On the Naming of Characters – and other tidbits

I have had a number of people ask me how I come up with such original names. The answer is both simple and complex. Simple part first – brainstorming, lots of brainstorming. Sit down with a notebook and just start putting sounds and letters together with little thought to how the results may look. I try to use all the alphabet and different combinations of vowels. Don’t throw anything out yet. (Actually, I’d advise you never to throw any of these results out. You never know when it will come in handy.) This list is a good starting place for the names of people and things or even alien language words.

Now, the complex part. If you are writing a Earth based story, past, present,or future, there are ample resources to work with and you don’t really need to invent names. If you are like me, however, and have invented an alien world/culture/language or ten, then you need to make some decisions about how the language is supposed to sound.  Some of the sounds may be dependent on physical characteristics of the race. I have a reptilian race whose language ranges from sibilant to guttural.

All languages have a distinct flavor and this influences names. An easy example is the common name of John. In other languages, the same name is found in different forms: Jean, Johanne, Jose, Ivan, etc. Your characters, and therefore your story, will be more believable if you create your names with this in mind. You would not have a character born to ethnic Chinese in Beiging named Abernathy, at least not without some explanation. You probably won’t find an Irishman named Gustav, either. Choose a flavor for your language and then take a look at your list. Which names fit, or will fit with minor changes? Make note of them, even begin to assign them to characters. Do you have gender related conventions? Many languages do, often related to endings. Jean is male, but Jeanne is female.

It gets murky from here and entirely subjective. Some will just sound like a protagonist to you, or maybe the officious secretary your main character wants to strangle at the first encounter. Don’t be afraid to take a real name and put an alien variant on it either. In my new trilogy, Diedre becomes Deiadri, similar, but with a different pronunciation and a unique feel that fits the character, and the language, very well. I have sometimes looked at maps for names of towns and places as a starting point, shifting letters around or replacing one or two to come up with something strange.

The same holds true for other proper nouns. For those worlds your characters interact with, you may want to develop the language for some words and phrases. Some names will even reflect this. Raith is the name of one of Sorth’s moons and alos is their word for fire. Raithalos is the name of a character and means moonlight.

There is a lot more involved in this language business if you get very serious with it. I first developed the concept of Old Sorthian as a different kind of construct than other human languages. Since Sorthians are telepathic, it made sense to have their ancient language convey complex thoughts and ideas in single words or short phrases, just as those thoughts would be communicated directly. The later need for some technical detail would have added a new dimension to it. After encountering other worlds, they developed a newer, descriptive language for easier interaction but retained the old, mainly for formal occasions.

Human languages, on the other hand, are largely descriptive fragments of ideas that must be put together to convey a complete thought. I think that would be true of most alien languages as well. Then again, you never know. My characters may encounter a race that communicates in a complex series of whistles over several octaves and may be partly beyond the human range to hear, much less comprehend.

Really, the only limit is your imagination.