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Joined: 4/27/2011
Posts: 6
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I was about to criticise another BC member for giving siblings the same initial letter when I realized I had done the same myself. 'D'Oh!' as my namesake, Homer, would say. I know parents often give children similar names, but in fiction it can slow down the reader, making them flick back to see who is who. For the same reason, it's not good to burden the reader with too many names too soon, but this is something that can be difficult to avoid in practice. Selecting names, I think, is important: would Hannibal Lecter have achieved infamy as John Smith? But giving everyone an odd name might detract from credibility.
I don't know how important this is, but it may be something we should think about both in our own writing and in reviewing.
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Joined: 5/17/2011
Posts: 3
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My novel had several male and female Chinese characters; I used a Chinese "favorite baby name" site to pick names. However, people who read early drafts complained that two of the character's names were too much alike and led too confusion. I think this is definitely a trap to be avoided.
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Joined: 4/26/2011
Posts: 77
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I write science fiction set in the 25th century, and I love finding names for my characters. Since my story is set in part in Stockholm, I have the (rather narrow) panoply of Swedish naming conventions to work from. One character is named Torkel Mohammedsson.
I shoot for both plausibility and originality; the latter is difficult because some names persist unchanged for hundreds of years, and neo-names, ideally, should have a similar feel. So I've got a woman named Viveth and a man named Effscott. I try to avoid the current convention for female English names to end in an unstressed vowel.
It can be a problem because sometimes I will like a name so much that I want to build a char around it just so I can use it.
I also like wordplay in a name, if it's not too heavy-handed. I have Rio Noir, and Galapagos Finch, and a dead orangutan named Longfall.
I don't really worry about feeding too much complexity to a reader. I prefer to think that readers choose SF to some degree for the challenge of comprehending a very different universe, but one with continuous roots into our own. That's the secret to why I have so darned many of them.
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Joined: 4/27/2011
Posts: 6
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Torkel Mohammedsson and Longfall? Your book will be worth reading for the names alone!
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Joined: 12/12/2011
Posts: 1
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I personally dislike it when I read books where the characters have normal English names that are so mangled up with alternative spelling I struggle with reading them, every time you come across them.
A good site for names is http://www.behindthename.com/. You can find all sorts of names there, with their meanings, origins (for example, Biblical or Shakespeare). Related names and you can search for Chinese names or Swedish names. It also has the most popular baby names. I use it all the time!
Swedish and Scandinavian names:
http://www.behindthename.com/names/usage/swedish
http://www.behindthename.com/glossary/view/scandinavian_names
Chinese names:
http://www.behindthename.com/names/usage/chinese
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Joined: 5/22/2012
Posts: 4
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When writing anything in a real-world/contemporary setting, if I don't have a specific character name in mind, I tend to do a Google search for government employee directories. I tend to find real names which are distinctive and memorable, without being "fiction fabulous."
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Joined: 4/30/2011
Posts: 662
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I write fantasy, which has a habit of being a name free for all. This means that names are usually hard to pronounce, all sound the same, or make no damn sense. So I tried to keep it simple since I end up having to deal with multiple cultures, religions, and races. I look up words in dictionaries and alter them as in the case with Adamar. Since I have a church system that resembles Catholicism, I use "good christian names" like Peter and Thomas. For my elves I usually use my triple barreled messes like Fredarias and Melodina, but even they trim the fat of them to call themselves Fred and Melody (my MC). Since I'm trying to gravitate toward more of an 19th century America feel in my work, I needed to take names from my various cultures and mix them up. Yet, I needed to make sure that people weren't going to have an problems with them. They're all pronounceable.
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Joined: 6/14/2012
Posts: 194
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The pronounceable thing is critical to luring more readers into SF/F. The number one reason people who don't read it tell me they don't read it is "I can't say the names--so I can't remember who's who and it's confusing and boring.' (The number two reason is "I don't know anything about/care about rockets." This group is amazed to find out that lots of science fiction isn't about rockets.)
Make names something people can read easily and hear in their minds. I didn't, at first, but now I introduce only easily pronounceable (I hope!!) new names. At least MOST of the names were pronounceable.
Some people, however, will have a problem with the simplest--especially if they're used to SF/F names being weird. They'll try to make an obvious name sound strange. "Gird" for instance. English word, one syllable, rhymes with "bird" pretty obviously, but I had someone ask me how to say it. She was not thrilled when I told her--it made her feel stupid (which was not my intent, but there's really no way to tell someone they've messed up "Gird" that doesn't make them feel stupid. Now if they messed up Rt'zzriztl'an, they wouldn't feel stupid if you told them it was "retz-lan", but a four-letter word that follows all English pronunciation standards? Bad news.)
I snag names from history sometimes (mostly in SF, not so much in fantasy though there are a few) and consider the foundation cultures of the society my characters live in.
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Joined: 6/28/2011
Posts: 188
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One of my favorite sequences from a Jack Vance s.f. book involves two characters introducing themselves. I don't recall the names Vance used, but one says something like, "I presume you're Mr. Xoncethl?" and the other one replies, "Actually, it's pronounced Xoncethl."
Vance is a master at taking flavorful words and making them into the perfect name to suit a character, like the mysterious offworlder named "Ifness" in the Durdane trilogy.
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I could have sworn I responded to this already. I guess not! lol
Read a telephone book. You get a book from ten or twenty years ago and take a first name from one end and a last name from another. Just don't go into a telephone directory and lift someone's name and address whole hog. That's just asking for a whole host of complications no writer needs. Now, I use a Harlan County, Kentucky, book because that's where my stories are set. I do this because a lot of surnames are particular to that area or if not particular, extremely rare elsewhere. Also, there's a huge proliferation of Celtic and Biblical first and second names. But it's prudent for me to keep in the back of my mind that people in Harlan County don't name their children offbeat names like Sierra, Jaleel, or whatever is popular right now. (There's probably few, if any, children named Destiny.) As more technology infiltrates the area, I look for this to change.
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Joined: 5/28/2012
Posts: 43
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I get aggravated when names aren't systematic. I'm reading a book now where people purportedly from the same country have names like Aric, Akeela, and Vanlandinghale. Some of the city names are unpronounceable (Poolv? Come on!) One author whose naming conventions never made sense to me is Terry Brooks, but then I saw on GoodReads that he just picks things he likes the sound of, with no system in mind. Even though he's a NY Times bestseller, I wouldn't recommend that strategy.
I understand that if your culture is cosmopolitan (take any US urban area today), you might have all sorts of different names. But they are still often attached to people from distinct cultural groups.
What I did when writing my manuscript was use the Oxford Dictionary of First Names. There was one group of people who are culturally rather like Asian Indians, so I gave them Indian names. Another group got Arab names, another German, another Celtic, another French, and so on. While some of them may still be unpronounceable (pronunciation of Celtic/Gaelic names is NOT phonetic) to some individuals, at least all of these names have actually been attached to living human beings in the past. (Though if someone couldn't figure out "Gird," well, that's a separate issue entirely.)
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Joined: 9/4/2012
Posts: 10
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I love the use of anagrams and the meanings of names which posed a conundrum for me. My own name was the perfect name for the B story heroine, and there was simply no other name that meant 'true face' (Veritas icon) The whole theme revolves around a misidentified portrait (The 'Mona Lisa') and invisibilty. It was uncomfortable, but I had to call the woman, Veronica. Latin anagram: veritas = truth and icon = face. Now I feel obligated to make a disclaimer in my authors page. I was not about to call her Ethel or Jennifer or whatever... Veronica it had to be.
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Also, I write about historical characters (mostly Italian) and it is normal for a parent and child to have the same name For example, an antagonist named Antonio has a mother named Antonia. These are real people, so to be factual they can't change. Both of these characters are necessary to the storyline.
Once in a while a name arrives clear and it feels right.
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Joined: 9/24/2013
Posts: 3
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For my story-historic fiction set in 5th century Gaul and Britannia I have used Wikipedia and other sites lists of various cults, deities, etc. for naming characters; such as Celtic deities etc.
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I like using names of actors from movies in the same genre I'm working in (and, on occasion, other writers in that same genre). A vast majority of the cast of The Brotherhood of the Black Flag are named for actors who have been in swashbucklers and have played pirates in movies or have written books about pirates. For my 1905 mystery novel, the two NYPD protagonists are named Nathan Brett and David McShane.
Nathan = Nathan Fillion, Castle
Brett = Jeremy Brett, the best of the Sherlock Holmes actors IMHO
David = David Suchet, Poirot
McShane = Ian McShane, Lovejoy
For another one, Suicide King, set in the fictional Renaissance-era city-state Packardia, all the names are derived from playing cards, and it took a lot of stealth puns and linguistic manipulations to pull that off. The protagonist is Acelin deSpada (Acelin is a real French name), his sidekick is Dusana Levesque ("Lev" is the Hebrew word for "heart"), and in all of the prominent families of Packardia, the family patriarchs have names beginning with a K, and the matriarchs' names begin with Q. The villain is a master-of-disguise assassin named Wylde.
--edited by Ian Nathaniel Cohen on 10/5/2013, 6:50 PM--
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Joined: 2/13/2013
Posts: 5
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Watching the opening credits from old movies is also a good way to go. Pull the ones that sound interesting then mix and match first and last names.
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"A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet." If way back then a rose had been called an onion,and vice versa, "roses" would make us cry and onions" would smell sweet. The best place to locate names is the obituary section of any large daily. Therein you will find names that could have never been made up, but are nonetheless manifestly real. Don't copy a full name, of course, but use combinations of the eye-popping assemblage.
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