Comments on: Naming

By: Little Willow

Little Willow — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 03:18:42 +0000

I am so picky. I can’t have a name that makes me think of someone I know or have known.

By: Darice Moore

Darice Moore — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 23:30:16 +0000

I copyedit, and often I must copyedit bibliographies. I hate bibliographies. But they have a redeeming quality, to wit: they have bunches of names, often names I’ve never heard of. I have been known to copy names from said bibliographies. Also, I’ve copied down names from authors’ typing mistakes, when they made something namelike.

But I’ve also used the “what’s on the shelves near me?” gambit, and the baby name book gambit. But I’m a name geek. I like names, and I tend to think of finding a character’s name as part of the “character definition” process.

Online, one of my favorite sources is the Medieval Names Archive — even if I’m not doing historical writing. There are some fantastic names in there.

By: dylan

dylan — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 22:06:13 +0000

i know this is a little late…but i have such a huge problem with names. And places…it’s amazing i have any time to write LOL:)

By: liset

liset — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 18:29:34 +0000

i’m totally with ya in the same letter names!!!
when i had to read smelly shakepeare in school i was so confused… sad

By: marrije

marrije — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 14:19:46 +0000

ruth: yes, michael and richard are definitely in the same ballpark! though they don’t sound all that much alike, if you read over them quickly they sort of look the same. or alike enough that i can’t see the difference when reading to speed: they just disappear into the page. like ‘he said/she said’. Maybe it’s something about the same visual word pattern, the ascenders and descenders? i don’t think it’s dyslexia, since in general i don’t have the letter confusion problem at all, it’s just names. interesting!

By: Rebecca

Rebecca — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 07:37:31 +0000

whatever sounds right. i usually search babynames.com for something that sounds good, but i have a pretty steadfast rule- once a character is named, the name stays. i break that rule with minor characters, every now and then with in-between characters, and almost never with main characters. once someone’s named, the name becomes the identity, and i can’t think of the character in any other way.not without some serious grief, anyway. i recently changed a main villain’s name from anhelo (made up name) to elijah, but i’m still writing anhelo for everything. find and replace is useful. i just can’t get used to calling characters anything other than their original names, no matter how weird they are.

By: Ruth

Ruth — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 01:48:45 +0000

Marrije, I was delighted to hear about your Robert / Patrick confusion. I have a Michael / Richard issue… I don’t know why. But they seem to be filed in the same drawer in my head, and I ALWAYS get them mixed up.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 00:03:39 +0000

I have a list of favorite names that i had my friends make, listed in alphabetical order. This way, i have a large variety from multiple cultures as well as a few plain-Jane ones.

By: Jennifer

Jennifer — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 22:32:51 +0000

I pretty much do what you do, Justine. Usually I look around at whatever’s in the room (frequently, DVD’s) and pick a name from one of those.

By: Tim Pratt

Tim Pratt — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 22:18:28 +0000

For most names i use the random name generator:

http://www.kleimo.com/random/name.cfm

And just keep reloading until I find something I like, mixing and matching first names and surnames at will.

For names of monsters, aliens, etc. I tend to dig down in various mythology/folklore dictionaries and willfully misspell things.

By: Rajan K

Rajan K — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 20:57:22 +0000

I am lazy, too. I usually grab for one thinking it’s a placeholder and then it just stays. Usually when I change it later, it doesn’t work as well.

Main exceptions are a certain group of characters (in different stories) who all have roughly anagramatic (is that a word?) names.

By: Katerate

Katerate — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 20:49:00 +0000

http://www.namenerds.com/

That’s all I gotta say.
I am a name fiend.

By: Diana

Diana — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 18:01:53 +0000

i also realized in the writing of this book that I made several main characters have names that start with a j-sound — not necessarily a j, but a j-sound. oops. too late to change it now. also,I have characters with rhyming names. again, too late to change, the first book is out. Still i can turn it into a thing. i guess…

By: jeff

jeff — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 17:19:39 +0000

at the risk of self-promotion, i wrote a little software application that generates names based on us census bureau data – none of the names are real, but they frequently sound real. it’s a bit of a creativity cop-out, but sometimes i can find inspiration in a name. check it out here… http://joglog.jeffknecht.com/random_name

By: claire

claire — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 16:01:25 +0000

i use whatever springs to mind for short stories, then go back and change them if i want to make a different point. on da nobble i used whatever sprang to mind and then had to do a lot of changing later, since too many characters sounded the same.

i had a “village” with four families so i ended up making sure each family surname started with a different letter and then made sure that the surname initial was a prominent letter in the first name of each family member (tho’ not necessarily the first letter.) again, i just established the principle and then thought up names, with the exception of the danish family, for whom i went on the internet.

By: marrije

marrije — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 15:02:08 +0000

i’m in the ‘lazy naming’ camp. i’m also very lazy when reading, it seems: the first-letter business you cite for unpronounceable names? i also have that if they are called jack, john and james. i also have robert/patrick confusions. i’m always happy when there’s someone with a wooden leg or an eyepatch, so i can keep the lot apart…

By: A.R.Yngve

A.R.Yngve — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 14:39:34 +0000

I never forget what Harvey Kurtzman wrote about character names in MAD Magazine.. it went something like this:

“In the Western moviews and TV shows, the hero always has a name like LANCE STERLING! You never met or heard about a guy with a name like that!

“While in the real world, the 100% genuine cowboy might have a name like… John Smurd, maybe… a guy named Lance Sterling would’ve been hanged!

“Mainly people have names like Charlie Siedenham… Iggy Freebie… Melvin Poznofsky! But could you imagine a Western hero named Melvin Poznofsky? So Lance Sterling it is.”

Kurtzman exaggerated, but not by much. How come the American movie hero is so often named “Jack”?

I tend to get neurotic about character names… I try out different varieties and change them several times… I look for interesting surnames everywhere… I even think the name of the author’s nom de plume is important.

Legend has it that in an early draft of GONE WITH THE WIND, the principal character was named Pansy O’Hara.

Try that name. Pansy… O’Hara. Ouch!

By: Diana

Diana — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 14:24:51 +0000

I’m completely obsessed with character names. I love naming people so much that I did it twice in my book — once for their regular names, and once for their society names. I have a whole section on my website that talks about the names I gave my characters:

http://secretsocietygirl.com/between.htm

Having said that, my big pet peeve is fantasy characters whose names are completely unpronounceable or don’t make sense. The ones that are celtic messes or have enough apostophes to freckle a leopard. it’s a cliche. I’m not saying you have to name your fantasy characters bob and susan, but there has to be a middle ground somewhere.

By: sara z

sara z — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 14:01:28 +0000

Usually my main character’s name comes to me along with the first vision of them. Sometimes I pick random names and then change them later for whatever reason. Story of a Girl has a Deanna for a protagonist, and originally her brother’s girlfriend was named Serena. On about the third draft I realized those practically rhymed, so Serena became Stacy. Once I have the mc name, I try to come up with names that include a variety of sounds and numbers of syllables for the same reasons you don’t write sentences of all the same length and pattern. i’m pretty fond of classic names that might even be boring. when I’m reading a book in which a character has a very unusual name or “wacky” nickname, it’s harder for me to stop seeing the writer’s decisions and just see the story. in fantasy or sci-fi it’s easier to suspend that disbelief, but even then my disbelief is kind of heavy and i don’t like to do too much hoisting.

By: robinwasserman

robinwasserman — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 12:50:37 +0000

In the World According to Garp, Garp collects phone books and pours through them for hours every time he needs an appropriate name for a character. I always thought that seemed like a really romantic, “writerly” way to do it. But I just pick whatever first name feels right…and for last names, I often steal from famous dead people or kids I went to elementary school with.

By: Maggie

Maggie — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 12:47:47 +0000

I use the books-on-shelf method as well, and sometimes I use a little name book that I have sitting beside me (so I don’t have to get out of my chair).

By: Martha (and cat)

Martha (and cat) — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 12:21:14 +0000

Sometimes the name just pops up along with the character concept, but a lot of the time I cheat… I have a whole box full of index cards where I have brainstormed names and brief character descriptions. That way when I need a name I can just flip through the cards till I fund something that fits. Saves me from naming all of my characters Mark, Carter, or Toby. *grin*

I also have an excel list of all the characters I’ve used and what I’ve used them in. Before I started tracking names (and personalities) I reused a lot of the same ones over and over. Now I check to make sure I’m not using the same person recast in a different story . . .

By: veejane

veejane — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 12:10:54 +0000

I once wrote a short story and, using the book-to-hand method, picked Vygotsky as the surname of a minor character. Somebody emailed me and asked, “Are you a psychology student, by any chance?”

(If I had been, I would have known the guy is kind of famous. I picked him out of the Works Cited list of a nonfiction book.)

By: SH

SH — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 12:01:20 +0000

first names just happen, sometimes painfully as if constipation has set in, but they do happen. but last names, i go to the white pages.

By: may

may — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 11:59:22 +0000

i’m one of those people who struggle, who rename and rename and rename and rename.

depending on what i’m working on, sometimes i use baby-name sites/books, sometimes i use translation dictionaries and start from there, sometimes there’s a name whose rhythm i just like and start doodling with that.

sometimes, it’s a mess. and usually, the first name in my wip isn’t the final name.