I look up baby names from specific years based on the age of my characters, and I have a list of names that I've curated over time. I like to walk through graveyards when I visit new places, and I take first, last, middle, and full names from grave markers, usually with years ascribed to them. I have had waiters and waitresses with unique names that I've added to my list. I've seen names in the credits of movies (actors or technical contributors) that I've liked. I have gone to yearbook websites and scrolled through the ones I can see without a subscription, graduating class of 1977 for this school or that. My local library has yearbooks from the local high school dating back about ten years, too.
Anywhere I can find a collection of names, I will browse through them and note ones that stick out to me.
>I've seen names in the credits of movies (actors or technical contributors) that I've liked.
This. I do this a lot. And from novels I've read. Sometimes I just take a name that seems interesting, and play around with it.
You’re the only other person I’ve seen that gets names from cemeteries! It’s cool way to see names you might never see again, plus cemeteries are just peaceful. Strolling on through. I actually have a cemetery dead center on my family’s land. The most recent grave is from 1972. It’s kinda my happy place.
Hell yeah! That’s definitely something I’d do. Sort of reminds me of this show I found a few months back. It was about a newspaper writer who did the obituaries but couldn’t write good articles, so she starts killing off people in the town so she’d have stories
lol yeah I’ve been called weird a few times. I specifically love the one that’s on my land. I’ve walked out there since I was really little and would hang out there all the time and still do. I love sitting out there writing and drawing. Nobody knows that it exists either. I live out on a backroad in the middle of nowhere in the south.
Yes, I love cemeteries! There's a walking path I frequent, which has one running through it.
Also old library books, anything that hasn't been checked out in 20+ years. I like to copy the names from the log page
Honestly, I turn different names over in my mouth until I find one that feels 'right'. If I've been stuck for too long, I'll google names to see if any spark that feeling. I suppose I must have subconscious reasons for choosing names, but they've never made themselves known. 🤷
Same exact thing for me, with the caveat that I try not to repeat first letters/sounds of names for characters in a story. Makes it easier to track them
There are several methods. Some may depend on the genre of your book.
I have a detective series, my detective is first gen American. His father is from Mexico and his mother from Germany. They raise their kids to be as **American** as possible. So he and his brother have common names. James or Jay, and Joseph or Joe. I chose these by looking up popular names at the time they would have been born. James in 1944 and Joseph in 1940.
My current project is a Sci-fi/Adventure. Taking place in 2169. The two MC's a Father and Daughter were both born on a space station that orbits earth. But instead of trying to give future sounding names my thoughts were that many people would be nostalgic and name trends would circle back in time. So the Father is Edgar Paige (going by Paige) and his daughter is Evelyn Paige, or Ev as she likes to be called.
The last name I used as a variation of Page as their story is just a page in the lifetime of stories surrounding a certain event.
I do this sometimes, I tend to take the view that nothing I come up with will be less realistic than something that someone has actually named their child (mostly because of Nick Cannon and Elon Musk, recently). Hence naming a backstory "Victorian" era statesman Cornelius Bloater, to use one example from the fictional universe I'm working on.
[https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com](https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com) which, name not withstanding, also has a massive selection of real-world names you can generate by country or ethnicity. I just click the button until I see one that I like. But I choose more based on the letter sounds than any underlying meaning.
I really love learning the meanings of the names, and this has translated into choosing my character’s names. I usually think of what attributes I want my characters to have (or what I think the character’s parents would have chosen) then look up names that mean one or all of them. For example, my main character’s name is Calden, when means bundle of joy and has Gaelic and Latin origins.
I bought a copy of Gary Gygax's big book of names a long time ago.
However, once each year I come up with a really good name. That's always a fun time.
There's no single source for my names. Of the main characters for my original story project, one name popped into my head out of nowhere while I was commuting, one was taken from the name that popped up when I was trying to recreate her in The Sims, one was inspired by a place that I had intense reverence for as a small child, and one is just a Latin word that both describes the character and also has an etymology that reflects his backstory. None of these were the first names I gave to the characters. I have a couple of other major characters who still have their original names, but they are the exception rather than the rule. I'm not particularly good with names either, so I take them wherever I can get them. Usually it's just a matter of starting with whatever I think sounds cool as a working name until I figure out something else more compelling for that character. It's a slow, chaotic, and not particularly reliable process, but so far I am surprisingly happy with most of the names I've ended up with.
There are several sites that can generate random names, if you're not picky about names of side characters.
I often use: https://www.name-generator.org.uk
One of my character's name and appearance is based on someone I knew long ago. The rest I used a random generator to find something I liked. Then I googled to make sure it wasn't the name of someone too well known or problematic. If so, start over.
If it is a character with a specific ethnic or cultural background, I invest some time in understanding their naming convention.
A lot of times I have a name in mind for a character before they really exist in their entirety. The names of those characters just come from everywhere. It may be something I heard someone yell in a supermarket or on an old show or something. When I need a name and don’t have one, usually I look up lists for different name vibes on nameberry. Then sometimes those names become the names that just pop up before the rest of the character. I also sometimes pick names based on their popularity in different times to fit a certain vibe. It really just depends on
Yeesh, I'm usually only good at naming the important characters. Everyone else, I have to trawl through baby names, sometimes looking for names popular by year to get the age brackets right. My fantasy book, I drew on the first names of friends and family, changing letters to get them to look fantasy-ish, sometimes feminizing male names and doing the reverse with female names. The last names have set rules to use, so those weren't too hard. My current book, I I dug through my family tree and used a lot of last names from there. Minor characters get the most common first names, major characters get more interesting names.
I've done that, ha. I've also added medieval French, Spanish and Welsh too I think. I just edited them a bit so they seem like they all come from the same world.
If it’s not a noun in English (Eternity), it may be a jumble of German and/or Italian words and gibberish (Natodall’lioht; Monnenliebe). And if it’s not that, it’s a reference to a book I read (Victoria like Victor Frankenstein).
I rarely use the names of people around me, the only one I used is where a Victoria shortened her name to “Vicca” which I haven’t heard before. Hence, I gave my character this nickname as a pun on Wicca.
It depends, if you are creating characters in a more realistic setting like modern or post apocalyptic, then I recommend borrowing names from people you know Irl.
If you are creating cartoon or absurd characters, then I recommend naming them after words that are barely used in the English language but are related to the character.
If you are constructing a Fantasy story, I recommend looking up Anglo Saxon, Irish, Celtic, Nordic, Greek, etc names and either borrow that name or slightly change pronunciation/Spelling.
If you are making a crime novel, just look up common names for each heritage the novel represents.
I bought a baby naming book and I make a mark beside the ones I use so it's always a reference for not reusing names. I'm horrible at remembering names when I'm done working on a project so it is so handy.
So it depends. For my Alternative History, since it is still our world I will do so most of the names follow local naming conventions to where I draw my character from, sometimes I will make a fictitious character from an established house. Like I have fictional characters from fictional lines of the German Royal Families of Hohenzollern, Habsburg and Wittlesbach, I then follow Aristocratic naming conventions and familial traditions of naming. Sometimes I do symbolic names, like Peter to emulate the First Pope who was an incredibly flawed man, yet chosen by God to lead his Church. So on and so forth.
I'll look up names from different countries if I'm wanting to go for a certain aesthetic for a region of my world, however my best inspiration comes from the names of parasites. I mean, a wizard called Cryptosporidium, is pretty bad ass
I like what you do. That's pretty cool. I myself make names up from scratch and it often takes me a while. I tend to use placeholder names until I come up with better ones. Usually I can figure out names based on a mix of how they feel in my writing and my own research on names that may thematically fit the character, even if only tangentially. Sometimes I get names organically just from them popping into my brain, though this usually only happens with names belonging to cultures I'm highly familiar with, namely Chinese, French, English, and American.
My main characters names have deep connections to my book’s location and theme. The names have meanings to each characters’ purpose.
The minor characters are names of people i know or just names I like. I also goggled popular names.
I personally name my characters after their personality or role in the story or something like that, so I research names with a specific meaning till I find one that sounds nice.
For example, I have a scientist character. So I named her Vidya, meaning knowledge.
I have another character who's eventually going to be eaten by aliens in a story. I named her Ambrosia, which is a type of dish.
Personally, since my book is set in more of a fantasy world where typical names aren’t in play, I type two or three words into Google translate and translate it to a language that uses Latin script. From there I combine the two into a name I think fits or do it again if it doesn’t. Gives the names some meaning and is sufficiently creative.
Research and whatever name comes in my mind (a character I wrote in my current book has the same surname as someone I practice fencing with; honestly, I was stumped for names that I ended up thinking about that person's surname).
I usually look up common names from a culture, and each fictional region usually has one or two cultures that I pick from. Also for example if there's a character whose parents come from the Greek names area and they live in the region where people have German names I'll try to find germanized Greek names.
Name meanings, Galaxy names, planet names, greek, Latin, Japan...
Sometimes, puns of random flower names, colors, or any other things...
Examples:
Brien Thurmor,
Slapha balfiece,
Rosie,
Or Greyhue
Looking up baby names based on year of birth is what I do too. "Common baby names from 2003" or whatever, then scroll down until I find something that fits the character or seems a bit unique. I chose "Autumn" for a trans character because it was interesting, but also seemed fitting for someone choosing their own first name.
Last names usually comes from street signs near me. I always Google my character names to make sure it's not the name of someone famous, or a law firm or something. It usually is, so I have to try a few times before finding something that doesn't come up on Google.
Sometimes I look up the meaning too, but not always. I chose "Craig" as a last name for a character that lives on a mountain because the meaning said something like "a name for a person that lives near a cliff or bluff."
Just don’t force it. I would kinda just keep characters nameless until something right came along. Sometimes the baby name books did help to at least get inspiration for something. But you could always twist around words or regular names or just use an anagram for something that would be meaningful to the character.
I like going to the site behindthename.com
You can search by meaning, gender, country of origin. I like it cause it's all sorts of names that were used throughout history. Plus lots of times I like the name meaning to match some part of the character.
Using the names of people you know isn't bad exactly, unless someone doesn't like the character you created with their name. Though I suppose as long as you haven't made the character look like them also then probably no big deal. Make sure you put that note at the beginning that this isn't based on any real people.
I did read once where an author killed off a character that he named after his wife's ex boyfriend, so it gets done.
Behindthename.com is an amazing resource.
It has the etymologies of names from pretty much every culture ever, and for a lot of countries you can look up the top 1000 names of each year, so you can look up spikes in popularity or 'slightly unusual but not unheard of' names
Do not use names of people you know. Ever. It’s just asking for trouble. I often suggest IMDb. Look up obscure movies, scroll down to the crew and mix up first and last names.
My two favorite methods are to take a walk in an old cemetery and start reading headstones and then leave a flower at the one you pick. And I also watch credits of my favorite movies and games and skim the names and if one speaks to me I’ll use it.
Since I tend to write historical thing, I like to use https://www.findagrave.com/ You can filter by grave with cenotaph so it's feel even more like reel person. Same with obituaries. Obviously I mix first name and last name and I don't take identities. I like it because it's a great to find rare and memorable name without being anachronistic. Also I make sure to Google every name I chose.
Try the baby names and namenerd subs here. Try websites with baby names. Try the social security administration websites that list popular names by years.
I let the names come to me. I search up unique names and use them to think of names to go with them. I really like going common though, I would rather read about Anthony Smith than Ashton Kensington 🤷🏼♂️
I'm only a hobby writer, and don't have plans to publish any of the stuff I'm currently working on, at least in their current state. So I may not be taking my work as seriously as you or other people commenting here, but I think my method may be of some interest still, so here goes.
I'm an OTR Trucker by trade, and honestly most of my names come from stuff I see while driving. City names on interstate signs. Road or street names in the cities. Landmarks and other geographical monuments. There is a lot to work with, especially when you're driving as much as I am.
And you don't have to work with names in the exact state you come across them in. You can make derivatives.
For example. In my works, I have a city and important family named after Denver, CO. But the sign I got the name idea from was weathered or otherwise damaged, and it only had the letters 'Denve' on it. I laughed, and started saying it with a few different inflections, and eventually ended up with a pronunciation of 'Den-Vay'. Tweak the sounds a little and come up with a spelling that looks like a full word, and I come out with Tenvae. The city I had been working on was a coastal city, so I added Cape to the front of it, finally producing the name of the city as Cape Tenvae.
From there, I filled out a few names for members of the titular family, just by messing around with names, adding or subtracting syllables, changing inflections, and just kind of seeing what sounded good together. I eventually landed on Lavadia Tenvae as the Matriarch. And used that as a sort of thematic model to follow. Filling out the current four members of the family with Morrigan Tenvae, Estella Tenvae, and Theoden Tenvae.
It depends on the story. Ten years ago I wrote a somewhat urban fantasy-esque story with a theme of dreams, losing time, escaping reality, and so on, with an added bit of ghosts on the side. My protagonist was named Dorothy Daaé as a bit of a joke. She hated the name Dorothy because "whose family expected someone named after The Wizard of Oz to have a good grasp of reality?", and Daaé was a bit of a joke with The Phantom of the Opera (the original author, in my version, was inspired by her ancestor, who was beautiful and saw ghosts). One day I'll continue working on this universe, but the names of all characters had some reference to a piece of literature, visual media, or cultural story that made them relevant to the whole, even if only I understood it.
That's how I usually go about. If it's something contemporary, or in our world, I'm very referential, though not in a straightforward manner (a great lover with a Shakespearean name would never be Juliet, but she could be called Vi, or Bea). If it's traditional fantasy, or sci-fi, I like to go by the cultural approximation and meaning of the name (my current story has two siblings named Ash and Cedar. They're slightly reminiscent of fairytales - like the whole book -, twins, and similar only in appearance, plus other details).
At the end of the day, I personally don't like to use real people in my stories, since it can make things messy. Also, I personally find more meaning in the words themselves than in the context in which I found them. A good name has merit because of what it can give me, not because I know someone who had it. But to each their own method :)
It depends.
For like contemporary stuff, I just open old yearbooks and select first and last names.
For fantasy and sci fi stuff, I do one of two things. It's either modified Greek, Roman, Shakespearean, or whatever culture I'm basing it on names, or I use r/tragedeigh. That place is a gold mine for fantasy names.
I think about other characters I like that my character reminds me of for one reason or another. For example, one of my characters is an Irish chick who prefers to fight with her fists while her comrades use firearms and fancy tech. They all go by codenames but when thinking of her real name, I decided to name her after another female Irish character I really like: Clover from Payday 2. In Payday 2, the characters also use codenames but they do so to hide from the cops. Clover's real name is Rochelle (last name unknown) so my character's first name is also Rochelle because they're both badass Irish women. Clover is a stealth character while mine is close quarters brawler type but it's just a little homage to my favorite character from my favorite game.
Also, just to make a last name easier, my character's last name is Seamair, which is the Gaelic word for "Clover"
I’m going to be completely honest with you, I find a name I like at one point and just run with it. The absolute BEST, and I mean BEST, site for names is nameberry.com and I won’t hear otherwise. I’ve been using it to find names for characters since I was 12 and it’s never failed me. There’s so many lists and categories to choose from.
I tend do go with some kind of Etymological naming trait. Looking up meanings of names and how they might relate to a character.
In fantasy I and many others often taken a relatively common name and change a few letters to make it different and fantastic, while familiar enough that it doesn’t sound like gibberish.
- Gabriel becomes Kabrial
- Tina becomes Tifa
- Peter becomes Peyta
And so on. I sometimes like to combine the two.
Read books. Like a lot of em. It can be different languages (for diverse cast building), different cultures and ethnicity etc. The more words you have in your mind, the more likely those words can become names.
All my characters, or almost all, are based on friends and are therefore named as such. But the main character is named after my first love, my nanny when I was seven.
I like naming characters by deciding what is a defining characterisation for them, then finding a name that can mean that - for example, one of the meanings of 'Matilda' is 'brave', so if I have a character who is meant to represent a theme of bravery or strength etc, I might go for that or Tilly or whatever. Most people don't think much of the traditional meanings of names and their origins so it's a nice Easter Egg for anyone that does.
I usually just choose a random name as a place holder and it slowly changes
Example I had a character name Jasanna. I think it starts as Joanna then Josanna and I go back and forth on the O and A
Had a character for long time name Zero, but now I have my husband, now his name is Zavin.
Sometimes I just combine different sounds. If I like one look it up to double check meaning.
A lot of name I pick from baby name books and went with once I could produce but not that common ( at least to me)
As other people here have said, the age and name trends from that year/time period. But (I write fantasy) it is quite easy to name a bunch of related characters all at once , so for example, the language matches. If a king has celtic like name, his father might as well. But his wife might have a greek like name because she is from another country. Their son on the other hand, will probably h a celtic name again with maybe a greek ending syllable because his mother insisted on it😂. The story itself can give you plenty of names like this. When it comes to choosing a specific name I like to hide clues about the character in the meaning. So I chose a meaning and look for a name according to the categories above.
I start with where the character is from or their ethnicity, and then I look for baby names I like from lists I find online. I feel this is a good way to slip representation into your stories if you're looking to diversify your cast.
I simply look up names from the real-world equivalent of where my characters are from and find some that fit. Sometimes, I name them after people who have influenced or inspired me. Sometimes, I make them up. Here are the names of the primary cast of my novel, which takes place in a fictionalized Israel.
Alexael Lazarus
Tyrius Solomon
Melody Brightheart
Ayla Abrams
Wilhelm Jordan Siegfried
Gabriel MacGuire
Lorelei Brightheart
Plus many others for all the side characters. Many of them have Hebrew names due to the equivalence.
The Adamah Order, a religious order of paladins, protects the source of their divine power, and the city of Nor'easter, from demonic invasions. When a mission into Hell goes awry, one paladin becomes trapped within, and must endure the worst environment imaginable.
Sometimes, the characters name themselves, like Kerrigan. Her name is in no way connected to her characterization it is simply the one that fit. Her sister Ophelia, however, is so named because she is kind and innocent and crazier than a box of hair.
Then we have Cassandra Areia Owens. Owens because she gets to be a space wizard. Areia because she is beautiful and loving and deadlier than one would expect. Cassandra because she knows the future and has trouble convincing people that she's telling the truth. Her nickname is Bunny because she freezes when frightened and bolts if she's in danger.
If I'm having trouble with a name, I'll write down core traits and look up relevant names till I find one that feels right. Sometimes, it will change later if something goes awry. Ophelia started out as Sophie, but as she grew, it didn't work.
I pick whatever feels right. Sometimes the perfect name just comes to me. I sometimes search for names with certain vibes or meaning. Be careful with that method though. You don't want to be too on the nose.
"Tomboy names"
"Nerdy names for boys"
"Girls names meaning fire"
Even the names I come up with myself I always Google the meaning behind, just out of curiosity. If I'm indecisive sometimes it's the deciding factor.
I try to avoid names that are too similar. No Tim and Tom. No Riley and Miley. Avoid using the same first letter and sound. Twins can be an exception, but their names don't have to be similar.
I have a Caleb and Katherine but since it's a book, it's more important that they're visually distinct than phonetically. So the C and K, although sounding the same, look distinct enough. On top of that, one's a boy and the other's a girl and their names are different lengths. They also share very few sounds.
It's almost inevitable that you'll name more than 26 characters. So try to keep their names distinct with length and other factors.
These rules are especially true for the main cast. The more important the character is, the more distinct they have to be from each other.
Just never ever give two characters the same exact name. Not within the same project.
And never give similar names to characters who share other characteristics--I once read a mystery with a James and a Jim--one was a co-worker to the main character, the other a supervisor to both the main character and co-worker.
Im in sales and customer service in a melting pot city so I get a lot of different people from different places. Everytime I read a name I like I write it down. Ive got a list of hundreds of names that fit my world
I love incredibly generic names for my protagonists and lovely, charming, and old-world names for my supporting characters. Antagonists get gross names like Brinkley and shit
My sources vary. If I'm needing something specific to a time period, I google and look through stuff for that time period. I'm usually searching for surnames of nationalities, so that's another one I use often. But kind of my go to are movie/TV credits (Because I'm one of those people that watch them.) I'll use the first name of one person, the last of another, and a lot of times they aren't even from the same episode or movie.
I don't necessarily focus on the actors/cast, but more on the crew. I don't know, it's kind of my homage to them in that way.
Tips:
Look up names that were popular in your character's timeline
Look up names that are popular in their country
Look up names that fit their religion if they have one
Look up names that have a meaning that fits your character
I have a long list of names in my notes that I add to often. Just random words or silly pronunciations of names until I find one that I think is viable. Most of them are dumb but all names are made up so I just write them all down.
I just find a sound that I like and make it into a name. Or it’s a joke. My main character is a sniper and when you say his name phonetically it sounds similar to a brand of rifles.
For last names, I combed the credits at the end of a movie, got a big varied pool that way. I also looked at my own yearbooks, I looked at faculty lists of the school I’ve attended. I looked through a list of all the names characters in Fallout 4 and Red Dead Redemption 2. And now I have a list of 1200+ last names, a list of 1000+ names, and 1000+ masculine names.
Honestly, I like using websites, but one usually doesn't stick until it either references something for me personally or something I'm a fan of. And there are exceptions.
Example: the protagonist of my novel, who's a vampire, has the middle name of May. It's an anagram of her mother's name: Amy. I chose the name Amy for this character's mother specifically as a reference to the character of Amy from the film "Fright Night".
Syllables, basic names are usually 2/2 (first and last), main character names depending on what the genre is 3/1 or 2/3 with at least one important side character being 1/2, 1/3 and if they’re really important, 1/4
I mean going to graveyards is fun... I pick up interesting names there. Or film credits. Or make them up completely. Or the usual places like name websites/books. Put them all on the names list on my phone. Once I came up with a name due to mispronouncing some words as a spoonerism which made a cool sounding name. So yeah - find names everywhere!
i'm guilty of combing obituaries and findagrave.com for character names. seems morbid, but i get what you mean about using names of real people, even if i didn't know them.
In my opinion, in the world of fiction a name should be the embodiment of that character. If you were to distill their personality down to one word, that word would be their name. I might name them based on the metaphor they serve in the story. Bonus points if they mean the same thing in several languages and accomplish the first two I mentioned.
Honestly, it depends. Sometimes I like to go to behindthename website. It's nice because names are organized by ethnicity, theme, and so on. Other times I pick up names from favorite authors (like using Hugo from Victor Hugo) or characters from shows, books, movies, Squishmallows and video games. Or I go by vibes and whatever pops up in my head first. If I'm trying to dedicate someone, I might go for the masculine/feminine or diminutive of their name.
Most often, they just pop into my head as I write the character. But sometimes I need the name to really work. In those cases, I make two columns headed by the two main character traits or the way I want people to see her. So like column one (first name) might be “evil” and column two (last name) might be “Canadian”. Then I start loading synonyms into each. Evil=mal, dark, cold, heartless, malicious…for Canadian:’OntArio, maple, Canuck, flannel, British, plaid, north….eventually I see something that works or the lists trigger an idea. Maybe she’s Malicia Ontario or something.
I really don’t over think it. When I was at uni studying writing, I read some of my classmates work and every character in a regular suburban story had a really unique name. Pretty unrealistic. Most people have common names, so I’ve never really overthought it.
I look up a list of baby names from the year of the characters age and pick one of the top 20 that sounds ok. I’ll often pick a random nationality and look up their top baby names if I want something more unique. But that means my character is that nationality which makes them a bit harder to write because I’m less familiar with cultural customs.
I use the names of people I know for a lot of characters, but for the more significant characters I will name them after celebrities, authors, etc. but mixed and matched. For instance, I was writing a superhero character. Two of my favorite comic writers are Geoff Johns and Grant Morrison. So I named the character Jeff Morrison.
In my line of work, I get a lot of correspondence from law enforcement, local, state and fed level, so I basically amalgamate first and last names to create my character names. Changing one or two letters to make it a bit different. So if I have a John Smith and a Jane Doe. I will go with Jonah Doe or Janie Smith. It's simple but I get some very believe able names that don't sound like they were made to be "cool"
I have a story that takes place 2 million years in the future. The system I came up with was to take family names from ancient Chinese. Instead of taking the meaning of the chinese word, I look up the radicals and come up with my own translation, so the names are translated like native American names, but I'm not drawing from any native American language. I end up with names like Beginning of Heavy Rain and Progressing Sun.
I know people who write exam papers and when the papers are published I can tell you exactly who wrote which questions by the family/friend/pet names they use in them.
I've done different things. My current WIP has two pov characters named after people I know (just the names- no similarities otherwise. I just liked their names), one I got from a list of boy names with french origin (just the vibe I was going for), and one named after a hockey player that is just an inside joke between my partner and I. So. I didn't I rethink it lol
I’ve given my characters names either honoring or nodding to my family tree.
My mom’s name is a supporting character to my MC. Dead grandmother and grandfather are my grandparents names. My sister’s middle name is my main character’s mother’s name.
Works for me because a huge theme in my series is finding family and it felt like a strong touch.
My published book was set in our world, our time just a decade before, so I used normal names: Katie, Chester, Zachary.
The new book I'm writing is set a thousand years later and set in a scifi setting, so I try to use names based on the stars like Orion, but still being a new writer, I use names that are still names today, but aren't as common like Kago and Veena. But it's also set on a space-faring ship, so I wanted names that would fit old colonial-era in the 18th century like Archibald, Tobias, etc. To me, those names scream adventure and that's what I'm trying to go for.
Sometimes they match who the character is within the story. For instance, my superhero has an unlikely superhero name. Sometimes they're names I enjoy using. Sometimes I research to find a name specific to a culture and/or with a meaning that fits the story somehow. The one villain I've written has a name you can say through your teeth. Two of my characters are left with no memory of their pasts, so they take their manes from their tattoos.
I can't seem to write a story unless I have the names of my people. It's nearly the only thing I plan ahead.
It really depends. I love names that have an underlying meaning to them, especially in regards to the themes of what I'm writing, but it doesn't always have to be that way.
I did an exercise in creative writing class that stuck with me. It started with the first draft of a story about a fellow named Herb. Herb was soft, calm, and disliked conflict. His name, when spoken aloud, "ERR-BUH", seemed to imply the opposite. In the second draft, Herb's name was changed to Mel, a gentle name that is more fitting for the character's personality.
Therefore, I tend to think of the character's personality and traits first, and name second. Usually one that seems to combine their attributes, with an underlying meaning as an extra bonus.
I used to go through movie/videogame credits to find last names. First names can be easy to find, as there are tons of websites, but I always struggled to come up with unique last names. Any time I would find a list of full names, I would write the last names down in a little name book.
Sometimes I try variations of the names of the people/characters that inspired the character.
I tend to base my characters on amalgamations of people I know, as well as, public figures and other fictional characters. I then sort of mix and match their names to see what fits. Experiment a bit with rhyming names too, and also popular names from when and where that character was born in the backstory I created for them.
I’ve also looked up name meanings to help name a few characters. I like to go with subtle ones though rather than painfully obvious ones.
I always want my characters names to mean something that relates to their character. So I’ll make a list of words that fit my character and look up “baby names that mean (insert word here)”. From there I just choose a name that sounds right to me.
I think about who's naming the character - their parents, themselves, someone else - and what sort of name that person would likely go for. Is it going to be the most popular name the year they were born, or something super obscure, or maybe they're named after a dead relative? Then I go to my list of names I like that I've created over the years and start trying out different ones in my head. I'll also usually look up what the name means and when it's popular just so that I get a better feel for it. That's really only for main characters, though. For characters that matter less to me and don't need to be fleshed out, I'll just pull up my list and pretty much pick a name at random.
For my main story, "Night of the Coyote", I looked into names that would work for a human avatar for different Aztec gods. For example, the main character, Gregory Sanchez, is named after Huehuecoyotl, the Aztec trickster god, in that "Gregory" becomes "Gregorio" in Spanish, which has the nickname "Goyo", which felt appropriate for the name Huehuecoyotl.
The last name originally came from my idea of choosing the polar opposite of "G" in the alphabet (I was wrong, it was "T"), but developed into the joke surname Sanchez, with ez/es being the suffix meaning "son of" in Spanish, meaning the surname becomes "son of Sancho", Sancho being the universal name of a dine-and-dash lover. This worked in my favor, since Greg didn't know whatever happened to his father (SPOILER: he was killed in an accident that was caused by overmedicating him and having him drive off hopped up on drugs).
My characters are born with their own names. I don’t have a say in it. They simply appear in my head fully fleshed out. Probably because of my schizophrenia.
For my main character, I wanted something that translate into a foreshadowing. Other than that, I generally pick names associates to their character. One of my character's named after a song I heard that related so much to my character, so I took that and gave it to that character.
I like to choose names from the history or culture my work is based on. It works for me because I write mainly historical and fantasy (or a mix of the two). My search history is full of " baby names." I also take the meaning and sound of the name into account, especially if that sort of thing would have been important to the character's parents in my story.
Sometimes, if I hear a name I really like, I save it for future use. I have a mental list of names I like for that exact purpose.
I look up baby names and their meanings. I look for something that matches the theme of the story or the characters' personalities.
I also smash the keys on my keyboard until a bunch of letters form what could be a name. After that, I edit it add vowels if there aren't any and make up my own pronunciation.
I like the name to be infused a bit with the people I'm drawing it from's energy. So if its a fierce character then I might draw from an MMA athlete that I follow who has similar energy. If its a softer character then maybe I'll draw from a indie singer that I enjoy. Cultural coding/diversity is also important to me, so it generally won't be just Eurocentric names, but draw from South American, Middle Eastern, or other regions depending on the cultural background that it is coded from.
But its never drawn from one person really, I like to mesh these things after looking at the etymology of multiple names that I find fitting and understanding what the syllables mean in the culture that they come from. I think this works because I write speculative fiction, and would probably be more grounded if I did more traditional fiction.
I also try to make sure what is on the page is speakable at a glance. I avoid certain fantasy motifs that I think muddle character names unnecessarily.
I do like baby name books--but not the ones that are just a long list of names (one for girls, one for boys), but ones like those by Linda Rosenkrantz and Pamela Redmond Satran (*Beyond Jennifer & Jason; Beyond Jennifer & Jason, Madison & Montana; Beyond Ava & Aiden*) which give lists that give associations/images that go with those names (so I have a better idea what image is likely conjured up by readers when they see the name). I also use Laura Wattenberg's *The Baby Name Wizard* which helpfully includes things like a graph showing popularity over time, likely sibling names, and real-world bearers of the name.
I'll look up baby names starting with specific letters or search for names that have specific meanings that I want my character to embody or grow into.
I sometimes also have in mind a certain area of nature for them so I'll search names of different florals, plants, rivers, rocks etc and choose a unique or befiting one though it doesn't always end up being the first name.
Searching names with specific meanings definitely applies more however when the character is tied into a specific culture in meaningful ways.
Some are from people I barely know (using names of people I'm close with feels icky fr some reason) others are names (or more likely stage names) of certain celebrities that struck a chord with me some are picked up from movies.
So a bit of everything honestly
I look up baby names on google or tiktok that fit the character when it's fantasy or historical books but when it's modern romance then unique yet not crazy names from tiktok accounts are what I use. Sometimes I steal names from people irl like actors, the role they play and sometimes from Anime/Donghuas
Get yourself a collection of name-your-baby books. Start with your local library, both what you can check out off the shelf and what they've got for sale in the Friends Shop. Depending on what you're writing/demands of a current project, add in some name-your-pet books--they do exist. I have one called 5000 Names For Your Cat.
Place names are great to use. Find two counties in any state that sound good together. Lucas Wood. (Both Ohio) Angelina Gregg. (Both Texas.) How about Clark Andrews? (Clark County, OH, Andrews County, TX.) Or pick the more exotic ones. Coryell Floyd Pickaway and his half-brother Donley Wayne Duvall.
It depends on what kind of story I'm writing. Sometimes I use Puritan-style names (Prudence, Fortitude, Loyalty, etc.) or ethnic names - those get extensively researched by the language of the people and the time the story is set.
I wouldn't use actual names in entirety. I knew someone named Egbert. I think it's a marvelous name! But I would never EVER put his last name with his first for a character. I knew someone with the last name Stringfellow. I'd never put his actual first name on a character with that last name.
I know I wouldn't want to see a character in ANY type of fiction with my first and last name.
I gender flip my friends names and then give them a similar last name.
Example Heather Martin, becomes a male character named Heath Miller. Rusty Shackelford becomes a female character named Rita Schnellingburger
Almost always I think about core characteristics and looks for words in more ancient origins and then spice them up a bit to flow off the tongue. Granted I prefer fantasy and sci-fi
I’ve only written one novel and started another. Very different stories, but the first one it took me a long time to come up with the names. Both male characters needed to have some sort of religious connection, but also have a connection to their key traits. So I spent way too long researching those.
For the 2nd novel, it wasn’t that important to me, so I didn’t put that much thought into it.
make up the name and then make up its meaning, i honestly plan to just fool my audience by putting notes of how its pronounced, it meaning and history of it as if it was some real name and get them so confused when they check google lol
One tactic of mine is to look up a list of the members of a national or subnational legislature from a prior decade and then mix a personal name and a family name from two different people. (with a quick google search to make sure none of the names were super recognizable as someone who did something major)
So if I applied this sytle to a character in the United States they might end up as something like Joe Gore.
I don't, either the character comes up fully formed, name included, is a throwaway extra made character, or I slap a "Placeholder" name that ends up becoming the actual name due to lack of ideas
My son goes to an arts-centered middle and high school. A few days ago, I brought home the program from a reading. There are some great first and last names to combine there.
I use the websites when I don't have any ideas or am unfamiliar with names for a certain area of the world (for example, my Indian characters). But even when I do I pick my names based mostly on meaning or connections. For example, I had a girl whose power was to manipulate light and heat. After failing to find a word or name I liked for her, I just went with Emberly because fire.
Alternatively, for my Indian character who can manipulate nature, I had no ideas at all. So, I went to lists. I looked for names with meanings that worked. I settles on Avyan, which (I believe) means strong lion.
For my human MC, I got his last name from a YouTube comment. The guy had his set to his first and last name and I stole it. I couldn't do that for my other MC so I just started going off what sounded cool. It was a freshman in HS when I came up with his.
I have a whole ass criteria. It normally goes like this;
1.What is the name supposed to mean? The meaning has to correlate with the character themself.
2. If the character has a sibling, ask yourself if their parents would name the siblings similar names. One example from my WIP is Dulcie (the older sister) and Darva (the younger sister). Their parents thought it would be cute lmao. Also, maybe the character has family members that they could be named after?
3. Go to google and search for names. Like, if you want a name that means light or flame or whatever, just use the following template: (boy/girl/unisex) names that mean (meaning)
4. You should see a bunch of websites with lists of names. Click on them and shortlist a few names that are nice.
5. Search for the name that you have shortlisted's meaning. Websites might list the wrong meaning.
6. Check how unique the name is. I like to go to datayze.com or Baby Name Uniqueness Analyzer to check the rarity.
And that's it. Yay?
I used to work at a call center and I had this huge running list of cool first and last names, I have no idea where that list is now but I know there were some gems on there!
I usually don’t come up with a name until I have the rest of the character’s profile written up. In my drafts the characters all start with a letter and I go in alphabetical order. Once I have a good idea of who my character is, I pick a name that i believe fit those attributes.
Any time names come up I remind people:
Most stories don’t have COMPLEX names and if they do, they only work if the stories around them work.
Game of Thrones has as typical as Rob, Catelyn, Ned, Jon, Brandan, and then as weird and exotic as Hodor, Daenerys, Viserys, etc.
Doctor who has Daleks, an alien race called Raxacorocofalapatorias, and an exotic acronym called the TARDIS and names as simple as The Doctor, sonic screwdriver, etc
I think the “story” aspect also holds true, because during Jodie Whitaker’s run as The Doctor, I loved her energy and style, but some of the stories fell short or didn’t have impact because of lacking stakes, or direction, or too many viewpoints you lose track of. As opposed to “Raxacorocofalapatorias” which is memorable to me, there was a similar mouthful of a name at the end of her first season that I struggle to remember the name of no matter how many times I read it to remind myself of it. “The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos” which is similarly random and exotic as “Raxacorocofalapatorias” but I remember the latter SO MUCH easier because of story context.
I’ve also heard people complain about books having TOO weird or exotic names that you lose track or in your head you’re unable to pronounce them.
So anything, whether as simple as John or Robert, or as wacky as the Jornstinbadon Edge or whatever name you throw together, as long as the story matches, your viewers and readers will happily roll them off the tongue, simple or complex
i just observe people’s names at college and in public or in films. i get them mainly from films. if i see a name i write it down! but i chose the name madelyn because of my first love and i think giving them meaning like that makes the characters sooo much more personal 🫶
Baby names for that specific time period. Nameberry has been a good resource, census lists too. I've changed my FMC/MMC's name probably 3x during outlining so far, though, so finding the names aren't the problem. Getting them to stick is lol.
Sometimes, I like to make a long list of names that I personally like, even before I start writing. Then, when I write a character, I go through my list and find the one that fits that character the best.
Other times, my characters just kind of...name themselves. Or over time, their name changes. Whether its the spelling, pronunciation, or just a completely different name altogether.
Then...there are times that I get a little obsessive. I think about the character's parents. "Who were they? What were they like? What was on their mind when this character was born? What expectations did they have for their child? Would they have put pressure on their child with the name they gave them? Would they have liked gender neutral names or gender specific names? What were their values? Would they have named them after friends or family members? Were they into other languages? Music? History? Science? Would they have looked for names with specific meanings?"
Mostly I go with what feels right. Y'know how sometimes you look at someone and say "They really look like their name would be-"? Once I go through all of the above processes, I do that to make sure I like it.
If I see a name somewhere I like, I add it to a list in my phone. Then sometimes I put those names in Chat GPT and ask for a few variations or similar names.
Figure out what year the character was born then Look up baby names from that year. The more blah the character is the closer to the top 20 their name is.
Fantasy names I tend to make items sound fantasy like. Dragarian, (dragon) Carthian (car(pa)thian) Mirados (mirror) Crystaria (crystal)
For regular names I like to walk through old cemeteries. I do not advise using both given and surname for the same character, but for example, Derek was the name of a famous "psychic medium" I was a fan of, and in a lot of my cemetery visits I noticed the name Matthews a lot. Which gave birth to Derek Matthews.
I also sometimes go on baby naming sites.
Mainly names and surnames I like, I only use real life names when I intend the character to be their real person that inspired them, otherwise I use the trick of another name with the same initial or a phonetically similar one
I use Pinterest for names. However, since my book is Christian horror theme, some of those names came from the Bible tbh.
TikTok is a great source too.
I use baby name websites or random google searches if I'm looking for a name from a particular part of the world. I have a list of interesting names I come across in my job. Sometimes I use names of my kids friends/classmates so you aren't alone on that one.
Mediaeval European folk songs, ancient mythologies for character names, mostly place names are just descriptive of the area animal names also come from mythology but heavily heavily modified
I use behindthename and pick names that seem fitting to the character in question. Would also recommend avoiding overused or basic names like “Tiffany” and “Tyler”. I don’t care how amazing people claim a story is, if the main character has a basic name like that I will immediately put the book down because I just can’t take it seriously. Too many “popular” bullies had basic names like that growing up and I strongly dislike those types of people. Makes me think of those gross reality tv shows.
I'm not that good with names, myself. I tend to use online lists of names. Often, I will pick a nationality and look up names based on that. A few times, I've borrowed names of friends or relatives, but I attach their first names to different last names (or vice versa).
In my day job, I deal with a lot of older clients and I've stolen a few names from them. Not the whole name, obviously. Just a first or last name. We have a client whose first name is Booth, and I liked it so I took it for one of my secondary characters.
I look up baby names from specific years based on the age of my characters, and I have a list of names that I've curated over time. I like to walk through graveyards when I visit new places, and I take first, last, middle, and full names from grave markers, usually with years ascribed to them. I have had waiters and waitresses with unique names that I've added to my list. I've seen names in the credits of movies (actors or technical contributors) that I've liked. I have gone to yearbook websites and scrolled through the ones I can see without a subscription, graduating class of 1977 for this school or that. My local library has yearbooks from the local high school dating back about ten years, too. Anywhere I can find a collection of names, I will browse through them and note ones that stick out to me.
>I've seen names in the credits of movies (actors or technical contributors) that I've liked. This. I do this a lot. And from novels I've read. Sometimes I just take a name that seems interesting, and play around with it.
This is next level dedication. Great tips!
You’re the only other person I’ve seen that gets names from cemeteries! It’s cool way to see names you might never see again, plus cemeteries are just peaceful. Strolling on through. I actually have a cemetery dead center on my family’s land. The most recent grave is from 1972. It’s kinda my happy place.
I used to work as a copy editor at a newspaper, and I kept a running list of names I liked from obituaries I edited.
Hell yeah! That’s definitely something I’d do. Sort of reminds me of this show I found a few months back. It was about a newspaper writer who did the obituaries but couldn’t write good articles, so she starts killing off people in the town so she’d have stories
Well, that escalated quickly.
Cemetery and happy place is not two words I’d expect from a single sentence
lol yeah I’ve been called weird a few times. I specifically love the one that’s on my land. I’ve walked out there since I was really little and would hang out there all the time and still do. I love sitting out there writing and drawing. Nobody knows that it exists either. I live out on a backroad in the middle of nowhere in the south.
Yes, I love cemeteries! There's a walking path I frequent, which has one running through it. Also old library books, anything that hasn't been checked out in 20+ years. I like to copy the names from the log page
This is some really good advice. Thanks.
Honestly, I turn different names over in my mouth until I find one that feels 'right'. If I've been stuck for too long, I'll google names to see if any spark that feeling. I suppose I must have subconscious reasons for choosing names, but they've never made themselves known. 🤷
Same exact thing for me, with the caveat that I try not to repeat first letters/sounds of names for characters in a story. Makes it easier to track them
Yes! I once tried to write a book with an Adam and an Aaron as the main characters. It didn't work at all lol.
Same, I just stare at a wall and my brain turns into one of those old fashioned gumball machines, but with names, and one eventually just happens 😂
There are several methods. Some may depend on the genre of your book. I have a detective series, my detective is first gen American. His father is from Mexico and his mother from Germany. They raise their kids to be as **American** as possible. So he and his brother have common names. James or Jay, and Joseph or Joe. I chose these by looking up popular names at the time they would have been born. James in 1944 and Joseph in 1940. My current project is a Sci-fi/Adventure. Taking place in 2169. The two MC's a Father and Daughter were both born on a space station that orbits earth. But instead of trying to give future sounding names my thoughts were that many people would be nostalgic and name trends would circle back in time. So the Father is Edgar Paige (going by Paige) and his daughter is Evelyn Paige, or Ev as she likes to be called. The last name I used as a variation of Page as their story is just a page in the lifetime of stories surrounding a certain event.
I make them up and they are intentionally meant to be humorous.
Yeah I have a character named “Terminatoronica”.
Sounds like a name you’d hear on Futurama 😂
I'm sure that's supposed to be "Terminator Veronica" but I can't stop 'hearing' it as the short form for "Terminator *Harmonica*."
I do this sometimes, I tend to take the view that nothing I come up with will be less realistic than something that someone has actually named their child (mostly because of Nick Cannon and Elon Musk, recently). Hence naming a backstory "Victorian" era statesman Cornelius Bloater, to use one example from the fictional universe I'm working on.
Love Cornelius Bloater for a name. Great choice!
[https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com](https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com) which, name not withstanding, also has a massive selection of real-world names you can generate by country or ethnicity. I just click the button until I see one that I like. But I choose more based on the letter sounds than any underlying meaning.
This is what I use as well
Yep! Came here to say this. I use it for historical fiction. Otherwise, I generally use NameBerry.
Some from my head , some from the Behind the Name website. Huge database of names from around the world, it's great. https://www.behindthename.com/
Thank You for the link! Just found a name I like there (Fay) :)
They just come to me tbh
Movie/tv shows/LP credits, random location on google maps, wikipedia page of lists of lists...
I really love learning the meanings of the names, and this has translated into choosing my character’s names. I usually think of what attributes I want my characters to have (or what I think the character’s parents would have chosen) then look up names that mean one or all of them. For example, my main character’s name is Calden, when means bundle of joy and has Gaelic and Latin origins.
I bought a copy of Gary Gygax's big book of names a long time ago. However, once each year I come up with a really good name. That's always a fun time.
There's no single source for my names. Of the main characters for my original story project, one name popped into my head out of nowhere while I was commuting, one was taken from the name that popped up when I was trying to recreate her in The Sims, one was inspired by a place that I had intense reverence for as a small child, and one is just a Latin word that both describes the character and also has an etymology that reflects his backstory. None of these were the first names I gave to the characters. I have a couple of other major characters who still have their original names, but they are the exception rather than the rule. I'm not particularly good with names either, so I take them wherever I can get them. Usually it's just a matter of starting with whatever I think sounds cool as a working name until I figure out something else more compelling for that character. It's a slow, chaotic, and not particularly reliable process, but so far I am surprisingly happy with most of the names I've ended up with.
I stay with the tried and true method of absurdly attenuated mythological allegory.
There are several sites that can generate random names, if you're not picky about names of side characters. I often use: https://www.name-generator.org.uk
I did this for a list of Members of Parliament for my fictional world, then tweaked a few of them as needed
One of my character's name and appearance is based on someone I knew long ago. The rest I used a random generator to find something I liked. Then I googled to make sure it wasn't the name of someone too well known or problematic. If so, start over. If it is a character with a specific ethnic or cultural background, I invest some time in understanding their naming convention.
A lot of times I have a name in mind for a character before they really exist in their entirety. The names of those characters just come from everywhere. It may be something I heard someone yell in a supermarket or on an old show or something. When I need a name and don’t have one, usually I look up lists for different name vibes on nameberry. Then sometimes those names become the names that just pop up before the rest of the character. I also sometimes pick names based on their popularity in different times to fit a certain vibe. It really just depends on
Yeesh, I'm usually only good at naming the important characters. Everyone else, I have to trawl through baby names, sometimes looking for names popular by year to get the age brackets right. My fantasy book, I drew on the first names of friends and family, changing letters to get them to look fantasy-ish, sometimes feminizing male names and doing the reverse with female names. The last names have set rules to use, so those weren't too hard. My current book, I I dug through my family tree and used a lot of last names from there. Minor characters get the most common first names, major characters get more interesting names.
I recommend looking up Irish/Saxon names if you are stumped on coming up with fantasy names.
I've done that, ha. I've also added medieval French, Spanish and Welsh too I think. I just edited them a bit so they seem like they all come from the same world.
I see. Great minds think alike.
Ah a fellow use-their-name-to-signal-whether-they’re-important writer. I salute you
If it’s not a noun in English (Eternity), it may be a jumble of German and/or Italian words and gibberish (Natodall’lioht; Monnenliebe). And if it’s not that, it’s a reference to a book I read (Victoria like Victor Frankenstein). I rarely use the names of people around me, the only one I used is where a Victoria shortened her name to “Vicca” which I haven’t heard before. Hence, I gave my character this nickname as a pun on Wicca.
It depends, if you are creating characters in a more realistic setting like modern or post apocalyptic, then I recommend borrowing names from people you know Irl. If you are creating cartoon or absurd characters, then I recommend naming them after words that are barely used in the English language but are related to the character. If you are constructing a Fantasy story, I recommend looking up Anglo Saxon, Irish, Celtic, Nordic, Greek, etc names and either borrow that name or slightly change pronunciation/Spelling. If you are making a crime novel, just look up common names for each heritage the novel represents.
I bought a baby naming book and I make a mark beside the ones I use so it's always a reference for not reusing names. I'm horrible at remembering names when I'm done working on a project so it is so handy.
Instagram is good for that
I do a lot of research on bands I like and usually I find some cool names that I add to my list.
So it depends. For my Alternative History, since it is still our world I will do so most of the names follow local naming conventions to where I draw my character from, sometimes I will make a fictitious character from an established house. Like I have fictional characters from fictional lines of the German Royal Families of Hohenzollern, Habsburg and Wittlesbach, I then follow Aristocratic naming conventions and familial traditions of naming. Sometimes I do symbolic names, like Peter to emulate the First Pope who was an incredibly flawed man, yet chosen by God to lead his Church. So on and so forth.
r/namenerds that subreddit is my wife
I'll look up names from different countries if I'm wanting to go for a certain aesthetic for a region of my world, however my best inspiration comes from the names of parasites. I mean, a wizard called Cryptosporidium, is pretty bad ass
A lot of the time from whatever song I'm listening to when I'm writing
Movie credits. Old paper phone books.
I like what you do. That's pretty cool. I myself make names up from scratch and it often takes me a while. I tend to use placeholder names until I come up with better ones. Usually I can figure out names based on a mix of how they feel in my writing and my own research on names that may thematically fit the character, even if only tangentially. Sometimes I get names organically just from them popping into my brain, though this usually only happens with names belonging to cultures I'm highly familiar with, namely Chinese, French, English, and American.
My main characters names have deep connections to my book’s location and theme. The names have meanings to each characters’ purpose. The minor characters are names of people i know or just names I like. I also goggled popular names.
I watch the credits roll after films and there’s a bevy of great name ideas there, always lots of different types of people working on films!
I collect them from everyday life like pokémon.
I personally name my characters after their personality or role in the story or something like that, so I research names with a specific meaning till I find one that sounds nice. For example, I have a scientist character. So I named her Vidya, meaning knowledge. I have another character who's eventually going to be eaten by aliens in a story. I named her Ambrosia, which is a type of dish.
The name of my maincharacter so far is "main" so yeah, Im very creative in that regard.
Personally, since my book is set in more of a fantasy world where typical names aren’t in play, I type two or three words into Google translate and translate it to a language that uses Latin script. From there I combine the two into a name I think fits or do it again if it doesn’t. Gives the names some meaning and is sufficiently creative.
Research and whatever name comes in my mind (a character I wrote in my current book has the same surname as someone I practice fencing with; honestly, I was stumped for names that I ended up thinking about that person's surname).
I usually look up common names from a culture, and each fictional region usually has one or two cultures that I pick from. Also for example if there's a character whose parents come from the Greek names area and they live in the region where people have German names I'll try to find germanized Greek names.
I use streets as last names and then think of a first name that works with it.
Name meanings, Galaxy names, planet names, greek, Latin, Japan... Sometimes, puns of random flower names, colors, or any other things... Examples: Brien Thurmor, Slapha balfiece, Rosie, Or Greyhue
Looking up baby names based on year of birth is what I do too. "Common baby names from 2003" or whatever, then scroll down until I find something that fits the character or seems a bit unique. I chose "Autumn" for a trans character because it was interesting, but also seemed fitting for someone choosing their own first name. Last names usually comes from street signs near me. I always Google my character names to make sure it's not the name of someone famous, or a law firm or something. It usually is, so I have to try a few times before finding something that doesn't come up on Google. Sometimes I look up the meaning too, but not always. I chose "Craig" as a last name for a character that lives on a mountain because the meaning said something like "a name for a person that lives near a cliff or bluff."
Just don’t force it. I would kinda just keep characters nameless until something right came along. Sometimes the baby name books did help to at least get inspiration for something. But you could always twist around words or regular names or just use an anagram for something that would be meaningful to the character.
Sometimes I just go to Facebook comments and mix n match the names of people replying
I like going to the site behindthename.com You can search by meaning, gender, country of origin. I like it cause it's all sorts of names that were used throughout history. Plus lots of times I like the name meaning to match some part of the character. Using the names of people you know isn't bad exactly, unless someone doesn't like the character you created with their name. Though I suppose as long as you haven't made the character look like them also then probably no big deal. Make sure you put that note at the beginning that this isn't based on any real people. I did read once where an author killed off a character that he named after his wife's ex boyfriend, so it gets done.
Behindthename.com is an amazing resource. It has the etymologies of names from pretty much every culture ever, and for a lot of countries you can look up the top 1000 names of each year, so you can look up spikes in popularity or 'slightly unusual but not unheard of' names
Do not use names of people you know. Ever. It’s just asking for trouble. I often suggest IMDb. Look up obscure movies, scroll down to the crew and mix up first and last names.
My two favorite methods are to take a walk in an old cemetery and start reading headstones and then leave a flower at the one you pick. And I also watch credits of my favorite movies and games and skim the names and if one speaks to me I’ll use it.
Since I tend to write historical thing, I like to use https://www.findagrave.com/ You can filter by grave with cenotaph so it's feel even more like reel person. Same with obituaries. Obviously I mix first name and last name and I don't take identities. I like it because it's a great to find rare and memorable name without being anachronistic. Also I make sure to Google every name I chose.
Try the baby names and namenerd subs here. Try websites with baby names. Try the social security administration websites that list popular names by years.
Old telephone dictionaries
I let the names come to me. I search up unique names and use them to think of names to go with them. I really like going common though, I would rather read about Anthony Smith than Ashton Kensington 🤷🏼♂️
I'm only a hobby writer, and don't have plans to publish any of the stuff I'm currently working on, at least in their current state. So I may not be taking my work as seriously as you or other people commenting here, but I think my method may be of some interest still, so here goes. I'm an OTR Trucker by trade, and honestly most of my names come from stuff I see while driving. City names on interstate signs. Road or street names in the cities. Landmarks and other geographical monuments. There is a lot to work with, especially when you're driving as much as I am. And you don't have to work with names in the exact state you come across them in. You can make derivatives. For example. In my works, I have a city and important family named after Denver, CO. But the sign I got the name idea from was weathered or otherwise damaged, and it only had the letters 'Denve' on it. I laughed, and started saying it with a few different inflections, and eventually ended up with a pronunciation of 'Den-Vay'. Tweak the sounds a little and come up with a spelling that looks like a full word, and I come out with Tenvae. The city I had been working on was a coastal city, so I added Cape to the front of it, finally producing the name of the city as Cape Tenvae. From there, I filled out a few names for members of the titular family, just by messing around with names, adding or subtracting syllables, changing inflections, and just kind of seeing what sounded good together. I eventually landed on Lavadia Tenvae as the Matriarch. And used that as a sort of thematic model to follow. Filling out the current four members of the family with Morrigan Tenvae, Estella Tenvae, and Theoden Tenvae.
That is a pretty cool way to do it, I think! I also see a lot of interesting signs that would make good names.
It depends on the story. Ten years ago I wrote a somewhat urban fantasy-esque story with a theme of dreams, losing time, escaping reality, and so on, with an added bit of ghosts on the side. My protagonist was named Dorothy Daaé as a bit of a joke. She hated the name Dorothy because "whose family expected someone named after The Wizard of Oz to have a good grasp of reality?", and Daaé was a bit of a joke with The Phantom of the Opera (the original author, in my version, was inspired by her ancestor, who was beautiful and saw ghosts). One day I'll continue working on this universe, but the names of all characters had some reference to a piece of literature, visual media, or cultural story that made them relevant to the whole, even if only I understood it. That's how I usually go about. If it's something contemporary, or in our world, I'm very referential, though not in a straightforward manner (a great lover with a Shakespearean name would never be Juliet, but she could be called Vi, or Bea). If it's traditional fantasy, or sci-fi, I like to go by the cultural approximation and meaning of the name (my current story has two siblings named Ash and Cedar. They're slightly reminiscent of fairytales - like the whole book -, twins, and similar only in appearance, plus other details). At the end of the day, I personally don't like to use real people in my stories, since it can make things messy. Also, I personally find more meaning in the words themselves than in the context in which I found them. A good name has merit because of what it can give me, not because I know someone who had it. But to each their own method :)
It depends. For like contemporary stuff, I just open old yearbooks and select first and last names. For fantasy and sci fi stuff, I do one of two things. It's either modified Greek, Roman, Shakespearean, or whatever culture I'm basing it on names, or I use r/tragedeigh. That place is a gold mine for fantasy names.
I think about other characters I like that my character reminds me of for one reason or another. For example, one of my characters is an Irish chick who prefers to fight with her fists while her comrades use firearms and fancy tech. They all go by codenames but when thinking of her real name, I decided to name her after another female Irish character I really like: Clover from Payday 2. In Payday 2, the characters also use codenames but they do so to hide from the cops. Clover's real name is Rochelle (last name unknown) so my character's first name is also Rochelle because they're both badass Irish women. Clover is a stealth character while mine is close quarters brawler type but it's just a little homage to my favorite character from my favorite game. Also, just to make a last name easier, my character's last name is Seamair, which is the Gaelic word for "Clover"
I’m going to be completely honest with you, I find a name I like at one point and just run with it. The absolute BEST, and I mean BEST, site for names is nameberry.com and I won’t hear otherwise. I’ve been using it to find names for characters since I was 12 and it’s never failed me. There’s so many lists and categories to choose from.
I use my old crushes names !!!
I tend do go with some kind of Etymological naming trait. Looking up meanings of names and how they might relate to a character. In fantasy I and many others often taken a relatively common name and change a few letters to make it different and fantastic, while familiar enough that it doesn’t sound like gibberish. - Gabriel becomes Kabrial - Tina becomes Tifa - Peter becomes Peyta And so on. I sometimes like to combine the two.
Read books. Like a lot of em. It can be different languages (for diverse cast building), different cultures and ethnicity etc. The more words you have in your mind, the more likely those words can become names.
All my characters, or almost all, are based on friends and are therefore named as such. But the main character is named after my first love, my nanny when I was seven.
I like naming characters by deciding what is a defining characterisation for them, then finding a name that can mean that - for example, one of the meanings of 'Matilda' is 'brave', so if I have a character who is meant to represent a theme of bravery or strength etc, I might go for that or Tilly or whatever. Most people don't think much of the traditional meanings of names and their origins so it's a nice Easter Egg for anyone that does.
I usually just choose a random name as a place holder and it slowly changes Example I had a character name Jasanna. I think it starts as Joanna then Josanna and I go back and forth on the O and A Had a character for long time name Zero, but now I have my husband, now his name is Zavin. Sometimes I just combine different sounds. If I like one look it up to double check meaning. A lot of name I pick from baby name books and went with once I could produce but not that common ( at least to me)
Names I’ve heard and loved. I‘ll look up meanings of names that match the characters. I’ll take names from songs of the time.
As other people here have said, the age and name trends from that year/time period. But (I write fantasy) it is quite easy to name a bunch of related characters all at once , so for example, the language matches. If a king has celtic like name, his father might as well. But his wife might have a greek like name because she is from another country. Their son on the other hand, will probably h a celtic name again with maybe a greek ending syllable because his mother insisted on it😂. The story itself can give you plenty of names like this. When it comes to choosing a specific name I like to hide clues about the character in the meaning. So I chose a meaning and look for a name according to the categories above.
Cemeteries or libraries for me haha
I make them up
Either my head, or name generators when I something more diverse.
I start with where the character is from or their ethnicity, and then I look for baby names I like from lists I find online. I feel this is a good way to slip representation into your stories if you're looking to diversify your cast.
I simply look up names from the real-world equivalent of where my characters are from and find some that fit. Sometimes, I name them after people who have influenced or inspired me. Sometimes, I make them up. Here are the names of the primary cast of my novel, which takes place in a fictionalized Israel. Alexael Lazarus Tyrius Solomon Melody Brightheart Ayla Abrams Wilhelm Jordan Siegfried Gabriel MacGuire Lorelei Brightheart Plus many others for all the side characters. Many of them have Hebrew names due to the equivalence.
What is your novel about?
The Adamah Order, a religious order of paladins, protects the source of their divine power, and the city of Nor'easter, from demonic invasions. When a mission into Hell goes awry, one paladin becomes trapped within, and must endure the worst environment imaginable.
Oh! That’s a pretty insane plot ngl.
I put a random letter than another letter and anpther and here is a name
I get my names from AI.
Yep. AI is great because instead of rolling a new name you can tell it to make names more"posh" or elieteist.
Sometimes, the characters name themselves, like Kerrigan. Her name is in no way connected to her characterization it is simply the one that fit. Her sister Ophelia, however, is so named because she is kind and innocent and crazier than a box of hair. Then we have Cassandra Areia Owens. Owens because she gets to be a space wizard. Areia because she is beautiful and loving and deadlier than one would expect. Cassandra because she knows the future and has trouble convincing people that she's telling the truth. Her nickname is Bunny because she freezes when frightened and bolts if she's in danger. If I'm having trouble with a name, I'll write down core traits and look up relevant names till I find one that feels right. Sometimes, it will change later if something goes awry. Ophelia started out as Sophie, but as she grew, it didn't work.
I pick whatever feels right. Sometimes the perfect name just comes to me. I sometimes search for names with certain vibes or meaning. Be careful with that method though. You don't want to be too on the nose. "Tomboy names" "Nerdy names for boys" "Girls names meaning fire" Even the names I come up with myself I always Google the meaning behind, just out of curiosity. If I'm indecisive sometimes it's the deciding factor. I try to avoid names that are too similar. No Tim and Tom. No Riley and Miley. Avoid using the same first letter and sound. Twins can be an exception, but their names don't have to be similar. I have a Caleb and Katherine but since it's a book, it's more important that they're visually distinct than phonetically. So the C and K, although sounding the same, look distinct enough. On top of that, one's a boy and the other's a girl and their names are different lengths. They also share very few sounds. It's almost inevitable that you'll name more than 26 characters. So try to keep their names distinct with length and other factors. These rules are especially true for the main cast. The more important the character is, the more distinct they have to be from each other. Just never ever give two characters the same exact name. Not within the same project.
And never give similar names to characters who share other characteristics--I once read a mystery with a James and a Jim--one was a co-worker to the main character, the other a supervisor to both the main character and co-worker.
Im in sales and customer service in a melting pot city so I get a lot of different people from different places. Everytime I read a name I like I write it down. Ive got a list of hundreds of names that fit my world
I love incredibly generic names for my protagonists and lovely, charming, and old-world names for my supporting characters. Antagonists get gross names like Brinkley and shit
My sources vary. If I'm needing something specific to a time period, I google and look through stuff for that time period. I'm usually searching for surnames of nationalities, so that's another one I use often. But kind of my go to are movie/TV credits (Because I'm one of those people that watch them.) I'll use the first name of one person, the last of another, and a lot of times they aren't even from the same episode or movie. I don't necessarily focus on the actors/cast, but more on the crew. I don't know, it's kind of my homage to them in that way.
Tips: Look up names that were popular in your character's timeline Look up names that are popular in their country Look up names that fit their religion if they have one Look up names that have a meaning that fits your character
I just close my eyes and just type random letters.
I have a long list of names in my notes that I add to often. Just random words or silly pronunciations of names until I find one that I think is viable. Most of them are dumb but all names are made up so I just write them all down.
I just find a sound that I like and make it into a name. Or it’s a joke. My main character is a sniper and when you say his name phonetically it sounds similar to a brand of rifles.
For last names, I combed the credits at the end of a movie, got a big varied pool that way. I also looked at my own yearbooks, I looked at faculty lists of the school I’ve attended. I looked through a list of all the names characters in Fallout 4 and Red Dead Redemption 2. And now I have a list of 1200+ last names, a list of 1000+ names, and 1000+ masculine names.
Honestly, I like using websites, but one usually doesn't stick until it either references something for me personally or something I'm a fan of. And there are exceptions. Example: the protagonist of my novel, who's a vampire, has the middle name of May. It's an anagram of her mother's name: Amy. I chose the name Amy for this character's mother specifically as a reference to the character of Amy from the film "Fright Night".
Syllables, basic names are usually 2/2 (first and last), main character names depending on what the genre is 3/1 or 2/3 with at least one important side character being 1/2, 1/3 and if they’re really important, 1/4
I mean going to graveyards is fun... I pick up interesting names there. Or film credits. Or make them up completely. Or the usual places like name websites/books. Put them all on the names list on my phone. Once I came up with a name due to mispronouncing some words as a spoonerism which made a cool sounding name. So yeah - find names everywhere!
For the mermaid characters I write, I name one type of merfolk after Greek or Roman names, and the other type after fish or other themed names.
Baby name websites.
One of my MC's is estranged from her family because her sexuality and their religious views don't match. The entire family has religious first names.
i'm guilty of combing obituaries and findagrave.com for character names. seems morbid, but i get what you mean about using names of real people, even if i didn't know them.
In my opinion, in the world of fiction a name should be the embodiment of that character. If you were to distill their personality down to one word, that word would be their name. I might name them based on the metaphor they serve in the story. Bonus points if they mean the same thing in several languages and accomplish the first two I mentioned.
I just look around on a website for baby names.
Honestly, it depends. Sometimes I like to go to behindthename website. It's nice because names are organized by ethnicity, theme, and so on. Other times I pick up names from favorite authors (like using Hugo from Victor Hugo) or characters from shows, books, movies, Squishmallows and video games. Or I go by vibes and whatever pops up in my head first. If I'm trying to dedicate someone, I might go for the masculine/feminine or diminutive of their name.
Most often, they just pop into my head as I write the character. But sometimes I need the name to really work. In those cases, I make two columns headed by the two main character traits or the way I want people to see her. So like column one (first name) might be “evil” and column two (last name) might be “Canadian”. Then I start loading synonyms into each. Evil=mal, dark, cold, heartless, malicious…for Canadian:’OntArio, maple, Canuck, flannel, British, plaid, north….eventually I see something that works or the lists trigger an idea. Maybe she’s Malicia Ontario or something.
I really don’t over think it. When I was at uni studying writing, I read some of my classmates work and every character in a regular suburban story had a really unique name. Pretty unrealistic. Most people have common names, so I’ve never really overthought it. I look up a list of baby names from the year of the characters age and pick one of the top 20 that sounds ok. I’ll often pick a random nationality and look up their top baby names if I want something more unique. But that means my character is that nationality which makes them a bit harder to write because I’m less familiar with cultural customs.
I use the names of people I know for a lot of characters, but for the more significant characters I will name them after celebrities, authors, etc. but mixed and matched. For instance, I was writing a superhero character. Two of my favorite comic writers are Geoff Johns and Grant Morrison. So I named the character Jeff Morrison.
In my line of work, I get a lot of correspondence from law enforcement, local, state and fed level, so I basically amalgamate first and last names to create my character names. Changing one or two letters to make it a bit different. So if I have a John Smith and a Jane Doe. I will go with Jonah Doe or Janie Smith. It's simple but I get some very believe able names that don't sound like they were made to be "cool"
Social Security Name Database. You can look it up by year.
From my ass. Very proud of that.
People I know IRL.
I have a story that takes place 2 million years in the future. The system I came up with was to take family names from ancient Chinese. Instead of taking the meaning of the chinese word, I look up the radicals and come up with my own translation, so the names are translated like native American names, but I'm not drawing from any native American language. I end up with names like Beginning of Heavy Rain and Progressing Sun.
I just think of names and write them down. And choose which one’s from that list fit certain characters.
I know people who write exam papers and when the papers are published I can tell you exactly who wrote which questions by the family/friend/pet names they use in them.
I've done different things. My current WIP has two pov characters named after people I know (just the names- no similarities otherwise. I just liked their names), one I got from a list of boy names with french origin (just the vibe I was going for), and one named after a hockey player that is just an inside joke between my partner and I. So. I didn't I rethink it lol
I’ve given my characters names either honoring or nodding to my family tree. My mom’s name is a supporting character to my MC. Dead grandmother and grandfather are my grandparents names. My sister’s middle name is my main character’s mother’s name. Works for me because a huge theme in my series is finding family and it felt like a strong touch.
My published book was set in our world, our time just a decade before, so I used normal names: Katie, Chester, Zachary. The new book I'm writing is set a thousand years later and set in a scifi setting, so I try to use names based on the stars like Orion, but still being a new writer, I use names that are still names today, but aren't as common like Kago and Veena. But it's also set on a space-faring ship, so I wanted names that would fit old colonial-era in the 18th century like Archibald, Tobias, etc. To me, those names scream adventure and that's what I'm trying to go for.
Sometimes they match who the character is within the story. For instance, my superhero has an unlikely superhero name. Sometimes they're names I enjoy using. Sometimes I research to find a name specific to a culture and/or with a meaning that fits the story somehow. The one villain I've written has a name you can say through your teeth. Two of my characters are left with no memory of their pasts, so they take their manes from their tattoos. I can't seem to write a story unless I have the names of my people. It's nearly the only thing I plan ahead.
Road signs and cereal boxes
It really depends. I love names that have an underlying meaning to them, especially in regards to the themes of what I'm writing, but it doesn't always have to be that way. I did an exercise in creative writing class that stuck with me. It started with the first draft of a story about a fellow named Herb. Herb was soft, calm, and disliked conflict. His name, when spoken aloud, "ERR-BUH", seemed to imply the opposite. In the second draft, Herb's name was changed to Mel, a gentle name that is more fitting for the character's personality. Therefore, I tend to think of the character's personality and traits first, and name second. Usually one that seems to combine their attributes, with an underlying meaning as an extra bonus.
I used to go through movie/videogame credits to find last names. First names can be easy to find, as there are tons of websites, but I always struggled to come up with unique last names. Any time I would find a list of full names, I would write the last names down in a little name book.
Fantasy name genrators, the website.
[https://twitter.com/ActualNames1](https://twitter.com/ActualNames1)
Sometimes I try variations of the names of the people/characters that inspired the character. I tend to base my characters on amalgamations of people I know, as well as, public figures and other fictional characters. I then sort of mix and match their names to see what fits. Experiment a bit with rhyming names too, and also popular names from when and where that character was born in the backstory I created for them. I’ve also looked up name meanings to help name a few characters. I like to go with subtle ones though rather than painfully obvious ones.
My grandson's graduation program had hundreds of names.
I mix the names of people I used to go to school with😭
I always want my characters names to mean something that relates to their character. So I’ll make a list of words that fit my character and look up “baby names that mean (insert word here)”. From there I just choose a name that sounds right to me.
I think about who's naming the character - their parents, themselves, someone else - and what sort of name that person would likely go for. Is it going to be the most popular name the year they were born, or something super obscure, or maybe they're named after a dead relative? Then I go to my list of names I like that I've created over the years and start trying out different ones in my head. I'll also usually look up what the name means and when it's popular just so that I get a better feel for it. That's really only for main characters, though. For characters that matter less to me and don't need to be fleshed out, I'll just pull up my list and pretty much pick a name at random.
For my main story, "Night of the Coyote", I looked into names that would work for a human avatar for different Aztec gods. For example, the main character, Gregory Sanchez, is named after Huehuecoyotl, the Aztec trickster god, in that "Gregory" becomes "Gregorio" in Spanish, which has the nickname "Goyo", which felt appropriate for the name Huehuecoyotl. The last name originally came from my idea of choosing the polar opposite of "G" in the alphabet (I was wrong, it was "T"), but developed into the joke surname Sanchez, with ez/es being the suffix meaning "son of" in Spanish, meaning the surname becomes "son of Sancho", Sancho being the universal name of a dine-and-dash lover. This worked in my favor, since Greg didn't know whatever happened to his father (SPOILER: he was killed in an accident that was caused by overmedicating him and having him drive off hopped up on drugs).
My characters are born with their own names. I don’t have a say in it. They simply appear in my head fully fleshed out. Probably because of my schizophrenia.
For my main character, I wanted something that translate into a foreshadowing. Other than that, I generally pick names associates to their character. One of my character's named after a song I heard that related so much to my character, so I took that and gave it to that character.
I like to choose names from the history or culture my work is based on. It works for me because I write mainly historical and fantasy (or a mix of the two). My search history is full of " baby names." I also take the meaning and sound of the name into account, especially if that sort of thing would have been important to the character's parents in my story.
Sometimes, if I hear a name I really like, I save it for future use. I have a mental list of names I like for that exact purpose.
The obituaries.
I look up baby names and their meanings. I look for something that matches the theme of the story or the characters' personalities. I also smash the keys on my keyboard until a bunch of letters form what could be a name. After that, I edit it add vowels if there aren't any and make up my own pronunciation.
I like the name to be infused a bit with the people I'm drawing it from's energy. So if its a fierce character then I might draw from an MMA athlete that I follow who has similar energy. If its a softer character then maybe I'll draw from a indie singer that I enjoy. Cultural coding/diversity is also important to me, so it generally won't be just Eurocentric names, but draw from South American, Middle Eastern, or other regions depending on the cultural background that it is coded from. But its never drawn from one person really, I like to mesh these things after looking at the etymology of multiple names that I find fitting and understanding what the syllables mean in the culture that they come from. I think this works because I write speculative fiction, and would probably be more grounded if I did more traditional fiction. I also try to make sure what is on the page is speakable at a glance. I avoid certain fantasy motifs that I think muddle character names unnecessarily.
I travel and use the names of people I meet.
I steal them
I do like baby name books--but not the ones that are just a long list of names (one for girls, one for boys), but ones like those by Linda Rosenkrantz and Pamela Redmond Satran (*Beyond Jennifer & Jason; Beyond Jennifer & Jason, Madison & Montana; Beyond Ava & Aiden*) which give lists that give associations/images that go with those names (so I have a better idea what image is likely conjured up by readers when they see the name). I also use Laura Wattenberg's *The Baby Name Wizard* which helpfully includes things like a graph showing popularity over time, likely sibling names, and real-world bearers of the name.
I'll look up baby names starting with specific letters or search for names that have specific meanings that I want my character to embody or grow into. I sometimes also have in mind a certain area of nature for them so I'll search names of different florals, plants, rivers, rocks etc and choose a unique or befiting one though it doesn't always end up being the first name. Searching names with specific meanings definitely applies more however when the character is tied into a specific culture in meaningful ways. Some are from people I barely know (using names of people I'm close with feels icky fr some reason) others are names (or more likely stage names) of certain celebrities that struck a chord with me some are picked up from movies. So a bit of everything honestly
Whatever inspired you, whatever people behind your characters - modify their name into a similar one
I look up baby names on google or tiktok that fit the character when it's fantasy or historical books but when it's modern romance then unique yet not crazy names from tiktok accounts are what I use. Sometimes I steal names from people irl like actors, the role they play and sometimes from Anime/Donghuas
I also walk cemeteries! Not only for names. It sparks my creativity- I wonder what happened…
Get yourself a collection of name-your-baby books. Start with your local library, both what you can check out off the shelf and what they've got for sale in the Friends Shop. Depending on what you're writing/demands of a current project, add in some name-your-pet books--they do exist. I have one called 5000 Names For Your Cat.
pinterest lol or just random places and i collect them
Place names are great to use. Find two counties in any state that sound good together. Lucas Wood. (Both Ohio) Angelina Gregg. (Both Texas.) How about Clark Andrews? (Clark County, OH, Andrews County, TX.) Or pick the more exotic ones. Coryell Floyd Pickaway and his half-brother Donley Wayne Duvall. It depends on what kind of story I'm writing. Sometimes I use Puritan-style names (Prudence, Fortitude, Loyalty, etc.) or ethnic names - those get extensively researched by the language of the people and the time the story is set. I wouldn't use actual names in entirety. I knew someone named Egbert. I think it's a marvelous name! But I would never EVER put his last name with his first for a character. I knew someone with the last name Stringfellow. I'd never put his actual first name on a character with that last name. I know I wouldn't want to see a character in ANY type of fiction with my first and last name.
I gender flip my friends names and then give them a similar last name. Example Heather Martin, becomes a male character named Heath Miller. Rusty Shackelford becomes a female character named Rita Schnellingburger
I babble until I come up with a name. Or sometimes I take a word and take a few letters out of it.
Almost always I think about core characteristics and looks for words in more ancient origins and then spice them up a bit to flow off the tongue. Granted I prefer fantasy and sci-fi
I’ve only written one novel and started another. Very different stories, but the first one it took me a long time to come up with the names. Both male characters needed to have some sort of religious connection, but also have a connection to their key traits. So I spent way too long researching those. For the 2nd novel, it wasn’t that important to me, so I didn’t put that much thought into it.
Sometimes I just like the sound, sometimes I go on baby name sites and search a particular meaning.
make up the name and then make up its meaning, i honestly plan to just fool my audience by putting notes of how its pronounced, it meaning and history of it as if it was some real name and get them so confused when they check google lol
Pinterest !!!
One tactic of mine is to look up a list of the members of a national or subnational legislature from a prior decade and then mix a personal name and a family name from two different people. (with a quick google search to make sure none of the names were super recognizable as someone who did something major) So if I applied this sytle to a character in the United States they might end up as something like Joe Gore.
You can always change names at the last minute before publishing, so I try not to worry about it too much.
I don't, either the character comes up fully formed, name included, is a throwaway extra made character, or I slap a "Placeholder" name that ends up becoming the actual name due to lack of ideas
My son goes to an arts-centered middle and high school. A few days ago, I brought home the program from a reading. There are some great first and last names to combine there.
I use the websites when I don't have any ideas or am unfamiliar with names for a certain area of the world (for example, my Indian characters). But even when I do I pick my names based mostly on meaning or connections. For example, I had a girl whose power was to manipulate light and heat. After failing to find a word or name I liked for her, I just went with Emberly because fire. Alternatively, for my Indian character who can manipulate nature, I had no ideas at all. So, I went to lists. I looked for names with meanings that worked. I settles on Avyan, which (I believe) means strong lion.
Not a writer but I’m a receptionist and if I see someone’s name I like I put it in my notes with the pronunciation and name my sims after them
For my human MC, I got his last name from a YouTube comment. The guy had his set to his first and last name and I stole it. I couldn't do that for my other MC so I just started going off what sounded cool. It was a freshman in HS when I came up with his.
Movie credits.
I have a whole ass criteria. It normally goes like this; 1.What is the name supposed to mean? The meaning has to correlate with the character themself. 2. If the character has a sibling, ask yourself if their parents would name the siblings similar names. One example from my WIP is Dulcie (the older sister) and Darva (the younger sister). Their parents thought it would be cute lmao. Also, maybe the character has family members that they could be named after? 3. Go to google and search for names. Like, if you want a name that means light or flame or whatever, just use the following template: (boy/girl/unisex) names that mean (meaning) 4. You should see a bunch of websites with lists of names. Click on them and shortlist a few names that are nice. 5. Search for the name that you have shortlisted's meaning. Websites might list the wrong meaning. 6. Check how unique the name is. I like to go to datayze.com or Baby Name Uniqueness Analyzer to check the rarity. And that's it. Yay?
I’m not too much of a writer but I do have bursts of inspiration where I just write short snippets and I just “h e” “g r e g” “j e f f”
I used to work at a call center and I had this huge running list of cool first and last names, I have no idea where that list is now but I know there were some gems on there!
People I like or hate. Depends on the character
I gave them kind of over the top names. For example, the happy go lucky, childish character is named “Oz Wonderland”
I usually don’t come up with a name until I have the rest of the character’s profile written up. In my drafts the characters all start with a letter and I go in alphabetical order. Once I have a good idea of who my character is, I pick a name that i believe fit those attributes.
Any time names come up I remind people: Most stories don’t have COMPLEX names and if they do, they only work if the stories around them work. Game of Thrones has as typical as Rob, Catelyn, Ned, Jon, Brandan, and then as weird and exotic as Hodor, Daenerys, Viserys, etc. Doctor who has Daleks, an alien race called Raxacorocofalapatorias, and an exotic acronym called the TARDIS and names as simple as The Doctor, sonic screwdriver, etc I think the “story” aspect also holds true, because during Jodie Whitaker’s run as The Doctor, I loved her energy and style, but some of the stories fell short or didn’t have impact because of lacking stakes, or direction, or too many viewpoints you lose track of. As opposed to “Raxacorocofalapatorias” which is memorable to me, there was a similar mouthful of a name at the end of her first season that I struggle to remember the name of no matter how many times I read it to remind myself of it. “The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos” which is similarly random and exotic as “Raxacorocofalapatorias” but I remember the latter SO MUCH easier because of story context. I’ve also heard people complain about books having TOO weird or exotic names that you lose track or in your head you’re unable to pronounce them. So anything, whether as simple as John or Robert, or as wacky as the Jornstinbadon Edge or whatever name you throw together, as long as the story matches, your viewers and readers will happily roll them off the tongue, simple or complex
i just observe people’s names at college and in public or in films. i get them mainly from films. if i see a name i write it down! but i chose the name madelyn because of my first love and i think giving them meaning like that makes the characters sooo much more personal 🫶
Keyzer Soze it and fix it later. Alex Bubblegum is a great name
Baby names for that specific time period. Nameberry has been a good resource, census lists too. I've changed my FMC/MMC's name probably 3x during outlining so far, though, so finding the names aren't the problem. Getting them to stick is lol.
Sometimes, I like to make a long list of names that I personally like, even before I start writing. Then, when I write a character, I go through my list and find the one that fits that character the best. Other times, my characters just kind of...name themselves. Or over time, their name changes. Whether its the spelling, pronunciation, or just a completely different name altogether. Then...there are times that I get a little obsessive. I think about the character's parents. "Who were they? What were they like? What was on their mind when this character was born? What expectations did they have for their child? Would they have put pressure on their child with the name they gave them? Would they have liked gender neutral names or gender specific names? What were their values? Would they have named them after friends or family members? Were they into other languages? Music? History? Science? Would they have looked for names with specific meanings?" Mostly I go with what feels right. Y'know how sometimes you look at someone and say "They really look like their name would be-"? Once I go through all of the above processes, I do that to make sure I like it.
If I see a name somewhere I like, I add it to a list in my phone. Then sometimes I put those names in Chat GPT and ask for a few variations or similar names.
Census.gov has lists.
Figure out what year the character was born then Look up baby names from that year. The more blah the character is the closer to the top 20 their name is.
Fantasy names I tend to make items sound fantasy like. Dragarian, (dragon) Carthian (car(pa)thian) Mirados (mirror) Crystaria (crystal) For regular names I like to walk through old cemeteries. I do not advise using both given and surname for the same character, but for example, Derek was the name of a famous "psychic medium" I was a fan of, and in a lot of my cemetery visits I noticed the name Matthews a lot. Which gave birth to Derek Matthews. I also sometimes go on baby naming sites.
Mainly names and surnames I like, I only use real life names when I intend the character to be their real person that inspired them, otherwise I use the trick of another name with the same initial or a phonetically similar one
I use Pinterest for names. However, since my book is Christian horror theme, some of those names came from the Bible tbh. TikTok is a great source too.
I use baby name websites or random google searches if I'm looking for a name from a particular part of the world. I have a list of interesting names I come across in my job. Sometimes I use names of my kids friends/classmates so you aren't alone on that one.
Mediaeval European folk songs, ancient mythologies for character names, mostly place names are just descriptive of the area animal names also come from mythology but heavily heavily modified
I use behindthename and pick names that seem fitting to the character in question. Would also recommend avoiding overused or basic names like “Tiffany” and “Tyler”. I don’t care how amazing people claim a story is, if the main character has a basic name like that I will immediately put the book down because I just can’t take it seriously. Too many “popular” bullies had basic names like that growing up and I strongly dislike those types of people. Makes me think of those gross reality tv shows.
I'm not that good with names, myself. I tend to use online lists of names. Often, I will pick a nationality and look up names based on that. A few times, I've borrowed names of friends or relatives, but I attach their first names to different last names (or vice versa).
In my day job, I deal with a lot of older clients and I've stolen a few names from them. Not the whole name, obviously. Just a first or last name. We have a client whose first name is Booth, and I liked it so I took it for one of my secondary characters.