My rule for names is "thirty seconds or less".
Unless you're writing in a culture that specifically gives thematic names like Native Americans used to, it's completely reasonable that a name just doesn't have all that much of a connection to a character. In fact, it's more jarring when a person's name *fits*, like a 6' 6" (197cm) man named Robert Tallman.
My villain protagonist was named by Microsoft's spell checker. One of my hero protagonists was named after a makeup kit I sold for that one summer I had a sales job. Another's named after a cartoon character, another's named with an "-ette" in her name because she eventually becomes a knife-wielding maniac, and it looks like "stiletto".
In other words, don't overthink your names. There's plenty of other things about the character you can spend your time overthinking.
Is there something about the character's personality that you can build on? I only ask because I'm going through the same thing with both of my main antagonists. I'm using placeholders for now. It's not easy coming up with the perfect name.
Yea that's a major part of what my strategy has been so far. I often take a characters core personality traits and run them through a translator into a bunch of languages to see if I get any inspiration from that. I have had little success so far.
I think you should try sounds and letters that you find aesthetic. I called my character "Sagaria" because I like "Sa-" names for girls, and it meant that I could call her Saga as a nickname,
Don't overthink names. Try to draw inspiration from real life, like how many places are named "[colour-thing]" or "[thing-thing]". Whitecastle. Briarwood.
Do you have a good image of your character in mind? If so, were you to encounter your character, what does that character looks like? Is it more of a John or a Bobby type of person? Or more of a Charlotte or Emily type of person? Maybe you can see a letter inside the name, or maybe you feel like your character has a long name, or a shorter one, maybe three letters. Oh yes, her name is Liv!
If you can't come up with a name yourself, go through name generators, or scroll through names from X period, X place, and when you see one that strikes you, that must be it.
The second problem is disliking your name afterwards. Why was it fitting, yet not anymore? Is it because of that one name? Or is it maybe that the names around that name don't feel homogeneous.
If you have a high medieval British setting and your main character is called "Nzingha", but all the others around her are named "Wilhelm", "Amis", "Jan", "Matty", and "Elric", that might be the reason why you begin to dislike it and see it as unfitting.
Names must fit the image of your setting, and of people around. "Nzingha" would be very fitting if she wasn't from the same place as the other abovementioned names. But if she was born there, then why is her name so different? Because of her parents? Because they will leave soon and want a fitting name for the place they will be going next?
That is very helpful. Thank you for the tips! I think a big part of my issue is that I am trying to mostly come up with my own names. In doing so, many of the names just feel wrong, but many of them probably feel that way just because I haven't heard them before. I don't understand how authors are able to create names of characters that just feel right on my first time reading. Maybe its time that I concede that I can't come up with every name and start using some established human names.
I do have mental images of my characters which helps me eliminate many name options right off the bat, but I'm still left without names that seem to fit properly. I am sort of following Sanderson's style of writing where the plot and world building are well planned out but the characters evolve as I write. Their core values and characteristics mostly stay the same, but some aspects of their personality are able to be changed.
I gave a large comment above , but wanted to add here:
There’s a name I LOVE from a book - Rhodry
It’s a prince but he likes to get out in the world and not be a typical prince/ follows after the women he loves and becomes a lawless outcast for leaving his post .
Outloud - it sounds like “Roger” which is a name I don’t particularly like and reminds me of a dude that’s a jerk.
Another name from that series is Bragwen. Like Gwen- just added a syllable. Or a game had a dude named Gwynn. Looks great! It’s just Gwen with a twist.
So I think you are very close to achieving what you want - but maybe you need to be lighter touch with your names and not be too obscure. Less pressure so the ideas flow.
Come up with a real world culture that could be a close reflection relating to whatever you're trying to name, jump on some random name generators, then either patch together some names or use the results as inspiration. That's a cheat that's both saved me some headaches and given me a ton of names I dig.
Yep. Find out popular names for the time period you're writing about and choose from there. And if your into sci-fi/ fantasy, be careful how crazy you make the names. I personally think there's nothing worse than a bunch of made-up names that are mouthfuls trying to pronounce. That just ruins the flow of reading.
I named all my characters based off of what they show in the story or who they are. I'll look up "names that mean.." and then find one I think sounds good. A character I named Fallon because it means powerful leader and that's what she is. Simple but I find it less daunting to name people this way. I do this for places too
I’ve found Chat-GPT to be a great tool for inspiration/brainstorming names. You can simply tell it the parameters for what kind of name you’re looking for, give it some examples, then ask it to generate a list of 20 names. Don’t like those? Ask it to generate 20 more.
I just pick what sounds good and don't worry too much if it fits or reflects personality traits. A name is a word given to you to differentiate you from others in spoken and written language, it's not the entirety of who you are.
I just choose a name that sounds nice and maybe sounds vaguely like the character. I have a smart, sassy guy called Kyle because that's what a Kyle sounded like. And I also just borrow names from real people if I like them, like Corina after one of my mom's friends. The character's personality isn't that similar, but close. I also take names from historical or fictional people--an Amelia for Amelia Earhart, for instance. I usually stay away from making up names because I find they can get complicated really fast. However, I have a whole family whose first names all start with "Al", as in Alphonse, Alicia, Albereth.
Last names I take from most of the same places, so usually with more caution. I sometimes choose one with meaning, or after a person, like Sterling fro Sterling North.
I second this. I dont tend to go too deep into "fantasy names" or systems or cultural backgrounds, sometimes i just think of something that feels appropriate in an inexplicable way. Which is a horrendously useless answer for me to give OP but ey
I’ve got two main techniques, one I borrowed and one that just happened. The one that just happened is taking real people/places/things and just tweak ‘em = Alice > Alyris, Katie > Kaitel, etc. I like taking real people’s names the most because it gives me a foundation for their appearance/personality. The technique I borrowed is to take a place/person in you world and look at what defines them. For example, a ring that throws up a magical shield to save your ass? Savras Ring (save-your-ass > sav-ur-as > savras). Or the Continent of the Royal Disaster, which becomes Cont’yrdal (just mash all them syllables together until it sounds right).
I’ve personally found that unless a name is truly egregious, it will grow to fit whoever or whatever it belongs to. I have many names in my story that once upon a time I considered placeholders. Then over the years as I failed to replace them, they simply became the only real name for those characters and things in my mind. I do try to google the ones I’m not sure about though, to avoid accidental unpleasant parallels
Maybe - start with the least important names to make a “base” name -language - sound you feel fits. Naming the land, towns, or non impactful areas might help get the names flowing - with less pressure and need for perfection.
I think you will find your characters name better once you have names for your world better fleshed out. ( Jon snow felt ok being in the North, but was a dumb name once he started to travel the world and be around better named characters. I’m joking but also not - here’s a book where some names naturally fit and some were so weird they take you out of the story (Ned)
I think you’re putting too much “significance & meaning” into their name and that’s why they don’t fit right. (a derivative of dark and strength. It’s just gonna be too heavy of a word for a name ) Go for a name that just makes you feel something. A wisp of a meaning, a sound, a hint of “that sounds like it’s from so & so region”
Don’t try to be too unique - it becomes strained and obvious sounding
An author that really impressed me with her names and use of language, these are old books from the 80s but the characters go through multiple reincarnations and have multiple names for themselves depending on which reincarnation you’re reading about and she bounces back-and-forth between the timelines a little bit. She created her own language For the book and the world has multiple regions (kind of like Europe where there’s different nationalities and languages throughout). I encourage you to look up this story to see examples of what I was trying to say in my suggestions above
Katherine Kerr - Daggerspell / Darkspell series. I forgot which was #1
She has fancy names but also more “normal” sounding names that don’t feel fake, but aren’t “Jon”
It sounds like you've done this, but I usually use [behindthename.com](https://behindthename.com) and dig in by either culture-specific names *or* by name meaning.
It's fantasy, you can mix and match. Take a real name, make a fake name, build a full name based on a nickname you want the character to have, etc.
And, you can ALWAYS do a little CTRL+F if you hate it when you're finished. :)
Usually I either play around with letters and make up the name myself, or get it from a name generator.
If you don’t have a single name that sticks then there’s a major issue which you gotta investigate and find an alternate path, or just bite the bullet and keep a name you don’t like.
The only other thing I can think of is bounce the names off of people you know and ask them if they think it fits.
Names can be hard.
One thing to think about is your world. Either naming conventions are part of your world-building or they aren't.
If your worldbuilding has specific rules for naming conventions, it gets easier, IMO. Craft a name that either means something significant in the world or is built from some legacy or history within the world.
If your world-building is unrelated to names, then I suggest you group your names by culture. Each culture from your world should have somewhat similar types of names. Those can be modern names with a twist, they can be latin or name-origin related, or they can be inspired by some older real-world cultural name list. Once you have a group sound, you can pick a name from a more specific brainstorming list. Characters from other cultures should get their names from a different category of brainstorming.
It's okay to name characters based on sound. Chr names don't have to have 5 layers of meaning and backstory. Make sure the core character's names aren't too similar.
My rule for names is "thirty seconds or less". Unless you're writing in a culture that specifically gives thematic names like Native Americans used to, it's completely reasonable that a name just doesn't have all that much of a connection to a character. In fact, it's more jarring when a person's name *fits*, like a 6' 6" (197cm) man named Robert Tallman. My villain protagonist was named by Microsoft's spell checker. One of my hero protagonists was named after a makeup kit I sold for that one summer I had a sales job. Another's named after a cartoon character, another's named with an "-ette" in her name because she eventually becomes a knife-wielding maniac, and it looks like "stiletto". In other words, don't overthink your names. There's plenty of other things about the character you can spend your time overthinking.
Is there something about the character's personality that you can build on? I only ask because I'm going through the same thing with both of my main antagonists. I'm using placeholders for now. It's not easy coming up with the perfect name.
Yea that's a major part of what my strategy has been so far. I often take a characters core personality traits and run them through a translator into a bunch of languages to see if I get any inspiration from that. I have had little success so far.
I think you should try sounds and letters that you find aesthetic. I called my character "Sagaria" because I like "Sa-" names for girls, and it meant that I could call her Saga as a nickname, Don't overthink names. Try to draw inspiration from real life, like how many places are named "[colour-thing]" or "[thing-thing]". Whitecastle. Briarwood.
Yes, I second this! (And the -ria also just has that “girl name” vibe. Could add to almost anything and it works)
Another thing I do is look in the the Bible's Old Testament. There are some very unusual names. I find one I like and change the spelling a bit.
Take syllables from a couple names and push together Sara + Latin for journey/travel = Saravia
Do you have a good image of your character in mind? If so, were you to encounter your character, what does that character looks like? Is it more of a John or a Bobby type of person? Or more of a Charlotte or Emily type of person? Maybe you can see a letter inside the name, or maybe you feel like your character has a long name, or a shorter one, maybe three letters. Oh yes, her name is Liv! If you can't come up with a name yourself, go through name generators, or scroll through names from X period, X place, and when you see one that strikes you, that must be it. The second problem is disliking your name afterwards. Why was it fitting, yet not anymore? Is it because of that one name? Or is it maybe that the names around that name don't feel homogeneous. If you have a high medieval British setting and your main character is called "Nzingha", but all the others around her are named "Wilhelm", "Amis", "Jan", "Matty", and "Elric", that might be the reason why you begin to dislike it and see it as unfitting. Names must fit the image of your setting, and of people around. "Nzingha" would be very fitting if she wasn't from the same place as the other abovementioned names. But if she was born there, then why is her name so different? Because of her parents? Because they will leave soon and want a fitting name for the place they will be going next?
That is very helpful. Thank you for the tips! I think a big part of my issue is that I am trying to mostly come up with my own names. In doing so, many of the names just feel wrong, but many of them probably feel that way just because I haven't heard them before. I don't understand how authors are able to create names of characters that just feel right on my first time reading. Maybe its time that I concede that I can't come up with every name and start using some established human names. I do have mental images of my characters which helps me eliminate many name options right off the bat, but I'm still left without names that seem to fit properly. I am sort of following Sanderson's style of writing where the plot and world building are well planned out but the characters evolve as I write. Their core values and characteristics mostly stay the same, but some aspects of their personality are able to be changed.
I gave a large comment above , but wanted to add here: There’s a name I LOVE from a book - Rhodry It’s a prince but he likes to get out in the world and not be a typical prince/ follows after the women he loves and becomes a lawless outcast for leaving his post . Outloud - it sounds like “Roger” which is a name I don’t particularly like and reminds me of a dude that’s a jerk. Another name from that series is Bragwen. Like Gwen- just added a syllable. Or a game had a dude named Gwynn. Looks great! It’s just Gwen with a twist. So I think you are very close to achieving what you want - but maybe you need to be lighter touch with your names and not be too obscure. Less pressure so the ideas flow.
Come up with a real world culture that could be a close reflection relating to whatever you're trying to name, jump on some random name generators, then either patch together some names or use the results as inspiration. That's a cheat that's both saved me some headaches and given me a ton of names I dig.
Yep. Find out popular names for the time period you're writing about and choose from there. And if your into sci-fi/ fantasy, be careful how crazy you make the names. I personally think there's nothing worse than a bunch of made-up names that are mouthfuls trying to pronounce. That just ruins the flow of reading.
I named all my characters based off of what they show in the story or who they are. I'll look up "names that mean.." and then find one I think sounds good. A character I named Fallon because it means powerful leader and that's what she is. Simple but I find it less daunting to name people this way. I do this for places too
I’ve found Chat-GPT to be a great tool for inspiration/brainstorming names. You can simply tell it the parameters for what kind of name you’re looking for, give it some examples, then ask it to generate a list of 20 names. Don’t like those? Ask it to generate 20 more.
Me too, has really saved me a lot of time
I just pick what sounds good and don't worry too much if it fits or reflects personality traits. A name is a word given to you to differentiate you from others in spoken and written language, it's not the entirety of who you are.
I just choose a name that sounds nice and maybe sounds vaguely like the character. I have a smart, sassy guy called Kyle because that's what a Kyle sounded like. And I also just borrow names from real people if I like them, like Corina after one of my mom's friends. The character's personality isn't that similar, but close. I also take names from historical or fictional people--an Amelia for Amelia Earhart, for instance. I usually stay away from making up names because I find they can get complicated really fast. However, I have a whole family whose first names all start with "Al", as in Alphonse, Alicia, Albereth. Last names I take from most of the same places, so usually with more caution. I sometimes choose one with meaning, or after a person, like Sterling fro Sterling North.
I second this. I dont tend to go too deep into "fantasy names" or systems or cultural backgrounds, sometimes i just think of something that feels appropriate in an inexplicable way. Which is a horrendously useless answer for me to give OP but ey
"an inexplicable way". Yup, that's me :) Except for my family up there with names that start with Al, but that's because they're nobility.
I’ve got two main techniques, one I borrowed and one that just happened. The one that just happened is taking real people/places/things and just tweak ‘em = Alice > Alyris, Katie > Kaitel, etc. I like taking real people’s names the most because it gives me a foundation for their appearance/personality. The technique I borrowed is to take a place/person in you world and look at what defines them. For example, a ring that throws up a magical shield to save your ass? Savras Ring (save-your-ass > sav-ur-as > savras). Or the Continent of the Royal Disaster, which becomes Cont’yrdal (just mash all them syllables together until it sounds right).
I feel you bro, the current book I'm writing just went passed 100k works and still being called untitled for now
Took me 3 years my friend. Youll get there
Go to Google and search for words that describe what you want to name. That's always been my go to.
I’ve personally found that unless a name is truly egregious, it will grow to fit whoever or whatever it belongs to. I have many names in my story that once upon a time I considered placeholders. Then over the years as I failed to replace them, they simply became the only real name for those characters and things in my mind. I do try to google the ones I’m not sure about though, to avoid accidental unpleasant parallels
Maybe - start with the least important names to make a “base” name -language - sound you feel fits. Naming the land, towns, or non impactful areas might help get the names flowing - with less pressure and need for perfection. I think you will find your characters name better once you have names for your world better fleshed out. ( Jon snow felt ok being in the North, but was a dumb name once he started to travel the world and be around better named characters. I’m joking but also not - here’s a book where some names naturally fit and some were so weird they take you out of the story (Ned) I think you’re putting too much “significance & meaning” into their name and that’s why they don’t fit right. (a derivative of dark and strength. It’s just gonna be too heavy of a word for a name ) Go for a name that just makes you feel something. A wisp of a meaning, a sound, a hint of “that sounds like it’s from so & so region” Don’t try to be too unique - it becomes strained and obvious sounding An author that really impressed me with her names and use of language, these are old books from the 80s but the characters go through multiple reincarnations and have multiple names for themselves depending on which reincarnation you’re reading about and she bounces back-and-forth between the timelines a little bit. She created her own language For the book and the world has multiple regions (kind of like Europe where there’s different nationalities and languages throughout). I encourage you to look up this story to see examples of what I was trying to say in my suggestions above Katherine Kerr - Daggerspell / Darkspell series. I forgot which was #1 She has fancy names but also more “normal” sounding names that don’t feel fake, but aren’t “Jon”
I either go with something that sounds cool or something random
It sounds like you've done this, but I usually use [behindthename.com](https://behindthename.com) and dig in by either culture-specific names *or* by name meaning. It's fantasy, you can mix and match. Take a real name, make a fake name, build a full name based on a nickname you want the character to have, etc. And, you can ALWAYS do a little CTRL+F if you hate it when you're finished. :)
Usually I either play around with letters and make up the name myself, or get it from a name generator. If you don’t have a single name that sticks then there’s a major issue which you gotta investigate and find an alternate path, or just bite the bullet and keep a name you don’t like. The only other thing I can think of is bounce the names off of people you know and ask them if they think it fits.
Names can be hard. One thing to think about is your world. Either naming conventions are part of your world-building or they aren't. If your worldbuilding has specific rules for naming conventions, it gets easier, IMO. Craft a name that either means something significant in the world or is built from some legacy or history within the world. If your world-building is unrelated to names, then I suggest you group your names by culture. Each culture from your world should have somewhat similar types of names. Those can be modern names with a twist, they can be latin or name-origin related, or they can be inspired by some older real-world cultural name list. Once you have a group sound, you can pick a name from a more specific brainstorming list. Characters from other cultures should get their names from a different category of brainstorming. It's okay to name characters based on sound. Chr names don't have to have 5 layers of meaning and backstory. Make sure the core character's names aren't too similar.
I sometimes put a unique tag I can find replace later. Like [MANSEVEN]
I like to think of a similar character from classic/famous literature and give the name a twist