McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft

Character Names

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etoiline:
Coming up with names has usually been pretty easy for me. Of course, as people have mentioned, writing fantasy means I can use pretty much whatever I want :) I tend to use my one foreign language (french) and mash it up with words or sounds that I like. I've been looking at more word meanings (latin, usually) to really describe the character, if I can. Then there's always the alphabet game: write the letters of the alphabet and make up a new name for each letter by putting together interesting combinations of other letters...I had a long list of names to pick from for my latest NaNo novel using that method...

Someday I'm going to be just like Tolkien, making up lists of grammar and names, I swear.

I'm also fond of the good old baby names websites. When I was writing my modern-day king arthur story, I looked up the classical names of the knights and tried to find modern names that evoked those. that was interesting, let me tell you.

I like the idea of a fire-mage named Frost.

~Cal

taralon:
There's backstory to a pyromancer named Robert Frost.  Maybe he's the black sheep of a family that's been ice mages for generations, where there's always been a Robert Frost around to lead the family.  Unfortunately his mother's genes kicked in.... 



--- Quote from: Mickey Finn on January 19, 2007, 03:08:44 PM ---" For one thing, I wouldn't have named that character Robert Frost anyway if I'd thought about it for another five seconds or so because his main magic is based on fire. "

Actually, having a fire-magician named Frost sounds good. ;)

Names normally just come to me (or I stumble across something that would work beautifully, like Grady Niblo Rd outside of Dallas). Sometimes, they're homages and injokes (like changing the protagonist's name to Ellison in my first published story).

Maybe on the Cogni boards, we'll play a name game where I toss out a few names, and people write a random story where the names influsence the characters they create.

--- End quote ---

Abstruse:
My main reason for changing the surname was the poet Robert Frost...

The Abstruse One
Darryl Mott Jr.

taralon:
So there's a famous poet of the same name.  *shrug*  That can be worked into the story as well.  Being rabidly set against using a name because it happens to also belong to someone famous is throwing out a lot of good names, and some good banter thrown in. 

For example my own first name is Jeb (short for Jebediah), and I always get this:

"Good to meet you, Jeff..."

"Its Je*b* with a B." 

at which point it devolves to one of the three:
"Short for Jebediah? Did you know that's a biblical name?"
"Like Jeb Bush down in Florida, the president's brother?"
"Oh, you mean like Jeb Stuart.  Now there was a general..." 

Depending on circumstances, how I feel, the phase of the moon etc, the conversation will either go well from there, or I'll purposely make a farce out of the whole thing because I simply don't like them, or because I've decided they purposely got the name wrong in the first place.

Names are important.  Its one of the reason's that the Dresden files is so good in my opinion, Harry was right in there that first book talking about his name, Jim handled Butters in much the same way.  Names define who we are in a large part, how we react to society.  A good name will help you out in places, a poor one can be a hindrance your whole life.  Having the same name as a famous person can be both.  Maybe Robert Frost the pyromancer prefers to be called Bob, or Rob, or Bert because of the onus of living under the name, maybe he's up front in your face "That poet guy is giving us a bad name" about it.  Character names are quite often neglected by authors.  They come up with a name for someone, but rarely do you ever see how that name affects the characters life. 

Soulless Mystic5523:
http://www.behindthename.com/random/

This is, in my opinion, one of the BEST places to find a name. Not only is it one of the largest collections i've ever seen, it gives you the meanings behind the names. And if you have a meaning in mind, you can do a search for name meaning and it spits out a list of all names with meaning similar to it.

I use it to name all my Role-playing characters, everything from WoW the LARP.

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