Naming Conventions

So since the end of October, I've essentially started three books: the book that I was going to do for NaNo that blew up, its replacement, and now the book that I assembled from the broken pieces of the first one into something new.

That requires a lot of names.

So where do I get names from? Well, there are two answers, one for each of my universes.

For the Ashes books, sometimes it really was as simple as Googling the most popular baby names in the country/year the character was born and choosing one that I liked and wasn't in the top ten. That's where Pretoria came from. I would never have thought of that as a character name, but when I saw it on the list for 1900, I loved it and was intrigued. Turns out it was only popular for that one year, and really only the summer, following Britain's victory in the Battle of Pretoria during the Boer War. Crazy, right? Naming your daughter after a battle.

Millie was an easy choice, too. 'Millicent' just sounded right for her character, and there was never another option. 'Brown' came from John Brown, Queen Victoria's Scottish friend and confidant. Speaking of...

Victoria was fully formed at conception with that name. Literally the first thing I wrote in my notebook for Remember, November is the header 'Victoria' at the top. That name was exceedingly popular at the time she was born (near the end of the reign of Queen Victoria), which makes it an exception to my rule of not using popular names, but there was never a second choice there, either.

The biggest exception, however, is Alexandra Smirnova. For her, I deliberately chose the most generic Russian name I could: 'Alexandra Smirnova' is the closest thing I found to naming her Jane Smith. If you've read the series, you know why!

But as for the three books I started this post with, all are set in the Alumita universe, which is entirely my own creation. What do I do there?

Well, that's complicated. It depends. The main character in Midnight Magic goes by Vimika, but her real name is Vimikathritas Malakandronon. In this universe mages (wizards in Atvalia) are their own species, with a common culture spread over a diaspora that covers the world. I wanted mage names to sound like a weird mish-mash of Greek and Thai, and to be long and convoluted (to human ears) on purpose. Make them distinctive, with a particular cadence.

So now, all mages have to have names like that, and it has been great fun filling in those particular blanks.

But where do I start? Literally at the beginning. The first letter. What letter haven't I used much? What letter doesn't get used much? What's the first sound that comes out of your mouth when you think of this person? Hard sound or soft sound? What strings together well? Cadence, mouth shapes, all of it goes into the pot for original names, mages or not. It's one of the fun points of writing fantasy! I can name my characters anything! Within reason, of course. I'm not going to string together a bunch of 'x's and 'q's separated with four apostrophes and expect people to read that over and over willingly.

But it's not all imagination and ephemera. For Without Words, I heavily leaned into names (places, people and tribes) from ancient Gaul, because they are invariably fabulous. I mean, the most widely-known Gaulish king was called Vercingetorix, for f*cks sake! Look at that name. Amazing. So naturally I named my butch elf princess Skathidemerix, and her mother Boudicirix, a combination of Vercingetorix and Boudica, a woman warrior who led several rebellions against the Romans in what is now Britain. (Also note that in Colours of Dawn, Katya's white convertible was made by a fictional company called Boudica that uses Long engines in their automobiles.)

One thing I don't do is worry about what names mean. I've never been a big fan of the convention of naming a character after their most notable trait or their destiny or whatever. That's nice and all, but it feel less important than what you're actually going to see page after page after page. It can be subliminal or a spoiler, but ultimately not terribly rewarding for me. Yes, I named my super-botanist Ivy, but I had no idea what Millicent meant when I chose it--it was a happy coincidence that it meant something relevant to her character when she has that talk with Sveta in Fires of Winter. But ignoring meaning is a personal preference! You do you.

Names are important, and shouldn't be taken lightly. They are the primary identifier of your character and will be written out hundreds of times by the end of your book, so choose wisely, but don't pull your hair out over it. Ultimately, if your characters are strong and memorable, they will come to define the name, not the other way around.

I mean, when I say Harry Potter, you just imagine a builder from Leeds or something, right?