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How Unique if at all should my Characters name be?

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the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:

--- Quote from: RodimusGT on March 16, 2011, 11:33:29 AM ---You could look at JB and JK Rowling and say hey they both have wizard characters named Harry WTF? But each series and character is vastly different in terms of abilities and personality, so is it okay to go with a name that's been used?

--- End quote ---

Use a name that's plausible in real life. That's perfectly fine.  JK Rowling is not the only person ever to call a character Harry Potter; Felicity Savage's Ever series had one some years earlier.

One thing that really really irritates me is large novels with Casts of Thousands where nobody ever has names that are the same or similar in the ways names get common or rare in real life, because it's perfectly workable to have Big Fred, Young Fred and Black Fred in the same class, and if Fred's a very common name in your setting, you will end up with people who spend their whole lives being known as Not-Fred because they were the only one of six people picked out of their school by a visiting dignitary whose name wasn't Fred.

Snowleopard:
Neuro, I also dislike cast of thousands books where a number of people have names that are very, very
similar and the characters are close in looks and behavior so I have to spend time figuring out which is which.

As for names.  I seem, in my writing, to have three kinds of names.  The everyday kind of name for some characters.
Just thought about it for a bit and the name sounded right.  Made up names - jumbling letters and the like to create something that I like the sound of.  Names that I've researched and the names - either singular or first and last mean something if you look it up.
(Baby name books are great)  Didn't have baby name sites when I started up.

Examples from one batch of writing.
Jason Kai - relatively normal name for a mostly normal young man
Xikk - made up name for an insectoid alien
Deva Ki - modification of a Hindu Goddesses name.  (Destruction I believe)  (Bad guy)

the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:

--- Quote from: Snowleopard on March 21, 2011, 04:22:04 PM ---As for names.  I seem, in my writing, to have three kinds of names.  The everyday kind of name for some characters.
Just thought about it for a bit and the name sounded right.  Made up names - jumbling letters and the like to create something that I like the sound of. 

--- End quote ---

I'm kind of middle-on-the-road on made-up names, but there are people who will hate them unless they are clued in well as to fit the character's background.

Fortunately my current project's aliens are primarily scent-oriented, so any spoken/written name used for one of them is a "nickname for dumb human use" anyway.

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