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Hello, all you people!
For those of us who are getting weary of wrangling solely about villains and perfect protagonists, I have another, slightly lighter discussion. No theory involved. No deep bits of knowledge required. No flattened soapboxes or wobbly shampoo bottles necessary.
My topic… is names. As is evidenced by the title.
Everyone can get on this topic and give their favorite techniques for finding the perfect name for a character or a book. What are your favorite resources? What do you look for in a name? In your opinion, how should we go about assigning a name to a character or a book, and what is necessary in the title of a story? How should a character’s name describe the character? And all that random, wonderful stuff.
Can’t wait to see what you guys come up with!I base quite a few character names simply on what sounds right. It sounds like a strong name, or a pretty name, or a bad guy name… Occasionally a character will go through several names before one ‘snaps’. Sometimes I literally mash together sounds until I get something I like (for fantasy stories). Most often, I have a basic idea…like I want my name to start with a ‘Th’ or a ‘J’. I have a few documents with all kinds of names that I’ll skim and sometimes I’ll look up names online too. Occasionally I’ll look up names for their meaning, but not often. And, sometimes, I’ll look up a word in a different language…like ‘love’ in Greek or Hebrew, and then try to base a name off of the sounds (sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t). 🙂
I am not very good at book titles, but I think they should normally be short and snappy. It’s really cool when the title of the book has some connection with the story that isn’t immediately obvious. And then, halfway through the book, you suddenly have an ‘ah ha’ moment. The Burning Bridge…I get what it means now. 🙂
INTJ - Inhumane. No-feelings. Terrible. Judgment and doom on everyone.
Yeah, isn’t it funny how some characters you just know their name has to start with a certain letter to fit them? I have no idea why that is, but it seems to be almost always the case.
Your methods for finding names sound very similar to mine. One thing I like to do also is look up the meaning of the name and see if it fits the character’s personality. I also have a document in my files that I use for names, and there I have a lot of old Saxon and Danish and Celtic names, paired with their meanings and divided up in alphabetized sections of ‘girl’ and ‘boy’. Sometimes I will take liberties with the arrangement of the letters, but I find that I have grown so accustomed to the meanings of the different names, and have realized so many similarities in the structure of the names and the meanings, that I can both guess what a name means and get it near right, and invent and combine names to fabricate my own name or meaning. That comes in handy, especially for fantasy names.
One thing I like to think about when I am assigning a name to a character is the color of that character’s personality. Does the name fit the personality? Does it look like the character when you read it on paper? Because you rarely ever actually visualize a character’s physical face when you read about him. Your perception of what he looks like is colored by what he is inside— you get a fuzzy image that nevertheless spells that character’s personality to your mind. That image can be very much enhanced if you take trouble that the name itself should call up a compatible image. Say… Tumblebee Appledore. Yikes! What a countrified image! (Actually it sounds more like a hobbit name). Or… Martin Brown. You immediately think a very simple, steady, kindhearted kind of person.
Samwise Gamgee would not have been the same if his name had been Denethor, and visa versa.I think this thing may be having a problem with the italics setting. If I post it and find it all messed up, that’s why.
Many last names are based upon things like landscape features, animals, or occupations. Think of smith, lamb, king, etc. You may not have heard of the names dell, prince, or butcher, but they probably exist, or at least they sound like they might, and that is all you need.
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Depends on the genre. Greatly.
For modern day realistic fiction:
A character who ends up being the first pilot from their town will not realistically have a name with the meaning ‘flight’ ‘bird’ or anything like that.
A character who dies young will not naturally have a name meaning, ‘fallen youth’ or ‘young death’ or something along those lines.
A character who has a scar from falling in a campfire won’t have a name that means ‘burned one’ or ‘fire face’ or ‘flames.’Come on. If it’s realistic/modern fiction, it’s just not realistic to do so.
Now if the charrie’s parents had a prevalent gift of prophecy in your book, sure.
-_- You do you. If the character’s name meaning is known to them, and influences them, then yes, that makes sense. (i.e, my cousin’s name means grace, and that has been a reminder that impacts a lot of her decisions.) Or if it’s part of the culture to give children name meanings that align with their likely/planned careers or milestones in life. That makes sense in realistic fiction too.Now fantasy, surrealism, allegory, that tends to be quite a different story when it comes to name meanings.
I agree with Emma along the lines of contemporary fiction.
But I do not write contemporary fiction. In one of my books, the characters have to have a word name because of their government/society/thing. But very specific word names, like Frost, Ace, Dawn, Flame, and West. No Grace, Faith, Joy, no animal names, and nothing that would seem like resistance to the government. Later, a few of them get name changes. Dawn, for instance, becomes Annora, which means “honor”, based on both her personality and her new occupation. And whenever anyone becomes a government official, they must go through a name change. Ash becomes Nicholas, “people of victory”, signaling what they want the country to become, etc., etc.
Also, in my Lord of the Rings fan-fiction, the main characters originated from the Easterlings and Southrons, so their names have a Middle-Eastern twist to them. And they work for the Dark Lord, so they absolutely CANNOT have names that mean “peaceful” or anything like that.
For resources, I use Nameberry.com, which does have a few interesting stories that they promote, but otherwise, it’s been really helpful.
And I totally agree with Hope about book titles.
Sorry I abandoned this topic after starting it, guys… we’ve been very busy getting done with summer and welcoming a new baby into the house, and this topic just slipped my mind.
To address Emma (that’s the name of one of my sisters 🙂 )— I agree that it isn’t realistic to take a modern day character and give him a name that means something about him, or about something he did, or whatever. Because modern day stories are very… well… modern. There is very little room for creative imagination and fantastical stuff.
But… in fantasy, even if there is no prophecy involved, I think giving a name with an apt meaning is a way to give the character a backstory, sort of. I mean, every character has been around since they were a baby, and there are facets of their personality that will rarely ever see the light— bits and pieces of them that were influenced in their growing up years and that the reader will never see. So a name that has a deeper meaning than just a set of sounds that mean one certain character is one way to give that feel of depth and backstory if you don’t have time to follow the character from their birth to their death.
It’s perfectly fine if you disagree with me— but this is my opinion. And thankfully I’m not in the business of making sure everyone agrees with me! That… would be a dreary existence. Like, very dreary.One thing I like to do is look up the biblical meaning of the name. I don’t have any websites, but you could google biblical boy/girl names and get some pretty cool ones.
WIP - Decisions
Kapeefer til we're old and greyYes! I do that too. It’s really cool, actually.
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