Character Names

NemoBook · Sep 18, 2007

I hate figuring out character names. They always sound either horribly commonplace or completely ridiculous and unrealistic. Again, I'm having trouble finding a good middle-ground of memorable, interesting character names for my WIP.

Anyone have any advice/name-websites/methods for naming characters?

KTC · Sep 18, 2007

google BABY NAMES. you'll get tons. My characters come with names.

Writer14 · Sep 18, 2007

you can go to the website: Behindthename
just add .com after it and you got it.

Also, you can always just make a long list of the alphabet, and under each letter write names that you know that begin with that letter. One (or more) of the names should click in your head and you'll probably be drawn to it for one of your characters. =]

C.bronco · Sep 18, 2007

I recommend C.bronco, or just Bronco. But then you probably have more than one character....
I've given some of my characters the first names or surnames of friends and relatives.
I also went on a website that listed all of the Catholic saints. That rendered some pretty cool results.

Calla Lily · Sep 18, 2007

For first names, I went to baby name sites that broke names out by ethnicity.

For surnames: My WIP is set in a fictional Pennsylvania town in a real county. I went online to census records and downloaded all the surnames for that county for the last 100 years, then weeded out dupes and unique-sounding singles.

sneakers145 · Sep 18, 2007

I usually start with a generic name that I sort of like, but as I write, the characters ultimately name themselves. One of my first characters had almost 10 names before she finally told me.

Current characters didn't take that long to name. Once I get to know them (via writing) their names come to me. They have to fit the character, not just sound good.

Scrawler · Sep 18, 2007

Behind the Name is a good one, especially if you're looking for specific nationalities. If you search name generator, you'll get a lot of other websites.

chartreuse · Sep 18, 2007

KTC said:
google BABY NAMES. you'll get tons. My characters come with names.

I have a baby names book that I use for first names. For last names I usually use the phone book.

jdparadise · Sep 18, 2007

I'll more-than-occasionally use last names as first names. Obviously, Siegelman Jones won't really work, but Parker Jones might...

nevada · Sep 18, 2007

make sure that the name you pick was in use in the year that the character was born. Nothing turns me off faster than someone with a name that wasnt used until the last few years. So don't pick a name that's popular now. And remember that more people have common names than unusual names, and if your character has an unusual name it will have helped shape her past and her character. Someone named Poppy Brite is going to have a different childhood than Mary Clarke, for example. For no reason sometimes than every time you tell someone your name they're looking at you weird. Your name's poppy bright? No really? and in school there would have been kids who would have called her poopy. THat will affect a character. So don't forget that either. It's not just a name.

Xx|e|ph|e|me|r|al|xX · Sep 18, 2007

Babynames.com is my main source for first names, along with the aforementioned behindthename.com. Also, a simple "baby names" google search will yield good results.

For last names, I love Last-names.net. It's a good list of last names by nationality, and it has good meanings, and you can get an idea of how common it is, like this. I got Angel's last name (Ackerman) from there, and Symphony's (Coleridge) as well. And Baldwin. And a few others. It's pretty good. :3 But of course, google searching "last names" will get some good results, too.

Zoombie · Sep 18, 2007

Or, you could just go nuts and use the zany names.

Like Justin Case: Freelance Gardener.

Kate Thornton · Sep 18, 2007

I have named several characters after people here on AW (their real names, not their "handles")

preyer · Sep 18, 2007

the dumbest name i ever came up with has to be cash profitt. man, that was awful. i usually hate other people's character names, so go nuts, it probably won't matter to me.

MidnightMuse · Sep 18, 2007

Cash Profitt beats Semoure Butts.

ETA: I've said it before, but using the phone book and mixing up first/last names works great, too.

Carrie in PA · Sep 18, 2007

nevada said:
So don't pick a name that's popular now.

Not necessarily. "Emily" is wildly popular right now, but it was also very popular many, many years ago. It would be equally valid for a youngster or for an elderly lady.

I do agree with the advice to choose a name that would have been in use when your character was born. If you like reference books, I love the Character Naming Sourcebook.

Here's a gem - you can do a search by year and it will give you the most popular names. You can do up to the top 1000 popular names back as far as 1879.

For me, my characters usually come with names in a real, "Hi, I'm Besty" kind of way. Other times, I'll hear a name that's slightly unusual and suddenly a character will appear.

DeleyanLee · Sep 18, 2007

For ages, I've worked in various places where I'm exposed to hundreds of names a week. For a while, I scribbled lists of cool and neat names onto scraps of paper and horded them like a dragon does its gold.

Then lost them all in a move, along with the notebooks filled with all the ideas I'd been saving for that "someday book".

Took me three years to realize that the box was missing. LOL!

Now, when I want to name a character, I look to the feel and tone of the world I'm writing in and the sense of the character I want the reader to get immediately. Sometimes it takes a while, sometimes it just comes. Thus far, I've never been lacking for a character name when I started writing.

sneakers145 · Sep 18, 2007

I moved a few months ago and the prior owner of my phone # had a wicked cool name. He's going to be a pivotal figure in novel #3 (currently in the planning stages).

flightless · Sep 18, 2007

Check the names of the senders that get screened in your email's SPAM folder, too.

preyer · Sep 18, 2007

sneaker, i knew before i looked at your location you had to be from the new england area. how long have y'all been saying 'wicked' now, anyway? lol.

it's funny: my wife is an engraver, so she does a lot of trophies and plaques with names on it. she does a lot for the city of dayton. she learned real fast never to take the spelling of a name for granted. 'kevin' could be 'kevyn.'

strange/funny/sad/pathetic story. a guy i worked with told me a story about a girl he knew. not the brightest star in the sky, it was no surprise i guess when it turned out she had gotten pregnant by someone. she had a girl and when they handed her the birth certificate to fill out her girl's name, the name she'd chosen she pronounced feh-mah-lee. 'female.' yep, she thought the hospital had named her daughter, so that's the name she wrote down.

anyone ever use their own name for a character?

Siddow · Sep 18, 2007

I'm another phone book user. I also do reverse lookup, I think it's through whitepages.com, but it could be another, where you can get all the names and phone numbers of people who live on a certain street.

I also steal homes from realtor.com. It's really creepy when you find a house in the type of town you want (like small-town Nebraska, or downtown Boston, or a suburb of LA), have the address, then do a lookup of the owner's name. hehe.

But I think if you have a person who lives in a certain type of town, if they're native, then you should know the common names of the place. Like I could never put a character named Cipriani in a small southern town, but an Easley would work fine.

nevada · Sep 18, 2007

ummm preyer, that Feh Mah Lee story? thats from the movie Cat people. The one with Natasha Kinski.

preyer · Sep 18, 2007

then i should mention that 'cat people' was based on a true story that involved my co-worker.

ZannaPerry · Sep 18, 2007

I've struggled with names for my current WIP for at least a year, or so. I liked the names I had first, then they didn't sound right or go with the character, but now I LOVE my names, and they are completely different from the ones I had originally. Just don't keep saying the name you want over and over in your head or they won't make sense anymore.

Once you find that right name it will POP!

Danger Jane · Sep 18, 2007

Most of my characters are straight out of either mythology or history. Other than that I do a combination of name research and historical research to find the right one. For my historical/fantasy stories.

I have a story brewing about an asexual teenage girl named Ophelia. Not a common name, exactly. She lives in the land of weird rich people who name their kids stuff that sounds fancy, so it's cool. Plus then the theme song can be Cecelia by Simon and Garfunkel. RHYME!!

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