dhyre

I have always had trouble coming up with names, but lately I have taken to misspelling words and liking how it looks on the computer but I am curious to know some other methods.. what are yours?

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Swamp Thing

dhyre -

You should probably PM a moderator to ask that your questions be moved to Tips and Advice. This is pretty much a story critique section only. I think you'll be more likely to get some constructive advice there.

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omginternetlord

My names always mean something.

Joe Moore

dhyre,
If you're looking for sources of names, that's a topic I covered on a SleuthFest writers conference panel a few years ago. That and other tips can be found among a collection of research links on my website.
Hope it helps. Good luck.

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seigfried007

Some characters pop into my head with names, and some I struggle with for ages.

Characters with overwhelming personality to introduce themselves by name and may introduce other characters for me. It reminds me of when I ask what a toddler's name is and the older sibling goes, "Her name is Maria." Two of my charcters are horrible about it, and, now that I think of it, both are or were senior military officers very used to handing out nicknames.

Sometimes I randomly assign names like the frat from Animal House. And thy name is "Flounder."

Sometimes I get a name before a character attaches himself to it. This happens fairly often when I'm brainstorming lists of names I'd like to use or come onto a naming convention for a particular group. Even then, some names won't get taken, and others will be made up.

On of the more famous cases of me making up a bunch of names on the spot led to Reno (who introduced himself), Skizzy (who was colored fairly similarly to a gerbil I'd had ages previous), and Oreo (right from the cookies in front of me). I was just popping out with scads of random names based on anything I could see or remember because my husband kept asking me, "Well, what's his name?"

You

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seigfried007

Some characters pop into my head with names, and some I struggle with for ages.

Characters with overwhelming personality to introduce themselves by name and may introduce other characters for me. It reminds me of when I ask what a toddler's name is and the older sibling goes, "Her name is Maria." Two of my charcters are horrible about it, and, now that I think of it, both are or were senior military officers very used to handing out nicknames.

Sometimes I randomly assign names like the frat from Animal House. And thy name is "Flounder."

Sometimes I get a name before a character attaches himself to it. This happens fairly often when I'm brainstorming lists of names I'd like to use or come onto a naming convention for a particular group. Even then, some names won't get taken, and others will be made up.

On of the more famous cases of me making up a bunch of names on the spot led to Reno (who introduced himself), Skizzy (who was colored fairly similarly to a gerbil I'd had ages previous), and Oreo (right from the cookies in front of me). I was just popping out with scads of random names based on anything I could see or remember because my husband kept asking me, "Well, what's his name?"

You could also try name generators or the Roleplaying Assistant (something like that, at least). Baby name books are a worthy investment if you ahve difficulty with names or prefer ones from a specific background or ones of a specific meaning.

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dhyre

Thanks alot, I really like how sopme characters are actually people to you.. I think I need to try introducing myself, that sounds awesome.

Thanks all!!!!!!

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*** correction: Writing is about individuality, breaking the rules, testing new grounds, listening to ourselves. That's why we do it, to show we are individuals, we are human and because everyone's idea deserves a chance, even if you don't think so.

little_red

starseed

My characters always sort of name themselves. At least my main ones. Hard to explain how. My main character now, I knew his name would start with a D. Not sure how. It just suited him. I could see him in my minds eye, hear people calling him, saying his name. I then wrote out some D names to look them over. I wrote the name "Devon" on the list. I liked it but something didn't feel quite right. I changed the spelling to "Devin" and immediately, just like that, I knew that was my guy, my Devin. He had been Devin all his life and that was that, I had just barely awoken to that truth.

I love picking names. Its a very fun, creative process for me.

Sabsz

Well, when I pick names for a character I think: What is this characters nationality? What time period is he/she born in? What type of character is she/he?

One of my main characters now is named Drusilla. Just Drusilla, no last name because she's immortal and she kind of lost it through the years. She was born in Roman times (about 50 B.C). So I looked up Roman names and there it was: Drusilla. It matched her character perfectly. Like starseed said, it's like Drusilla had been that all her life. It was the name for her.

Another one of my character's took forever to name. I changed her name several times and I probably will change it again. Right now it's Johanna Morgan but that doesn't seem to fit her. She's one of my problem characters to be named. I'll probably explore her character a bit more and maybe a new name will come to me.

Basically, just go with what feels like. If your character is named Maria but doesn't feel like a Maria - then change it. A name can say a lot about a character and I think it should matter. Names shouldn't be random.

-- sabsz

Remedy

I'm not overly fond of names. I'm ok with first names, generally, but I never name a character with the same name of someone I know; I'm very strict on association of names. Like others said, sometimes your character introduces him/herself, and that's cool. Other times, you have to make it up and change it around.

For last names, I tend to grab the phonebook and flip to a random page. If there's something there that fits reasonably well, I use that; if not, I flip to another page.
There's a good deal of last names in that book, whereas they're hard to find in mass in other places.

PageOfCups

It depends on the character. If it's the main character or my favourite character then they sort of attach themselves to a name that's been one of my favourites.

For example I've liked the name Asriel since I was a little girl and now it's the name of my main character. It fits him well enough since it's a derivitive of Azreal which is the name of the Angel of Death and Asriel made a living making poison for the most part (though that bit was an accident, the name was simply arrogant enough to fit in with the society he was born in).

In other cases I Google lists of demon, angels or Gods/Goddesses and look for something that fits the character I'm trying to name. Or sometimes Celtic names or foriegn names, depending on the character and the time frame.

Though in the case of a few characters I have now, their people have a way of naming their children. A word to describe the way they look and a word to describe an one of their atributes. SnowThorn, snow because of her white fur and thorn because when she was young her teeth were like thorns. CloudStalker, cloud because of his grey fur and stalker because he was turning out to be a good hunter.

There are dozens of ways to name characters ^.^

SilkFX

Co-signing Starseed's and Remedy's approaches...I let the character name him/herself OR I'll pull from the phone book.

Baby name books/sites can be helpful as well. I had a character who was born in the 1940s so I needed to look up first names that would have made sense for a baby girl born in that era to the parents that she had. Brittany/Britney/Brittni would not have worked. (Sure I could have used it, but I'd have had to explain it...and I didn't want to.)

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evadri

When I was at highschool, I'd often have my head in a baby-name book, searching for character names. Other kids would be like, 'Are you pregnant?' And I found that surprising, because it never really occured to me that you use a baby-name book for naming anything other than story characters, let alone a baby! And why do they call them BABY-name books? I'm pretty sure the names are still in use once the baby has grown up.

Anyway, I concur with the characters naming themselves theory. Sometimes I get the name right away, other times I get a sense of what it should be, but its elusive. That's when I pull out the name book and search until the name presents itself - once I find the right one, it's like 'Yes, that's what it has always been, but I didn't know it yet.' It's a weird and wonderful experience - these characters that seem to exist prior to me discovering them (or them presenting themselves to me), though I know that, really, I created them. Then, sometimes the name will come before the character, but from that name I get an immediate sense of who the character is. I know I'm repeating, but it's one of my favourite parts of being a writer, so I wanted to describe it myself.

Also I want to mention: if you can avoid using several names that begin with the same letter, it's a good idea to do that. Especially in a novel. (Not that I can talk; I have a Nari, Nico, and Nathan all in the same book. It kinda bugs me, but it's waaaay too late to change them now. They own those names.)

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dhyre

Wow, I really like some of the ideas.

I posted 'baby name googler' a while ago, and thats a way I will always describe myself but the idea about the phone book, well now that is interesting. You know, and I guess it depends on who your characters are.

One of mine is currently name Ehlistine after changing from Rengar and I like the whole picking and owning their names thing.. awesome.

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*** correction: Writing is about individuality, breaking the rules, testing new grounds, listening to ourselves. That's why we do it, to show we are individuals, we are human and because everyone's idea deserves a chance, even if you don't think so.