How do you name your characters?

[Dasquian Belargic]

Here's a nice piece written by Michael Stackpole, on the importance of names:




One of the things I love the most about creating new worlds is figuring out what my naming conventions will be. Sometimes they are loose, but not very often, precisely because names and how they are used help set the tone for a story.

First and foremost, they point you to characters who are strong or weak. For example, most of my heroes have names with begin with a hard sound in English: K or T. They’ll have one somewhere in their name if it doesn’t begin with it. Corran, Hawkins, Crow, Resolute, Victor, Kai… I could go on. I also, for a reason unknown to me, also favor the letter N for hero names: Nolan, Neal and, in the current books, Nathaniel. (Even Corran ended up with an N, since he was Rogue Nine…)

Often a character will have his true name, and then a call name, or the name I used most often in the book. Nolan, from Talion: Revenant, got called Talion a bunch, so his call name had a T in it. Owen Strake (who has a twofer in his last name) is often called Captain Strake, so he picks up that K sound. That hard sound suggests toughness for a character, and I like that. Helps me fix the character in my mind.

There are other bits of name games that can be played. One thing I don’t like in a lot of novels, especially fantasy novels, is that names are just a mishmosh, drawn from every culture haphazardly. I like them to be grouped the way, um, gosh, they are in life. In At the Queen’s Command I made a couple choices in this regard. The Mystrian colonies are populated by people from Norisle. In Norisle, most folks have a family name that is a place name of some sort: Langford, Rivendell, Harrington. The folks shipped off to the colonies were often rebels and criminals, so they adopted new names in the new world. Hence they have last names like Woods, Bone, Strake, Baker, Branch and Cask. I decided to name them largely after nouns, sometimes after occupations and occasionally a bit more exotic, but just by reading a character’s name, you’ll know the side of the ocean he comes from.

I also get to have fun with the names. Seth Plant is a simple man on the edge of civilization. He has a small farm. He also supplements his income by being a grave digger. (Yes, the pun was quite intentional. These are things writers do to amuse themselves.)

At other times names are symbolic. Nolan means, “no land,” and the character was one whose nation was destroyed and whose family perished along with it. Victor Davion was conceived on the eve of his father’s greatest victory, hence his name. Also from the BattleTech novels, Kai Allard-Liao got his name from John Steinbeck’s spelling of the name of King Arthur’s brother, Kay (Cay, Cai, etc). This is why I pronounce it Kay, when most folks use the Asian pronunciation of Kye. I named him that because, like Sir Kay, he’s stalwart and reliable.

The use of names can be a very strong technique in projecting a sense of order into your world. When you’re putting together a setting, take some time to group names so they are familiar. Think about honorifics that can elevate a person in class. Think about how you change a name from male (Steve) to female (Stephanie) or child (Davy) to adult (David) to familiar (D or Dave or Big Dave or the D-man). Just by using different names you can suggest a whole world of relations in a very subtle way that most readers will miss consciously, but will pick up subconsciously. It gives your work more depth, more layers, and will make readers come back for more.


http://www.michaelastackpole.com/?p=919

[Jeseth Cloak]

I like this...

I usually come up with names by making strange sounds and such, until I hit upon something that sounds alien to me, but comfortable, and then I build around that. Or, I take a world that I like, and then I play around with it until I find something that seems to work for my purposes.

With Jeseth, I thought of a snake hissing, and gradually it became Jeseth. I used the word Cloak for his last name because it seemed Star Wars-like. I almost named him Jeseth Earthflyer (which at the time, I thought was hilarious) but eventually decided against for the sake of my character's dignity. :rolleyes

[Lyanie Quez]

Names just magically appear in my head, at the same time as the character concept forming. I've never had to think particularly hard about names.

[Serasai Onashi]

I'm weird about naming. I find hard sounds and such work better for bad guys in most cases. But for the most part, like Stackpole, I like to pick names that sound like something someone would be named. Unlike Mike, I normally don't choose based around the meaning of the name, because I don't think I'm that witty; in fact, often I do the exact opposite, and choose a name that wouldn't have been assumed for a character. Istina has that T in her first name, but is quite possibly the weakest character I have. On the other hand Ettagar is chock full of hard sounds, and has an r at the end, like 'arr', said by a pirate. Bad-ass all around.

Mostly this operates under the idea that in the real world most people don't get to choose their own name. Those that do end up either choosing a stupid sounding name or aping off somebody who means somebody to them (hey, just like their parents!). So sometimes I go with the most common sounding names I can (such as Ben Merasska). Other times I don't even start with the character, but their great great great grandparents, whom I don't even name sometimes, and go down the names from there, making sure to add a history as I go along: events, deaths, friends, enemies, lovers, etc. This provides a huge assortment of names to choose from, and considering who the parents are, I'd choose from these names for the main character(s). It's time consuming, but it's more real, and the story benefits from the extra work, even if it's just a sense about it.

[Dasquian Belargic]

I am super picky about names and do tend to try and give them some meaning, whether that's meaning relative to real world or in game culture.

A lot of the names I use, though, I dreamed up for characters before we reset the board so I'm not sure how well they suit the characters they are applied to. Salem Ave, for instance, does not seem to me like a particularly iconic name for a Sith Lord... then again I suppose his day-job is supposed to be that of an unassuming politician, so maybe it works. Likewise, Dasquian Belargic was maybe more appropriate for a Legolas lookalike, but it has a kind of exotic quality to it that could pass for Hapan.

Like I said, I think too much about names.

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

I do nothing but sound out names in my head until they "sound" about like the character I want to be.

[Darth Gravis]

I look to my family for inspiration. I hold a lot of personal connections with my characters and all have at least one of my family members name in their own. Jake Daniels is unique as I got Daniel from my middle name but added an S to the end and Jake came from my Grandfather (which makes this character the only one to hold two names from the family) It may be cheesy and corny (:lol) but its my way to ensure that I always hold a more personal connection to them at some extent.