What's your Opinion on Creating Names?

Sometimes the name comes first, sometimes later.

One resource I use for names is FindAGrave.com. I can look for names common to the area the story takes place. I mix and match first and last names until I get one that works. I used to do this with phone books (remember those?) and I had several from around the country.

Maryn said:

I write most of my novels with characters named James, Beverly, Daniel, and Natalie, because I can type them fast and those character strings don't appear in other words. Later, when the right name comes to me, I just do a search and replace. Voila!

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I once had a character named Lance whose name I changed to Brice with a search and replace. Suddenly my characters were shooting each other quick gbrices and gbricing over their shoulders.

"Whole words only." It's a thing.

Chris P said:

I once had a character named Lance whose name I changed to Brice with a search and replace. Suddenly my characters were shooting each other quick gbrices and gbricing over their shoulders.

"Whole words only." It's a thing.

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I'd have thought it'd have respected case sensitivity as Lance is different from lance...but I like the funny result of gbrices and gbricing (though shouldn't the 2nd be gbriceing)

I flesh out the character before I assign a name. Sometimes the name comes instantly, sometimes I need to visit baby name sites or download lists of registered names from my character's birth year. For main characters, the name has to feel right and I do like to have it decided before I start writing. Minor characters get the first name I think of that feels okay.

Jason said:

I'd have thought it'd have respected case sensitivity as Lance is different from lance...but I like the funny result of gbrices and gbricing (though shouldn't the 2nd be gbriceing)

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Word does do this, but only if you check the right box. Same with the whole word thing.

I sometimes wish the search function had more options. I tried to do an adverb search when my main character was called Ally...

Chris P said:

I once had a character named Lance whose name I changed to Brice with a search and replace. Suddenly my characters were shooting each other quick gbrices and gbricing over their shoulders.

"Whole words only." It's a thing.

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You can fix that by putting a space in front of the word. So [space]Lance will not find glance.

I'm doing screenplays, not novels. For a grand series planned, I have thousands of named characters (some human, humanoid, animals, and so forth). I had to get creative in naming characters. I use free, online Web tools designed for Scrabble to come up with my unique names. Most often, my characters have first and last names. Combined, they are a collective anagram of a larger word. I use this larger word to help flesh them out. E.g. I start with Flowerchild and end up with Orchid Fewll. Some bullies might bully her for her surname (fool). This is not one of my characters, but an example. Not too difficult to come up with with the online tools.

When dealing with a large ensemble, of interconnected projects, it helps do multitask. I get creative names and I often know if they are good/bad, aggressors/victims, gender, and I get a prompt (e.g. flowerchild) to flesh him/her out. Just a matter of plug-n-play with assets created in frontend work.

It takes time doing this, but you can get some really nice names.

Some names come to me straight away and rarely get changed. My current antagonist has the same surname as a chef whose book is on my shelf in the kitchen where my desk is. They tend to be the minor characters on the whole though.

Major ones I mostly struggle with but make a conscious decision to not let that get in the way of writing so assign them all letter codes, otherwise I know I'd just spend hours procrastinating over placeholder instead of writing. So, the main character is AA AAA, their wife is BA AAA, their children are A#1, A#2 etc.... and I just carry on through the alphabet. I then use Scrivener's replace feature in the compile to try out names as I read and edit scenes. Once I'm happy I then do I find and replace.

Only downside of this is after a while I tend to be blind to the codes, even after I'm 90% decided on a name I like...as displayed in the first three sentences thread recently when I cut and pasted direct from Scrivener, not the compiled ebook and didn't notice the codes until someone pointed them out

As for coming up with names...I write contemporary fiction so my starting point is usually common or uncommon names for that locality, their ethnicity, religion and other background so official government stats websites, baby names sites get used a lot. Most of the time I don't know what their background is until much of the story is drafted.

I've written a few mss dealing with real (historical) people, so the names are not an issue.

When I have to come up with names, I've generally had little difficulty coming up with a name, and I very, very rarely change the names. I sit down and say, Right, so I have a character. What should I name him/her?

The answer usually comes to me without a whole lot of effort. Since I write historical fiction, the names have to be plausible for the time period, and that can sometimes be fun. You won't come across too many Eliezers in this day and age, but Eliezer isn't out of place for the Victorian age. Sometimes the names are oblique references to real people: I have a character named Everett, a reference to Edward Everett, who was the featured speaker when the Gettysburg cemetery was consecrated, and a character named Julia for Julia Grant, wife of Ulysses S. Grant.

Some names have thematic meaning. In a pair of Civil War mss, the Confederate character is called Gray and the Union character is called Mazarine, which is a shade of blue. Get it? Get it? In another WIP, a character goes by Wendy, mostly because her love interest is going by Peter (both aliases, chosen independently). Her real name is Alice. Get it? Get it?

I've gotten a few names from people I've worked with, etc.

But mostly, the names just kind of come to me. How about . . . Betty? Harry? Clara? Tommy? Ann?

In a current WIP there are different types of humanoids as well as aliens, ghosts, and regular humans. At first I thought of keeping, say alien names, alien-ish, but then I realized that these aliens have been in contact with humans for hundreds of years. That means some of them might name their children human names. For example my alien FMC is named Kora, while another alien is named Jeganna.

As for your question...my names come when the character is just an inkling of an idea. I need that perfect name right away so I have something to call them by.