am writing I can consult the list.
If you are writing fantasy there are name generators available online to help inspire you.

TheIT · Apr 14, 2008

I make name lists from baby name books of names which fit the story so I've got a quick list to look through. So far I haven't needed to do the same for places. I'm using a real map for the world in my fantasy novel, so I make anagrams of the real place names.

If I'm in the groove of writing and need a name, I do what Uncle Jim recommends in the "Learn Writing With Uncle Jim" thread and use a placeholder name which describes the function of the character, like <friend1>. This way I don't lose momentum. Later, I go back and replace it with an actual name.

dpaterso · Apr 15, 2008

"people" is easy:

Close your eyes, open a phone book to a random page and touch any spot on the page. Use the name. (Unless it's something like "Page 234" or "Joe's Garage" in which case, try again.)

Watch the closing credits of any film or TV show. Take note of some random first names and match them up with some random second names. As long as you don't end up with Brad Clooney and George Pitt, no one will notice. Maybe skip the lead actors and pick crew names instead?

Google random names census and check out the links. The very first one I clicked on gave me:

1. Garrett Hall
2. Lesley Armitage
3. Roddy Stephenson
4. Dorinda Hirleman
5. Kelly Baldwin
6. Skylar Patton
7. Katherine Hahn
8. Nichole Knisely
9. Alana Brooks
10. Ogden Howard

As for "places" -- I don't know what to suggest for that one. Are you having problems deciding where to set your story?

PS - sender names from this morning's spam mail harvest:

Patrica Brunson
Tamra Siegel
Briana Hope
Lilly Cho
Alma Stanley
Ada Madison
Karina Jack

PPS - have fun here, http://www.seventhsanctum.com/index-name.php

-Derek

mscelina · Apr 15, 2008

Skylar Patton is a very nice dude by the way.

dpaterso · Apr 15, 2008

mscelina said:
Skylar Patton is a very nice dude by the way.

Special forces field interrogation officer, with just one stroke of his SOG knife ol' Sky can split a prisoner from crotch to throat, and then by golly they talk, they don't stop talking, they'll tell him everything he wants to know if only he'll stitch 'em back together. He never does. He likes to see what makes people work. When he was a boy he used to take old clocks and stuff apart for the same reason.

None of his neighbors suspects a thing when he invites 'em over for beer and fried chicken on Sunday afternoons.

-Derek

Raindrops · Apr 15, 2008

Either they come to me or I look at baby name websites. Or sometimes I thumb through the telephone book.

Lyra Jean · Apr 15, 2008

For the novel I'm working on I need 1400 names. Notice my signature. This is because it's a colonization effort from planet Earth to another planet. I'm looking for a good ethnic/genetic mix from all over the world.

I'm using baby names for my names. It divides it up by nationality and gender or you can looking for a certain meaning. I'm not looking for a certain meaning but it's definitely helping me come up with names with a decent mix to get the feel I want. My hard part is finding surnames.

Place names I haven't had to deal with yet but I'm definitely going to have meaning behind those names more so than my characters names. As far as I know no one names their kid Sylvester or Moriko because they think he's going to grow up and roam in forest or something of that nature.

Fresie · Apr 15, 2008

A tiny detail: for realistic foreign names, I beg you not to use online baby name lists or random generators, even if it's fantasy. Always mix and match real people's names out of newspapers or web sites. Online baby name lists often contain most hilarious mistakes in foreign names, and as for random generators, I won't even start!.. I'm Russian and half the time I don't know whether to laugh or cry when I go through "Russian" baby name lists on the Web, people who compile them often haven't got a clue.

So if you have a foreign character and don't speak their language, stick to real people's names (as long as they're not too famous), that's the safest option.

CDarklock · Apr 15, 2008

I usually give some thought to the character's parents and what they would have chosen as a name. It gives me a reasonable excuse for having someone named "Jesse James Bond"; you just make it part of the character's backstory.

And remember, whatever your characters are named, they've had to live with that name all their lives.

HourglassMemory · Apr 15, 2008

For Characters:
I just make a list of names and then just play with them until I find two names that give me an idea of the character's (either) look or personality.

For Places: I pick something which would make people name the place for it, like : "Pebble, Dust, Star, Pens, encounter, tall trees, castles, flower, etc.
And then add parts like: Road, beach, bridge, archway, lake, graveyard, and so on.

Just give yourself material to play with for hours.

hdawg06 · Apr 15, 2008

Characters don't seem to be too tough, but it seems every other novel has a character named John, Frank, James, and a few others. I just want to be original. I found a good site that I am using, and it seems to be doing wonders. I got a few from it last night.

Places though... That's an entirely different story. I feel that when I come to this, I just blot something random down, and go with it for at least now. I usually have no meaning behind my places. Maybe I should start using foreign translators?

MelodyO · Apr 15, 2008

Well...I use the obituaries quite a bit, and I also Google "board of directors", which always gives me the goods. Then I just mix and match the first and last names if I find something I like.

raegan_1 · Apr 15, 2008

I love the website www.behindthename.com and there is actually http://surnames.behindthename.com/ for surnames as well. Wonderful, wonderful place(s).

ishtar'sgate · Apr 15, 2008

Yeah, names are hard. I don't make it any easier for myself though. One WIP is set in Burundi, Africa. I'm building a small list of contemporary names as I come across them during research. The other WIP is set in ancient Babylon so I've got those weird names to contend with.
Linnea

Bruzilla · Apr 15, 2008

I'm writing a military thriller with characters from Russia and Germany. I've been Googling the names of the members of the parliaments and other government organizations in each country, and then mixing up names.

Polenth · Apr 15, 2008

You have to be careful with non-English names, because they may use different rules for forming the name. Sometimes you're saying things you don't realise, like the name of the person's father. Or putting the given name in the wrong place.

Some names only come from certain ethnic groups within a country. It'd be like naming two brothers Akbar and John. They're both names you find in England. They're just unlikely in the same family (without good reason, like a mixed cultural background).

Daehota · Apr 16, 2008

People in my stories usually name themselves, but I love the "random name census" idea. Also baby names, names on film and TV credits and phone books. When I travel, I love to open a phone book in the motel room. It gives me an idea, also, of what names are common in certain geographical areas.

I love the idea of the "random name census."

Places are not usually hard for me, either, since I'm usually writing about a real, or semi-real place.

Becky Black · Sep 22, 2010

The Internet Movie Database is a good place to find long, long lists of names - go to the "full cast and crew" page. Don't use the famous ones.

I love it for the great mix of names with origins from all over the world that you get for Americans, and for using the credits from foreign movies to get a feel for the names common in a particualr country.

I once needed a bunch of name for a group of men from Cameroon and I ended up looking up info on Cameroonian football players to get a typical kind of selection.

Danthia · Sep 22, 2010

I write fantasy so this might not apply to your genre, but my trilogy world was set in an African-inspired area of Lake Victoria, so I used Afrikaans words for things. Like "Geveg" is the name of the city, and that means struggle, which was fitting for a city struggling under enemy occupation. Their enemy is from "Baseer," which means hurt. (I changed the spelling a tad)

I've done this with a lot of name of both people and places. It helps me find names, and gives them secret meanings that can be clues to who and what they are.

T.N. Tobias · Sep 22, 2010

Morbid as it seems, a cemetery is a great place to find names. You get a wide spread over many decades of popular names. You can get a loose impression of the person buried there by how much family surrounds them, how long they lived, epigraphs on the tombstone. I take my phone and make a list whenever I'm nearby a good cemetery.

JMC2009 · Sep 22, 2010

As a reader, I absolutely love it when an author uses places I've been to or have lived - it really increases the authenticity of the novel for me. Therefore, I tend to do the same thing. Being a geographer and hearing professors talk about "sense of place" for 7 years, I love being able to throw in some of the more unique features of my local -- in my current WIP I'm hoping that a reference to the red Oklahoma dirt (as minor as that may be) will make the story seem real to people who are from that area (and I know red dirt is something of a novelty because during weather channel coverage of a tornado one night the reporter commented that the red color is normal.)

For people I try and use names that Have a hidden significance
One of my characters feels invisible, so she's named after a comic book character "the invisible woman" the name? Sue.

lenore_x · Sep 22, 2010

Like Danthia, I'll take names and words from a language my fantasy culture is based on. I usually modify them slightly, though, just to drive home the point that I am not writing about real cultures and nations. For example, Jae Jinhwa is a possible Korean name, and I named the main character of one of my books Jei Jinwa. Not a possible Korean name anymore, but still reminiscent.

heza · Sep 22, 2010

dpaterso said:
PS - sender names from this morning's spam mail harvest:

Patrica Brunson
Tamra Siegel
Briana Hope
Lilly Cho
Alma Stanley
Ada Madison
Karina Jack

Here, I thought I was being clever copying down spammer names (at least they're good for one thing, huh?).

JMC2009 said:
...in my current WIP I'm hoping that a reference to the red Oklahoma dirt (as minor as that may be) will make the story seem real to people who are from that area...

Ha! There is nothing minor about the red of Oklahoma dirt. I caught the first part of your WIP in SYW, and I got all excited at the first mention of "Cimarron." I mean to read and comment when I get a couple of other crits finished.

I have a stock set of names, and in my first draft, before I've settled on the real names, I use them rather than <friend1>, and I replace them later.

I mentally file names from all sorts of places. The doctor's office, magazine articles, names on office doors when I visit client sites (mixed up, of course). I do the same with locations. I write down streets and small town names as I travel or check out names on a google map and then mix them up.

This thread has been really interesting. I'm glad the OP brought this up because I've gotten a lot of ideas from the responders, as well.

Linda Adams · Sep 22, 2010

I used to labor over baby books, picking out six names and then eliminating them one by one until I had the name I was going to use. After writing a book with a cast of 30, I don't sweat the names. Not worth all the time and effort. I just try to make sure they don't sound similar to the main character's name or start with the same letter.

Most of the time, I just pop onto a website like the Internet Movie Database or the Navy or Air Force Websites' officer's biographies and scan for names that catch my eye. Sometimes I'll hit the family genealogy, too, since it's a good source of more unusual names.

For locations, I try to think in terms of names that are named after places and events, since that's how many places are named. A place I grew up in (later renamed) was named after a real estate businessman who owned a lot of land. A major street was named after another prominent person in the community. Many of the streets outside of that area were Spanish names, and I also lived in a place where the names of places were Native American. Where I'm at now, they're all Civil War names or names of famous people.

Choosing names for characters & locations

hdawg06

eleven

TheIT

Infuriatingly Theoretical

dpaterso

Also in our Discord and IRC chat channels

mscelina

Teh doommobile, drivin' rite by you

dpaterso

Also in our Discord and IRC chat channels

Raindrops

Lyra Jean

Two years old now.

Fresie

She Who Runs The Waves

CDarklock

Yes!

HourglassMemory

hdawg06

MelodyO

Waiting for love on the web

raegan_1

Funny, motivated, eccentric.

ishtar'sgate

living in the past

Bruzilla

Polenth

Mushroom

Daehota

Becky Black

Writing my way off the B Ark

Danthia

T.N. Tobias

JMC2009

Your friendly neighborhood Chat Op

lenore_x

heza

Linda Adams

Soldier, Storyteller