Habits in naming characters

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cyanz

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Does anyone else make inadvertent patterns in their character names? I'm just going through and changing names in a WIP because I have:

Character names beginning with 'A':
-2 out of 3 POV characters
-the antagonist
-a best friend
-a boyfriend

Character names beginning with 'R':
-the other POV character
-a brother
-a friend/love interest
:e2thud:
Even I began to mix up the names... I didn't even realise I was doing it until I'd finished the first draft. Now I've got to decide who gets to keep their name and who doesn't. I love find-and-replace :Sun:
What patterns do you find yourself slipping into?
 

kaitie

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Aaaall the time. Especially with last names. I tend to use the same starting letter. Once discovered (no, twice) that I'd given two different characters the same last name in the same book. Oopsie. :tongue Now that's part of something I look for on edits.
 

MissMacchiato

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I'm fond of R names and S names....

My main love interest 's initials are RJS, which I only realised halfway through my first draft is the same as my own!

I actually went through all the first and last initials to make sure when I created a new character, their name started with a letter I didn't already have!

I'm terrible though, I tend to say a name aloud, and automatically add a last name I've heard in a movie, or read in a book, without realising. It's because the name sounds so familiar!
 

mccardey

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It took me years to realise that I'd matched my children's initials with my youngest siblings.... really quite spookifying.
 
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night-flyer

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I have a thing for 'J'.

I was rereading a chapter where people were gathered in a camp, half of them started with the letter J. Men and women.:e2writer:
 

leahzero

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Yes, a million times yes. I was horrible at this with my WIP. Two of my 5 POV characters have G names, but so did a ton of minor characters. I was also bad with the B's.

Most of the minor characters have had first and surnames changed several times now.
 

Linda Adams

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I'm trying to be better with names. At the moment, I'm having to replace 99% of my character names, the remaining name being the main character's. An agent at a pitch session heard one of the names and immediately started talking about changing some of them. That made me look at how I picked them. Pretty much, when I realized I needed a name, I hopped onto a site and picked one, both first and last. The result was that I ended up with names that sounded similiar and were easy to confuse--James, Jack, Jerry, Gene, and Barry. Particularly problematic with a large cast.

Since it's an urban fantasy set in a fictional foreign country, I've started using a Latin name list to only select from. Curiously, since the names are a bit out of what I would normally pick, I think I'm having fewer problems gravitating to the same name sounds. However, we'll see, since I do tend to have thirty characters.
 

Mr Flibble

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H. Names beginning with H, over several books. I have no idea why, seems utterly random, but the names for the characters turn up and I type happily away and then go 'Nuts! Another H!'. Then I say screw it and carry on lol.

Also names to do with wolves, as the OM pointed out the other day when I told him what MMC's name meant in Old Norse.
 

shaldna

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I just pull the names out of the air, because I figure that's what most parents do anyway.

I do tend to stay away from odd or unusual names, or names that are considered exotic in the location I'm using. So, while I'll use Sarah and Kenny and Bill for a Belfast based story, I might not use Sherayah or Anyjia.
 

Jamesaritchie

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I almost always use the names of people I know, and sometimes the names of famous people, so the names have a randomness simply by the fact that the names of people I really know are random.
 

cyanz

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Ha! It seems to be an epidemic! I wonder why we each like particular letters... Or names or phonemes or whatever :D The subconscious does funny things.

Since I realised the 'A' thing I've been going cold-turkey and avoiding all 'A' names (and it's not just because A is the first letter in naming dictionaries - half my A names are made up). In a recent WIP, however, I HAD to use an 'A' name because the plot didn't work without it (was a weird plot lol). I spent ages agonising over whether I could or not...
 

ChaosTitan

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I try hard to avoid repeating the same first letter, especially for main characters. If I'm going to have two characters with the same first letter (siblings with cutesy parents, for example), then I try to vary the number of letters in the name (Sara and Susannah, for example).
 

bri_ness

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I was naming characters yesterday and noticed that, for girls anyway, I love names that begin with a C or K, and ones that end with an ie/y sound (Callie, Tiffany, Tilly, etc.) And actually, in typing that I noticed I notice I'm find of the ll, I have an Adelle as well.

As for guys, I love names that end in -than (Nathan, Ethan, etc.)

I ended up naming the characters Kaci and Derek. There's another K!
 

Jessianodel

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One of my other WIPS, that has been temporarily trunked, I had the names Miyu and Maya (twins...I know, I know.) Riku, Jed, Raiden and Rai-Rai.

I like Jed, and there's a reason Rai-Rai is named after Raiden, but eventually I'll have to change Maya's and Riku's name....even though I like their names it got confusing for everyone else. And whenever I had to randomly come up with a name, they always started with R.

I could only come up with names starting with R, J, or a vowel. Why?
 
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adarkfox

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I thought I was just a weirdo! I have a weird love of the letters "K" "S" and "M"... characters names first and last, names of places...

Why is this? LoL
 

Sage

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Js and Ms are my big ones. I've also started using Cs a lot.

Js are my default though. They're so easy.
 

Devil Ledbetter

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While writing my NaNo novel I noticed that all of the male characters had single syllable names, the young women had two-syllable names and the older women had three syllable names.
 

Nivarion

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Oh, I discovered that three of the names in my current WIP that I thought I made up are actually real Hebrew names.

I laughed when I realized that Sosha, a name I gave a male character is a female name meaning Beautiful. :D I doubt he would be pleased.
 
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