How do you name your characters?

[Quantum]

I figure out what the dominant characteristic is for a character and then look for a name that has that meaning. For example, today, I was looking for a name for my heroine in my flash fiction story that shows that she's tough. I found it easily in
Oxford Dictionary of First Names:

"Mathilda: Latinized from of a Germanic personal name derived from "maht, meht 'might' + hild 'battle'. This was the name of an early German queen (895-968)."

How about you?

[[deleted user]]

I actually tend to use rather common names that reflect their ethnicity or nationality. For example, I used for my various novels' heroines (yes, I am big on female main characters) names such as:
- Nancy Laplante (French Canadian)
- Ingrid Weiss (German)
- Tina Forster (Spacer of North American stock)
- Tasha Lenoir (Eurasian French-Chinese)
- Pham Ti Hien (Vietnamese)

We do not choose our own names, our parents do it for us, thus I do not believe that having a name that reflects someone's character is realistic, even though it may sound 'heroic'.

[Leonie]

I write mainly speculative fiction, so I choose all kinds of names using all kinds of methods, including just making them up. Sometimes I use online randomisers, and flick through them until I find a name that suits my imagined character.

Have used this one a few times https://www.behindthename.com/random/

[J.J.]

A lot of different ways.

For USS Krakowski, I took the list of fallen from the Iraq/Afghanistan wars for last names of all but two characters.

For the Freedom Reigns series, I grabbed the 2010 census to choose family names, trying to pick names based on what I imagined the characters' ethnicities to be. If I wanted African American, I picked names where a significant number of the respondents were African American. If I wanted Hispanic, I got to choose names that were a little uncommon (ie. no Hernandez, Martinez, etc.).

In a number of cases, I picked names that came up in my own genealogy research. In Dione's War for example, I used the name Corbitt for one of the main characters because it came from my family tree, while the title character's last name, Pafford belongs to a family that was in the area where my second great grandfather set up roots...they're not in my direct line, but a Pafford married one of his other kids.

[Quantum]

These are all great ways of going about naming characters.

Using a name randomizer is a great way to add variety and come up with new names. It's not like authors haven't coined new names for ages, so why can't we? ^_^

Using census names is such an excellent idea. I'd never thought of that.

[Joe]

It's an interesting issue. The sound of the name is most important to me but there are caveats. You have to avoid multiple uses of a name in your story. Alex Smith can't, or shouldn't be in the same story as Alex Jones or Alexa Murkowsky. On the other hand names tend to be multi-generational in real families. There are lots of Patricks in my family. My father had a cousin, an aunt, a grandmother and a great grandmother named Bridget. He also had a great aunt and a grandmother named Isabel which seems to be an odd name in an Irish clan. In my recent story, a character named Joe who has a son named Joe Junior or JJ. His daughter is named Becky after her grandmother Rebeccah or Gramma Becky.
The writing tool that I use has a database of ethnic names that it will use to suggest names. I also go to the internet for common names for girls or boys from whatever country my character traces back to.

[Nik]

I remember taking part in 'name a character' contest of one of the fellow authors here. I remember it as fun.
Also, I hear that some authors choose, for example, a name of the most hated teacher at school for the prime villain, while a favorite auntie - for the awesomest heroine -:)

[Jeff]

Honestly...at random. I try to not go too uncommon, but not too common.

[Scout]

I'm not a writer, but I'm interested in how authors name their characters. Do hard and soft consonant sounds play a part? For example, strong characters might be named Grant, Bart, Drago; weaker characters might be named Sherman, Alfonse, Frances?

[Nik]

TheLongWait wrote: "Honestly...at random. I try to not go too uncommon, but not too common."

Long time no hear, Jeff. Seeing now where TheLongWait might be coming from -:)

[Joe]

Scout wrote: "I'm not a writer, but I'm interested in how authors name their characters. Do hard and soft consonant sounds play a part? For example, strong characters might be named Grant, Bart, Drago; weaker ch..."
It is not scientific for me. American names tend to be nicknames - Bill, Sue, Becky surnames are more challenging - you have to be careful about too many Smiths, Jones, etc. Although I discovered late in the game that two of my characters are Stewarts and they aren't related. The protagonist is Yvonne April (MacMahon) Walsh. Her maiden name was suggested by my writing tool and I got comfortable with it after a while. I never got comfortable with "Yvonne" although I used to have a friend with that name. The character spend most of her first 35 years being 'April'. When she decides to reclaim her birth name, 'Yvonne' doesn't stick. It gets shortened to 'Eve' which is an appropriate name given what she is asked to do in the story. But the truth is her name evolved along with her character after I made my initial choices. Some people get nicknames and some don't. Your name sounds like a nickname - how did you come to be called 'Scout'?

[Joe]

Scout wrote: "weaker characters might be named Sherman, Alfonse, Frances..."
Seriously- Sir Francis Drake, Pope Francis - named after a superstar like Francis of Assissi.
I know you wrote 'Frances' - the feminine version and I couldn't come up with any female examples right off of the top of my head.
But for starters: Frances Willard (Educator and suffragist 1839 -1898), Frances Perkins (US Secretary of Labor 1933 - 1945), Frances Xavier Cabrini (Religious Leader 1853 - 1938), and a long list of movie actresses.

[Ian]

I try to avoid thinking of character when naming them because there is a danger of "silly" names, or worse, "flag-carrying" names. For ordinary people, I try for the telephone directory or something like that for surnames and then pick something; for foreigners there are some random name generators on the web. Aliens are more of a problem, and sit there and sound out various things until something clicks. (You have to be careful it doesn't mean something awful in some language.)

My biggest problem was with my Roman names. For males, that was reasonably easy with the prenomen and the gens name, but the cognomen was more difficult, because that could be all sorts of things. (Cicero meant "chickpea", apparently.) I had Tiberius give my major protagonist the cognomen Scaevola because he was - it means "lefty". Of course some cognomen became almost sub-gens names, so a hero needed yet another one. Unless, of course, you were a bottom pleb, in which case you may only have one name.

Female Roman names were big problem because in the republic, the gens name came first, but by the end of the first century the male order was predominant. My novels were set half-way between, so what to do? I used the republic era order, and hoped nobody would get to critical.

[Jeff]

Nik-
Very 'punny' lol. I'm usually on GR every day, but haven't been commenting much. it's nice to know I have been missed :-)

[Jeff]

Main character in The Long Wait is Will Boyd...pretty blah I know, but I like the blankness of it.

[Nik]

TheLongWait wrote: "Nik-
Very 'punny' lol. I'm usually on GR every day, but haven't been commenting much. it's nice to know I have been missed :-)"

Welcome back -:)

[J.J.]

Joe wrote: "It's an interesting issue. The sound of the name is most important to me but there are caveats. You have to avoid multiple uses of a name in your story. Alex Smith can't, or shouldn't be in the sam..."

Funny you talk about this. I did one story with a theme where characters looked liked people other characters once knew. One included a girl the main character once had a crush on. To emphasize the theme, the two girls had similar names Alice and Alison.

[Joe]

J.J. wrote: "Funny you talk about this. I did one story with a theme where characters looked liked people other characters once knew. One included a girl the main character once had a crush on. To emphasize the theme, the two girls had similar names Alice and Alison.."
Exceptions to every rule.

[Justin]

Great topic. I tend to either come up with names out of no where, by hearing them and making a note to use it or a look into some by research. For my upcoming book I'm gonna do a bit of all three.

[Scout]

Joe, I'd love to tell a great story about how I came to be called Scout but, since I can't claim to be a fiction writer, I have to tell it true. Several years ago, when I joined Goodreads, I adopted the name Scout because I felt a kinship with the character in To Kill a Mockingbird. Like me, she was a tomboy with a good imagination, an inquiring mind, and a strong father figure. My name is Liz, but I'm Scout when I'm here :)

[Joe]

Scout wrote: "Joe, I'd love to tell a great story about how I came to be called Scout but, since I can't claim to be a fiction writer, I have to tell it true. Several years ago, when I joined Goodreads, I adopte..."

You just did tell a great story and you proved that there are any number of reasons for picking a name - in life as well as in fiction.

[Holly]

For the fantasy series I am writing I use a few old Celtic names and a lot of names that I make up by combining two randomly selected first names into one..........Cheryl + Virginia = Cherginia. I also have an awesome source for fantasy place names but am not willing to share it. In my contemporary stories I tend to use generational names to imply age without telling the age of the character.

[J.J.]

Joe wrote: "J.J. wrote: "Funny you talk about this. I did one story with a theme where characters looked liked people other characters once knew. One included a girl the main character once had a crush on. To ..."

And I must admit I enjoy breaking rules...

[Joseph]

Hi,

I usually bounce around sites like goodreads till I come across a name. However, sometimes I have one in mind before hand..