best way to come up with character names?

[Sean Renaud]

I can't imagine using F1 and F2 though it would easily clear up my same search and replace issue that hits on occasion. I do need a place holder. I tend to just use a very generic name in those places.

I find that watching the credits of a show is nice you end up with really odd names that don't have much of an attatchment at the start.

 

[JayLikestoRead]

BUT - I usually start writing my stories with 'vanilla' names and only change the name after the character has begun to develop. I use Word's 'find and replace' but that isn't wholly reliable. In one story I had the Indian name Reshed but I changed it to Reshad. Find and replace changed the word 'threshed' to 'thReshad' and I didn't notice.

Non-literary story here: Many years ago, I was a project manager. I took over a project where the names of the computer files got updated each month, using the first three letters of the month. I thought I'd be clever and do a search-and-replace instead of manually changing them. I invented a new month named Maruary.

 

[Sean Renaud]

Well I intentionally tried doing that several times during world building and found. . .dear god is it a headache.

 

[lovecraft68]

I take people I know and mix their first and last names together sometimes.

At my comic store my best customer's first and last name could both be first names and those two names were used for the two main male characters in my Circle novels.

Oh, one thing I'd be interested in knowing how others feel...

I cannot use my daughter's names in any of my stories.

 

[IrisGardens]

I look up name meanings. Do I have a need for a name to be from a certain locale? To keep names straight, I will give a character a name that has a meaning to a trait that the character has. A Scot girl named Rowan that means red hair, for instance.

 

[oggbashan]

I look up name meanings. Do I have a need for a name to be from a certain locale? To keep names straight, I will give a character a name that has a meaning to a trait that the character has. A Scot girl named Rowan that means red hair, for instance.

That assumes that the parents knew the meaning of the name, or that you are using the same baby name book as they did.

I used the female Welsh name Angharad in one of my stories. My baby name book said it meant 'very loving' which was appropriate for the story, but someone else pointed out others meaning as 'much loved' which suggests she had multiple lovers. When I checked more baby name books the meaning of Angharad could be very different.

The same name can mean different things in other countries. For example Randy can be a US name. In the UK it is never used as a person's name because it means 'always wanting sex' e.g. 'He's a randy devil'.

 

[RogueAlan]

i have lists of names available to me, and will count down the list and say month for first and day for last for example.

or if i'm using a 'known' person but don't want issues, there are usually similar sounding names ... Steel might become iron, wanda might become wendy.

my cautionary note if you're searing 'name lists' online would be to avoid those names at the top of the list, which are often the 'most common' and while by definition they would be common, they can lend an air of... creation to a piece you otherwise want to feel real.

 

[adamzapple]

Movie cast and production crews list; christian names from one, skip a few lines down, pick out a surname from another, mix 'n' match... but, take care, you don't want Robert Newman and Paul Redford, Stephen Jackson and Peter Spielberg..

 

[Hypoxia]

Baby-name and phone books are good. So are newspaper obituary listings, and googling for national or ethnic names. The F1 F2 M1 M2 approach is pretty incomprehensible to me. I name each player before I write them so I have them firmly in mind. Only rarely do I change names, and only if they seem clumsy or misleading. Each character inhabits their name.

 

[igottapussy]

names

I use a variety of methods to choose names. Most of the time they just come to me, but I don't always like the first ones that pop into my head. For the most part, unless there is some ethnicity to consider, I keep them fairly mainstream. I don't want readers focusing on a weird name rather than the content.

 

[quicky1]

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[delicious_man]

The best way to come up with a character name is to finish writing the story. It'll come to you.

Sometimes a character will appear to you with a name already attached to them, almost as if they have arrived pre-packaged. Other times you have to assemble the character first - nail down their behaviours, their aspirations, their little quirks etc - and the name that fits them will eventually come to you.

I think nightlola is right - when your character is fully fleshed their name will become apparent.

 

[bbcbarry9033]

Adjectives

I like to use adjectives for names. So, a driver may be named Carl; a fisherman named Rod; a writer named Reed… and so on.

 

[CoffeeWithMonkeys]

I use Word's 'find and replace' but that isn't wholly reliable. In one story I had the Indian name Reshed but I changed it to Reshad. Find and replace changed the word 'threshed' to 'thReshad' and I didn't notice.

Once I was using Mindi for a female main character and decided to change it to Mara, used the find and replace on google drive and it changed remind to reMara, hehehe

I have trouble with my memory these days so I use the same names in my stories. And of course since Eddie is my muse anyway it makes sense to always use Eddie as my main male character.

 

[Adder4321]

I just run through names until I find one that suits the character.

For instance, Peter tends to suit honourable, masculine characters. David is a "harder" name, so I use it for characters that are fun, but rough around the edges.

Same for females, I use names like Kate, Kylie and others for "girl next door" types, because they are so ordinary. Joanne suits mature, tomboy types.

Honestly I'm not sure how to explain it, but I just find names that suit the character.

 

[oggbashan]

I just run through names until I find one that suits the character.

For instance, Peter tends to suit honourable, masculine characters. David is a "harder" name, so I use it for characters that are fun, but rough around the edges.

Same for females, I use names like Kate, Kylie and others for "girl next door" types, because they are so ordinary. Joanne suits mature, tomboy types.

Honestly I'm not sure how to explain it, but I just find names that suit the character.

I understand what you are saying but it is your perception of those names, not mine.

What we think of a name depends on people we have met with those names and cultural references.

Peter to me means Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit.

David? Apart from relations (no comments!) I had a friend called David who was a great person but slow thinking and acting. For example his wife sent him to make mugs of instant coffee while I and my friend Peter (see what I mean!) changed the brake shoes on their car. We had changed the brake shoes on all four wheels before David had finished making the coffee.

We, and his wife, knew that David would take that long. She knew that the timing would be just right. She appreciated our competence and understood exactly how long David would take to do a simple task. She loved him but ran him. He worshipped her. We liked him. He would do anything for anyone - if you were prepared to wait, and wait, and wait... He was employed as an accountant and earned a reasonable living because his employers valued and used his insistence on getting everything perfectly right.

So just the names Peter and David have mixed associations for me.

As for Kylie? The only one I know is Kylie Minogue and the girls named after her. I would never use Kylie in one of my stories. She'd be far too young.

 

[Oblimo]

Peter to me means Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit.

Me too. When I saw the commercial for that recent abomination of a movie that some studio motherfucker dared call “Peter Rabbit,” I raged. I’m talking man-killer Achilles levels of high dudgeon.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

As for Kylie? The only one I know is Kylie Minogue and the girls named after her. I would never use Kylie in one of my stories. She'd be far too young.

Nothing jerks me out of a story faster than a completely wrong name (possibly a completely impossible bra size...). Middle-aged Kylies or Lyras, 17th-century Pamelas or Wendies, contemporary Brits called Randy or Fanny or Chuck. Chuck you could get away with with some sort of explanation (had American mother or grew up abroad or something), but the other two you might as well call them Horny and Cunt if that's the reaction you want!

Google is my friend - recently I needed to name a brother for a character Atif. Lots of lists of Bangladeshi names around but I couldn't find one for Brits of Bangladeshi heritage born round 1980. So I looked up Atif, brother and London/Bradford (just in case parents of Atifs abroad have different naming patterns), and came up with a few names that were used frequently with brothers of the right age.

In my early drafts I either keep names of people I know who are superficially similar, or put in placeholders alphabetically. I recently tried a 750-word challenge, ended up with characters Alex, Bob, Cassie, Duncan, Ed and Fran, and decided they would all do, so I kept them - I felt it added a Brechtian feel that suited the over-sparse text which acquired a lot of sentence fragments in order to keep the word count down.

 

[ZoeGeller]

Scrivner

The program has under writers tools a name generator where you list what nationality and what letter you want the first and last name to begin with, or do random. you can keep clicking and getting more, too.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Oh, one thing I'd be interested in knowing how others feel...

I cannot use my daughter's names in any of my stories.

Me neither, nor my son's. Even though they're both adults, that would be skating too close to "weird dad shit." I would not use my own name in a story, either.

EB glanced across at Adam. "Well, that's just confusing, isn't it?"

"No. I'm used to it by now."

 

[ElectricBlue]

Nothing jerks me out of a story faster than a completely wrong name [like a] 17th-century Pamela

Well, you've got yourself a fail, right there (OK, eighteenth century, but you take my point ).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela;_or,_Virtue_Rewarded

 

[ElectricBlue]

As for Kylie? The only one I know is Kylie Minogue and the girls named after her. I would never use Kylie in one of my stories. She'd be far too young.

La Minogue is 51. Which is, I admit, a bit weird, somehow.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Sometimes a character will appear to you with a name already attached to them, almost as if they have arrived pre-packaged.

My characters usually reveal their names in a flash - I rarely know their names until they're revealed for the first time, out of the blue. Somehow, the name is always " just right" for the character.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Well, you've got yourself a fail, right there (OK, eighteenth century, but you take my point ).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela;_or,_Virtue_Rewarded

No, that's what I meant - Richardson is believed to have made up the name Pamela, so a character in a story that takes place before that book isn't going to have her name! Unless you have sources saying he didn't make it up after all?

 

[ElectricBlue]

No, that's what I meant - Richardson is believed to have made up the name Pamela, so a character in a story that takes place before that book isn't going to have her name! Unless you have sources saying he didn't make it up after all?

Sixteenth century, if this wiki article is to be believed - but it's interesting that the name Pamela was indeed a literary invention, later made popular by Samuel Richardson - so I thank you, I'm now a name wiser.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_(name))

My favourite Pamela is Pamela Courson-Morrison, Jim's common law wife. Well, favourite after the Pamela in one of my stories, of course .