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Finding good surnames

satyesu

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How do you find good last names for your characters? I have a parameter for what I'd like my male lead's to mean, but it could be part of a number of phrases - "God inside," "close to God," or something - but I usually don't have luck Googling for things like that. I'd know a good last name meaning for him if I saw it, but I don't know where or how to look.
 

satyesu

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The Second Moon said:
You want meanings, hmm? Try Nameberry It has lots of names with (most of them having) meanings.

That's a site for first names, apparently. :/
 
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Chris P

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Almost any language that forms compounds will work. From your example, I immediately thought of Hebrew, for example where Emmanuel means "God is with us." If it sounds too first namey, you couls tweak it, such as "Manuel" for a surname.
 

Maryn

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I'm going on record as a reader who hates--and I do mean hatred, not mere dislike--names that have a meaning that applies to who the character is in regard to appearance, actions, attitudes, etc. I can accept it only in comic books and movies that resemble them in depth and scope.

If your character is uncommonly close to a god or God, and I recognize that's what their name means, I'm done. For real.

That doesn't mean I dislike the writer who disagrees with me, of course, but it means there are other readers out there who feel as I do. So consider carefully whether this is a wise move.

Maryn, with zero animosity toward you
 

Kjbartolotta

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I'm going on record as a reader who hates--and I do mean hatred, not mere dislike--names that have a meaning that applies to who the character is in regard to appearance, actions, attitudes, etc.

Not a John Bunyan fan, I assume.
 

cbenoi1

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Movie credits. Some names in there are memorable. That's what you want.

-cb
 

cmhbob

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I've sometimes trolled obituaries, or looked on Wiki for national sports team rosters, especially if I need a name in a language that use a different name format than what I grew up with.
 

Chris P

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Not quite the question you asked, but I love FindAGrave.com for names. Need to know common family names in the area your story takes place? Look to those who came before.

I used to collect phone books from around the country, but, yeah, not so much a thing anymore.
 

Marissa D

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I save a few programs a year from the concerts of the classical orchestra I attend as they include lists of donors--usually several hundred names. Also the annual fundraising reports from my alma mater with donor lists--again, a couple thousand names.
 

lonestarlibrarian

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Knowing that you're writing something that deals with Hidden Knowledge, did you ever read the Titus Crow short story, "Lord of the Worms"? A key plot point involves the numerology symbolism.

At one point in the story, when the Bad Guy is gloating over what he plans on doing to the MC while the MC is in a drugged sleep--

"What of his sign, Master?" asked a fourth and final figure, in a voice as thickly glutinous as mud. "Is it auspicious?"

"Indeed it is. He is a Sagittaran, as am I. And his numbers are... most propitious." Carstairs' voice was now a purr. "Not only does his name have nine letters, but in the orthodox system, his birth number is twenty-seven-- a triple nine. Totaled individually, however, his date gives an even better result, for the sum is eighteen!"

"The triple six!" The other's gasp was involuntary.

and then later on--

...For the more he looked at and handled these old books, the more the feeling grew within him that Carstairs' passion lay not in the ownership of such volumes, but in their use. And if that were the case, then yesterday's caution-- however instinctive, involuntary-- might yet prove to have stood him in good stead. He thought back to Carstairs' question about his date of birth, and of the man's alleged interest-- his "consuming" interest-- in astrology. Strange, then, that there was hardly a volume on that subject to be found among all of these books.

Not so strange, though, that in answer to Carstairs' question he had lied. For as a numerologist, Crow had learned something of the importance of names, numbers, and dates-- especially to an occultist! No magician in all the long, macabre history of mankind would ever have let the date of his birth be known to an enemy, nor even his name, if that were at all avoidable. For who could tell what use the other might make of such knowledge, these principal factors affecting a man's destiny!

So, anyhow, a key plot point involves one character lying about his birthdate, and thereby changing his Numbers, which thereby throws a monkey wrench into the evil occult plot against him.

So if you're still thinking about your plot in the Sorcerer and Sophia thread, remember that keeping-your-personal-information-secret is very much a tradition in those sorts of plots, and regardless of what anyone's "true" name is, they probably have a moniker they use to keep that a secret, if they have a background that insists on maintaining that sort of secrecy. So your symbolic name can be the real one or the fake one, and if it's deliberately fake, it can be as natural or unnatural-sounding as the character cares to have it. But it's also a reminder that if you're writing those sorts of stories, there's more symbolism that can be worked in that shows a depth of knowledge of your subject, and your readers will appreciate the facile handling of such details.
 

Alessandra Kelley

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Before the internet I collected clippings of newspaper articles about the Olympics, as about the ONLY commonly available source of surnames from Africa, SE Asia, etc.

Athletics might still be a good place to look.
 

Woollybear

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How do you find good last names for your characters? I have a parameter for what I'd like my male lead's to mean, but it could be part of a number of phrases - "God inside," "close to God," or something - but I usually don't have luck Googling for things like that. I'd know a good last name meaning for him if I saw it, but I don't know where or how to look.

I devised a naming system for my world. It was pretty slick. I was proud.

It had to be reworked, basically scrapped in revision, because readers brought all sorts of personal lenses to the system. They said everything from "You can't use apostrophes; you aren't Tolkien" to "Clearly, the guy's white."

I reworked my surname naming convention to get past these kinds of reader bias. Now, people assume my character is non-white, because his last name is bizarre. In his case, which is part of the naming system, only those letters that occur in various Native American, Hawaiian, (sorry for dropping the apostrophe in that; spell check corrected the apostrophe out, because clearly the internet ain't no Tolkien), and several African languages. Figured that would be geographically and ethnically diverse enough to get past the bias, and it worked. No one assumes the male lead is white, anymore. Because of his last name.

So. My answer to you is to not surname your character yet, and when you do be ready to road-test the name. You might be better off in the end allowing room to change it.
 
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frimble3

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How about getting your name's meaning down to one word, ie 'Godly', and just running that through all the language choices on Google Translates until you find one that works? Especially if he didn't choose the name himself, it's a family name that might have changed a little over time.
 
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benbenberi

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Another vote here for *Detest MEANINGFUL Names in Fiction*. Except in a comic novel, and sometimes even there, Meaningful Names tend to come across as silly, or stupid, or pretentious. You're not John Bunyan, and you're not Charles Dickens.

Stumped for a character surname? Select a community that has the sort of general ethnic mix your character's hometown has. Find a phone directory (paper or online, both ok, there are lots of scanned directories of all sorts of places online). X=the number of directory pages. Use a randomizer to pick a number from 1-X. That's the page where your character's surname lives. Pick one. Done.

Don't want to pick from a phone book? Any large list of people will do. (A full roster of Olympic athletes from any recent decade would probably give a good set.) Put all the names in one numbered list. You don't have to sort it. Generate a random number. There's your surname. Done.

REMEMBER... you don't have to make a final decision about this name now. It's perfectly all right to write an entire book with a placeholder name in it. As long as it's a unique placeholder, you can easily find-and-replace it with the Real Name whenever the real name presents itself to you.
 

MythMonger

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I opted for no surnames in my earth alternate histories. They're set from the 1990s to 2010s and all my characters only have first names. They're formally addressed as Mr./Ms. (first name).

My reasoning was that none of my characters would have the same first name anyway, so they'd always be distinctive.

I've written three straight manuscripts in the same world with multiple beta readers each. None of my characters have had a surname and no one's complained.

Am I on to something or is the hammer going to fall when I try to get my latest manuscript published?
 

Kjbartolotta

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I opted for no surnames in my earth alternate histories.

I never, ever, ever use surnames if I can avoid it. Helps that I primarily write specific, if I had to come up with a plausible surname for a character it would quickly devolve into silliness.
 

Woollybear

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I've noticed that characters to whom I do not assign a surname are easily accepted at critique group. No one says "What's their last name?"

Surnames can serve a purpose, though, like suggesting an ethnicity, or class (in fantasy), etc.
 

satyesu

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Thanks, everyone, especially for the warnings!
 

talktidy

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IMHO searching for the perfect character name is yet another means of prevaricating. I would suggest you select a name -- Smith or Jones would work for the present -- and pile into your story.

If you succeed in getting to a first draft, then you can spend a little more thought on the task. What you have written may inform the character name. It is a doddle to perform a find and replace at that point.
 
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DongerNeedFood

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I'm going on record as a reader who hates--and I do mean hatred, not mere dislike--names that have a meaning that applies to who the character is in regard to appearance, actions, attitudes, etc. I can accept it only in comic books and movies that resemble them in depth and scope.

If your character is uncommonly close to a god or God, and I recognize that's what their name means, I'm done. For real.

That doesn't mean I dislike the writer who disagrees with me, of course, but it means there are other readers out there who feel as I do. So consider carefully whether this is a wise move.

Maryn, with zero animosity toward you

My hatred of that is not as intense, but I definitely roll my eyes when a character's name is too on the nose. It's not clever anymore.
 

Sonya Heaney

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Behind the Names has a surnames section: https://surnames.behindthename.com/

I recommend it. It's kind of heavy on certain names (i.e. English names) and light on others (I'm Eastern European and their offerings are both pitiful and not especially accurate), but it's still my favourite site for surnames.

I'm going on record as a reader who hates--and I do mean hatred, not mere dislike--names that have a meaning that applies to who the character is in regard to appearance, actions, attitudes, etc. I can accept it only in comic books and movies that resemble them in depth and scope.

If your character is uncommonly close to a god or God, and I recognize that's what their name means, I'm done. For real.

That doesn't mean I dislike the writer who disagrees with me, of course, but it means there are other readers out there who feel as I do. So consider carefully whether this is a wise move.

Maryn, with zero animosity toward you

Same. I'm most concerned with Googling my characters' full names to make sure I didn't pick the same name as a serial killer or a porn star.