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I'm just curious if I'm in the minority. It seems that lately, few books I've read (of the fictional variety), have had little attention paid to character names. Working through my own characters, however, I've been meticulous in choosing names with meanings that reflect a key aspect to the character.
Am I the only one who keeps a name dictionary close at hand? How do you come to name your characters?
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Joined: 3/16/2011
Posts: 214
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Well, in one of my novels (“See Sabrina Run”), I see a lot of similarities between the MFC and Scarlett O’Hara – they’re both tough, driven, Type A women trying to compete in a man’s world. So I knew that I wanted something that sounded like “Scarlett” … but that wasn’t. Something distinctly feminine, with a little bit of pepper. Perhaps a slightly retro-sounding name. “Sabrina” fit my MFC perfectly. Her surname, “March” also alludes to her personality – straightforward and steady ahead.
My MMC wasn’t too difficult to name either. He’s a shock jock. I asked myself what name was befitting someone in this profession. It had to be unique, but not bizarre. One syllable, to counter Sabrina’s three. “Gage Fitzgerald” immediately sprung to mind. It falls trippingly on the tongue.
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Joined: 3/14/2011
Posts: 80
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I do occasionally research names, especially if I'm writing fantasy. I'll often have their names reflect their appearance or a character trait.
Sometimes I'll name characters after friends, but I make sure to tell that friend knows that the character is not based on them! That could cause problems, you know? ^_^
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Joined: 3/13/2011
Posts: 244
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Usually a name will just pop into my head. For surnames, I have a dictionary of those that I'll flip through until something strikes me as sounding right for my character.
My MC in one book was named before the plot came into being because her name basically inspired a lot of the plot. I won't say its meaning but yeah, the meaning was the catalyst for a lot of early world-building.
I've renamed side characters before for various reasons, but usually the first name that sticks is the one that is absolutely perfect for the character.
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Joined: 10/20/2011
Posts: 350
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I have a site of baby names that I keep going to as well. Since I deal with historical fiction, I need to know that the name I picked was a viable option for the time period. For example, my MFC for "The Wedding Game" was originally named Samantha. When I did some research, I learned that Samantha was an American name that originated in the 19th century. My story was set in 12th century England, so I had to change names immediately.
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Joined: 11/20/2011
Posts: 4
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You need to be careful with names. First, don't load your novel with six characters whose first names begin with the same letter, Bobby, Barbara, Beth, Bill, Brandon, and Betty. Try writing a scene with them all in it and see how messy that gets.
Choose a name that fits the place. If the setting is Paris, a Frenchman named Ian is out of place. Also fit the name to the character. A hardnose villian named Percy is as bad as a "Boy Named Sue."
The name sets the tone for the character. Names need as much thought as other elements of your story.
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A name that defines the essence of the character makes it is easier for me to think of that character as distinct from the others.
For example, my main character is an ordinary teen who transforms to do heroic feats. Hence the name, Otero Smith. Otero was a god of the Ute Indians whose name meant "Slayer of Alien Gods." The name makes him easier to create because it reminds me that he will go from ordinary to extraordinary in the course of the adventure. My young heroine is named Rhia, from the Old Celtic Rigantona meaning "great queen," because she matures to become politically powerful in the story. Rhia's lover and protector is Marc, from Marcus, derived from the Roman name for the god of war.
These three characters have different personalities and different destinies and their names help me to remember that as I write.
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Joined: 4/26/2011
Posts: 77
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I don't try to get a character name to express any aspect of character. Instead, I aim for social-linguistic plausibility.
For example, among the orangutans of Shortfall, four hundred years from now, years filled with slavery and oppression, there are three prominent families: the Yunsbitches, the Yardboys, and the Chattles.
I love to make up character names. I keep a list, and then use names from it as necessary. Barbary Yardboy mans the cheeseboard in the market. Pongi Yunsbitch is the village baker. Billiam Chattles is the harrier.
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Joined: 1/8/2012
Posts: 2
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Sometimes the meanings of my characters' names are intentional and sometimes they're not. If I need to find names I usually go to behindthename.com, and I'll try to look up names by meaning, although it doesn't always work out. Most of the time, like stephmcgee said, a name just pops into my head feels right. It might not fit the character meaning-wise, but the right name always just feels right somehow.
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Joined: 3/13/2011
Posts: 412
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Personally? I find that trite. People in reality seldom reflect or are reflected by their names. When everyone in a story has a name that has a definitive tie in to their character, it tends to be a turn off for me. (One exception of note, Ariadne in Inception, I thought that was awesome. )
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Joined: 3/13/2011
Posts: 244
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With my latest project, currently in revisions, I picked names that all meant the same thing because it tied into the fairy tale inspiration for the story. But that's as far as I take the names. And now that I've changed the series title for the trilogy, the meaning doesn't matter as much but the characters are named what they are and it would be ridiculously difficult to change their names at this point. (Trust me, I've tried changing character names after the fact and it's a beastly battle.)
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Joined: 5/18/2011
Posts: 5
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As far as naming people (and sometimes) places go, sometimes things just pop into my head at random and there are times I'll like it enough to use it, or I'll start cutting things apart in my head and combining it until I'm satisfied.
Other times, I flip through a dictionary of names with a specific trait in mind (one of my female characters her last name I think is Gaelic for honor) or even a fantasy name generator. Far as the extreme latter goes, anything I take from that is promptly googled to make sure it's not been used elsewhere in a game, movie, or other publication.
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Joined: 6/14/2012
Posts: 194
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For every book so far, I've made up some names out of the murky depths of my mind (in some books this comes close to 100% of the names), and used others that seemed to fit a given character and his/her background culture. In the SF books, some of the names will be familiar to readers; in the fantasy books, not so much.
A lesson learned after the first books came out (in conversations at signings, etc) is that most people hate names they can't read-and-say easily. They don't want to fumble trying to figure out how a name should sound, and they remember names by the sound, not the letter arrangement. Once I heard that from people as a major reason they wouldn't read SF or fantasy...I started making up easier names. I thought. One person asked me at a convention how to pronounce Gird. (Not only easy to figure out, but it's already an English word. Person who asked me seemed to be annoyed that the character's name did not have a peculiar, arcane pronunciation.)
Names--not so much their meaning as the sound of them and their prior use in popular media--do carry baggage with them. Adolf, Ivan, Thanh, Niko, Estevan...suggest various cultural backgrounds. If the book has more than one culture, it's good to salt each one with different naming conventions. In my SF work, with cultures derived from those here on this planet, I can use the "right" names or variants of them to give that touch of verisimilitude. So for readers with the background to appreciate it, there are names from all over put where they'll do the most good.
The names of popular entertainers with unusual names (Elvis, for instance) or characters in a book or movie suggest character traits derived from these models. Some names are, or were, so common that they can be used equally easily for a grocery store clerk, skydiver, a judge, or a criminal...others raise more limited expectations (in my region, a character named Percival would be expected to have a hard time in high school.)
Gender assignment: Cody is usually a boy's name here, but I knew a girl named Cody (the only female Cody in the high school with many male Codys...think what that could do to your character!) Ambiguous names for girls (family surnames used as first names) are much more common now than formerly, and are viewed (by human resources and officialdom, not so much readers) with wary interest. I knew a girl in high school whose name, Michel, got her investigated by the draft board back in the days of the draft.
Conflict with extremely popular books can also be tricky: I was about to name a teenage boy character Harry (fit his personality perfectly) about the time the Harry Potter books took off. Oops. When you've been thinking of your smart kid as Harry, it can be hard to find him a new name that seems to fit as well. Bill? No. Jim? No. Tom? No. Percival? NO!
Finally--the character's name will mean something to the character, and it will mean something to the milieu in which the character lives.
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I enjoy original and unique names, but not over the top (Katniss Everdeen). My naming convention is straight forward. I hate generic names (John Smith), hate dated names (unless the novel is written in a specific time period. For example, naming a modern character, Betty, doesn't work. But, if the book takes places in the 1950s, then it does.) I like androgynous names for boys (e.g. Ashley) and for girls, (Macaulay). See my post on this:
http://mellmckenzie.com/6/post/2013/08/whats-in-a-name.html
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Joined: 4/28/2011
Posts: 24
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I usually don't begin naming characters until after I've started writing chapters or get a little deeper into the short story I'm writing. I want to have a little bit of a clear picture of who they are before I determine whether the two people in the opening scene are called Gladys and Herman, Jennifer and Sebastian or Rayne and Jedi. When I work off a writer's prompt or explore an idea, I use placeholder names. Lazlo tends to be the temporary name for the main male character. The other people in the scene tend to get random monickers. Sometimes the name sticks, like Bill Hammerstein in Dead Man's Float. Other times the name is changed 5 or 6 times before I settle one I like.
I spend a fair amount of time researching names for my characters, but the names I ultimately choose are not necessarily the ones that fit the character like a glove. Sometimes the surname ties into something significant in the character's family history. Other times it may represent a character trait or fits into a symbolic metaphor. I've also picked character names with the purpose of hiding something from readers that comes into play later. Character names sometimes honor people who have made an impression on me. Once in awhile, the name just seems to fit.
The first name, I think, tends to tell you more about the parent of the character then the character herself, but can provide clues about their formative years. Someone with a Biblical name like Rebecca or Jacob might grow up in a different type of environment than a boy named Kepler or a girl named Rainbow.
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Joined: 4/26/2011
Posts: 8
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Gosh. My characters already have names when I meet them. Which probably sounds pretentious, but they do. My bad-boy Lenny was just a voice at the other end of the phone until he turned up out of the blue and walked into a big scene at 6am, fully-formed, yet with a backstory he only let slip some time later. He couldn't have had any other name than the one he was given at birth. To me, if I have to consciously think of a name for a character, then that character isn't ready to walk into the story yet.
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Joined: 8/28/2012
Posts: 6
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When I'm designing characters, their names are an especially important aspect. I've seen too many instances of characters with names that either don't fit their character or are just plain boring. I think when it comes to characters (especially main characters, protagonists, antagonists, etc) you want to come up with a name that people will remember; but more so than that, you want to come up with a name that befits that character's matrix and standing within the story. For example, when I was coming up with the name of the villain in my novel SERAPHIM, I knew I wanted something short and simple, but that had a hard edge to it. . .a name that got across his cold attitude. It also needed to fit the idea of betrayal that he in part represented, so I named him Cain.
A character's name is important, but I wouldn't say strive to solely come up with a name that people will remember or think of as iconic. A name's worth is only garnered by the actions of the character holding it. For example, if Luke Skywalker hadn't done everything he'd done in STAR WARS, if he'd been a different type of character, then perhaps his name wouldn't hold so much resonance with the world. Craft the actions of your characters to be something that impresses you and strikes a chord with you, and I guarantee someone else will feel the same. Make sure the name works toward the ideals of the character and what they represent. When you picture your character, you should be able to hear another character call them by their name and believe that the name is proper. I always handle the names after I have the basic ideas for my characters down. Once I know about them as people, how they look, etc., the naming part comes with ease. Consider too the themes of your story and how you may want to tie those all together.
Well, that's my opinion of it, anyways. 
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Joined: 12/16/2013
Posts: 1
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I'm really meticulous when naming most of my characters. For my first series, however, the names are as important to the story as the plot line. To go with the magickal realism of the novel, I chose names from Celtic Legend.
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Joined: 1/2/2014
Posts: 2
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I depends. Some times I chose Names for people at random and at other times I look up name meanings in a dictionary. In one of my more resent stories I do both because several characters have aliases. In the case of this stories most to the aliases are references to the book Alice in wonderland while the true names are random.
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You're not the only one who cares about the names of your characters.  A character's name and what it means is vital to who they are in your story and how they act. I too am very careful about the names I choose for my characters. If I want my bad guy to mean, vicious and cruel, I'm not going to give him a goofy name like Billy bob. No I'm going to give him the kind of name that even the sound of it will give my readers the creeps. That's the point!
By the way.. baby name books are a great place to find names for characters especially if they have meanings in them as well.
jlwordsmith
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To me, a name is a name. When you're born, your parents name you after what they want. Hopes and dreams for you in some cases. But they don't know who you'll be when you grow up. It's annoying to me when characters are named after one of their traits, like strong, or smart, because they're named as babies. Not as adults. Unless that's part of the culture where you get a new name as an adult that does reflect one of your traits.
I pay attention to names in the way that I make sure it makes sense to the parents. In one of my stories, the main character is named Dustin. Why Dustin? Because his mom knew a woman who had a miscarriage, and she told her they were going to name the baby Dustin. Dustin's father's name is Benjamin. Why? His family is religious and named all their children after religious figures. Things like that. But unless it's important to the story, a name shouldn't define a character, nor should the character define the name. After all, were you named after a trait you developed when you were older than a few days old?
Literally, I go through baby names and search for ones I like. If I continue to write the story and I don't like the name, I change it. I have one character who's name I've changed 8 times because it didn't fit, but I didn't choose the names because of her character. If anything, I analyzed her mother and choose from there.
So that's how I am. Names can be important to a story. But usually they're just a title we're given as infants by our parents before we can even smile.
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The best place to find names is the obituary section of any large daily. The names are actually real but many of them would never occur to a writer searching for names. Avoid the telephone directory. Aside from the intriguing names, the obituaries come with real life stories that complement their authenticity. When folks are dropping like flies, as they are in this current flue epidemic, the obits become a gold mine of mix and matching names you literally could not make up. It's a macabre undertaking, sort of, but it solves the problem.
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Joined: 6/7/2013
Posts: 1356
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I love this discussion; I haven't delved into it before now.
I guess I play it a little safe with names. Like Alexandria, I research to make sure the name isn't anachronistic. The project I am writing is contemporary, so I figure out when the character would have been born and look up baby name data from that year. I want my characters to feel as much like real people as I can, so I choose names that are fairly common: Melissa, Holly, Jessica, Naomi, Riley, Craig, Marcus, Patricia, Corinne, etc.
Much harder for me are surnames. How do you all go about picking those?
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Joined: 6/7/2013
Posts: 1356
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@Robert--those are awesome! How do you pronounce that last one?
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To me naming a character is a hard thing to do. I spend at least half an hour deciding what my Jedi's name should be in KOTOR. But then I think back to some already great character names: Harry Potter, Bruce Wayne, Peter Parker, James Bond, Mary Poppins, Ash Ketchem, and etc. I think to myself what made their names stand out.
I guess in a way their names also match their personalities too. Their names also have to be unique, making them stand out from all the other characters because those are the kind of characters we want to follow.
For example, one of my characters from my stories is named Carlisle Saint. I chose the name Carlisle because it stood out. How many men do you know with the name Carlisle? And I chose Saint as a bit of irony because the character is Roman Catholic and is best known hobby is slaying monsters.
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Joined: 6/7/2013
Posts: 1356
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Carlisle Saint is an excellent name!
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Joined: 7/18/2014
Posts: 121
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I tend to stick with what I call solid, easily remembered names - or names I can remember. Lately, I'm stuck on Frank as a first name. Frank Cirilli, Frank Jackson are two. For others, I use the names of people I know or knew. I'll take the first name of one and swap it with the last name of another. One recurring character in one of my stories is Hank Pierce. Hank was a detective I partnered with on a few cases. The last name is from another detective I knew and worked with. If the names are changed, the characters, personalities and dialogue are them, as closely as I can make them.
For my female characters, I'm more open. One is named Melba. I decided on that name when I saw Melba toast in the supermarket one day. And, Melba Ortiz was born.
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Joined: 6/14/2012
Posts: 194
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In SF, I pick surnames to suit the culture that person came out of (looking up some, if I don't already know them.) If it's far-future SF, I may choose to tinker with the names, so that the exact spelling has changed (as it can within one century--one of my own ancestors added an R to his name because so many people pronounced it that way it was easier to change the spelling.) In multi-cultural societies, the first name and surname (if that's how that culture assigns names) may come from different cultures. That's one signal of cultural mixing. (Otto Garcia, Vikram Schmidt, etc.)
I'll still try to keep them easy to "see/say" for readers' comfort, and if for some reason I need a really long, complicated surname (historical fiction, maybe?) I'll find a short form to use for most of the book--a title, a first name, a nickname, something.
And I'll try to keep it suitable to the character, considering how most readers of English perceive specific sound combinations as friendly/unfriendly, etc. (A friend named Sikes complained once that the Sikes/Sykes characters in books always turned out to be bad, never the heroes.)
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Joined: 2/26/2015
Posts: 6
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Keeping a name dictionary sounds like a good idea. I usually get the names for my characters from other stories I've read, historical figures and real life people that they sort of remind me of.
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Joined: 3/5/2015
Posts: 2
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This is a debatable one. Yes - a dictionary of names would truly help you. Depending on the history roots of your character and storyline - you may also need to do some extra research to make it interesting. My friends and I are debating about a character we'll do for a project in our book club, Cordia. The niche is fantasy and we're choosing some characters to be named "Aram, Jeedua, etc" It still in the works but - again, in naming a character, you have to consider these factors:
1) History (place were born, etc)
2) How you build the character in the story
3) Characteristics/Emotions
Those are just my 2 cents.
--edited by billyhill on 3/14/2015, 1:02 PM--
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Joined: 2/2/2015
Posts: 1
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yeah I see what you mean when it comes to picking names I feel it need to reflect on the character. Not that it sound like it a good fit on the story
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Joined: 10/8/2015
Posts: 7
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I love names. Love making up names and experimenting with different spellings. Love the unique.
I own five or six baby name books and one character name sourcebook and am always on the lookout for new ones. The telephone book is another source I've used from time to time. Lots of unique names there!
Sometimes a name will pop into my head and it works just fine. Other times, after a chapter or two, I can tell the name just ain't gonna fly for this person. Then the search is on! I can't write until I find that perfect name. I don't bother with matching meanings to the characters' names. Unless the parents of a certain character had some reason for doing so. That's different.
Some authors pair an exotic first name with a common last name. Sometimes it works, sometimes not so much. But hey, in real life some people have some funny names!
I happen to like the name Thomasyna. Didn't want the general spelling of it. Had to have the y. Took a few months to find her last name and define her parentage. Found it on the back cover of a album of Norwegian folk songs - Tollefson.
I like to visit nameberry.com from time to time to check for new names or find a meaning if I need one. I do use Native American names from time to time, and those I like to know the meanings of. Not to attach a story link with it, but more to link it with the character, as in the case of Thomi's brothers, Tristen and Adrien. Their dad is part Sioux along with that Norwegian. Adrien was born pretty much on the heels of Tristen, so he was given the middle name of Ohanzee which means shadow.
It's fun to see how we all choose our characters names.
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