Name your characters

[TheWritingGroup]

I just saw a story in the SF & Fantasy category with a protagonist who is named "Kali". To me, that was an instant, "Don't read that."

"Kali" is literally one of the most famous names on the planet. There are over a billion Hindus on the planet, plus people like me who know about Hinduism. The author named the character after one of the most widely-worshiped deities. It's distracting. I'm not meaning to mock the author. I just think that name takes away immersion because it doesn't fit, since the story is about a D&D-like environment--at least, she's "Captured by Orcs". (That's the title.) A character named "Lakshmi" in a Hinduism-influenced setting would be totally appropriate.

So ... how do you folks name your characters? For my own fantasy stuff, I just sort of pick syllables that sound namelike together in a fake Indo-European language I'm assuming my European-like characters speak, being careful not to use anything I recognize as a real name.

-Eddie

 

[StillStunned]

Short answer: WIWAW - Sci-Fi and Fantasy Names

 

[NoTalentHack]

Most of my stuff is modern day or near-recent past; the furthest back I’ve gone so far was the Great Depression, and then only once. For modern day, I figure out roughly how old the characters should be, then look up popular baby names for the year they would have been born. I also try to not re-use major character names too often, so I then do a quick search through my Google Drive to make sure I’m not doubling up.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

For my own fantasy stuff, I just sort of pick syllables that sound namelike together in a fake Indo-European language I'm assuming my European-like characters speak, being careful not to use anything I recognize as a real name.

Likely very much the exact method of the author that you are chastising.

 

[yowser]

For me the name and the character are usually closely tied. But either one can arrive first, then the other follows naturally.

 

[AllenWoody]

Naming characters is one of my least-like tasks when writing. For contemporary names I pick a random movie on IMDB, go deep into the credits for the crew, and pick a first name from one person and a last name from another. Keeps me from re-using the same few names knocking around in my head, and movie production is so international now that I get good variety.

For sci-fi or fantasy it's more difficult. I will sometimes start with a contemporary name then use a fragment. So for example I might use Stephen, then the characters name becomes Phen. Perhaps not a great example, but you get the idea. But yeah, not my favorite part of the creative process.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

People are called Kali, some named for the goddess, others just from putting random syllables together, some from changing Carly to a different phonetic spelling. Everyone's got names they dislike, but a woman called Kali wouldn't seem any more odd than a man named Jesus, for example.

I've not done much fantasy-world naming, but I stick to my principles - I hate added punctuation in the middle of names, and names where the reader can't pronounce them at all in their head. If it's meant to be a future Earth-derived population, then names that have been around for the last couple thousand years are likely to still exist, possibly with a new spelling or nickname. I often look up lists of baby names for appropriate years and countries, or if unavailable, sportspeople or other professions from the right place. Often I have a problem of wanting to ensure no friends think I'm writing about them, so not using any of their names if there could be confusion.

Some name and surname combos jump out at me, others use a little research. Bradley got the surname Owens because it's apparently the fortieth most common in Iowa. Emily got Bannatyne from TV credits passing at the time. Laura I decided needed a more uncommon surname. About a third of Brits, especially with rarer surnames, get them from place names. So half an hour with a map of Yorkshire, and I picked Silsden. Laura only became Laura because the Karen meme kicked off just before I started publishing a series, and she'd never have been taken seriously!

 

[Voboy]

I always try for mellifluous names, especially in SF/F and particularly in Fantasy. I also, selfishly, prioritize names in main characters that are easy to type repeatedly.

Fantasy names tend to reflect the character's personality or appearance; a guy named Lunt (or something like that) is likely to be short, squat, muscular, and short-spoken; a woman named Llinwyn (or something like that) is more likely to be some sort of willowy beauty. There's a knack.

For SF, I set my stories in the far future. So I try to envision how current names might possibly change down the road: elements are mixed and matched. There are a lot of "MacChoi," "Yamagoudreaux," and "O'Slanski" type names in my SF work. First names from one linguistic tradition mix freely with surnames from another.

Also, spellings are simplified: the modern Juan might become Wonn in one of my stories, for example, because I think that over the next thousand years, that might well happen in the same way that Johann has become Jan in many places.

The principles of mellifluity and typing simplicity still apply, however.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

Likely very much the exact method of the author that you are chastising.

Except that author clearly wasn't doing the step where you filter out real name, if they ended up with Kali. Kali is so famously a real name my telephone's keyboard will autocorrect it.

 

[MrPixel]

So ... how do you folks name your characters? For my own fantasy stuff, ...

For one, I don't write fantasy or SF, so what you describe is not an issue for me. My characters are all modern Midwesterners spanning three generations.

However, it's the "three generations" that is important. I can impart cohort with names. A "Bill" or "Bob" or "Susan" can imply a Boomer or Gen X, an "Aaron", "Abbie" or "Heather" would be a pretty solid Gen X, and a "Logan" or "Zoë" tilts towards Gen Z. Weird spellings like "Debbye" and "Traci" are mostly Gen Z. On rare occasion I will consult a website of popular baby names organized by year when I need something that nails a specific age group. For instance, while "Taylor" has been common in Gen Z, we absolutely know Gen Alpha is going to see scads of "Taylor" babies, likely including males with that given name.

Surnames? Whatever pops into my head. An "advantage" I have in choosing names is I developed phonebook publishing software many years ago. Name filters were a big part of the algorithms. My time in that biz was drawing to a close just as two trends were surfacing, the first being an explosion in hyphenated surnames that made the lines too long for the narrow phonebook columns, making the typography awkward at best. The second was recent immigrants not anglicizing their names, given or surname, and my correction filters were breaking badly. The last straw was Arabic surnames, some having as many as seven words for the proper name.

Sometimes I will have fun with names. One character has "Gabrielli" for a surname. Of course that implies Italian heritage, but her and her roommate ("Percell") were chosen because I had Baroque-period composers on my mind at that particular moment.

 

[Voboy]

You didn't ask about historical pieces, OP, but it might apply to the problem of Kali:

In historical stories, I search up real names from that period or culture, filter them for mellifluosity and typing ease, and bob's your uncle. BUT! For all I know, the Bronwyn or Hildegrim I choose might be some sort of folk figure in a culture I've never even heard of. I'd never know, and yet a reader with a background in that culture would be jarred out of my story every time he or she comes across that name.

We can't always predict things like that. I agree that Kali is super-well-known. But honestly, if I hadn't grown up with Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom, I might not realize it was all that significant even so: I have nothing more than the usual grounding in Indian religion and culture, and although I know many Indians, I don't make it a habit to talk religion with them.

I don't see a writer who picks "Kali" as someone who's committed any kind of faux pas, even though Kali is worshipped and revered my billions. After all, so are Jesus and Muhammad; I've met many of both, and they wouldn't bother me in a story.

 

[MrPixel]

...a reader with a background in that culture would be jarred out of my story every time he or she comes across that name.

Like @Kumquatqueen mentioning "Jesus". I know a Jesus. I wouldn't use it in a story without having previously set the context that this character is Hispanic, or introduced the character with a clearly-Hispanic surname.

 

[Voboy]

Like @Kumquatqueen mentioning "Jesus". I know a Jesus. I wouldn't use it in a story without having previously set the context that this character is Hispanic, or introduced the character with a clearly-Hispanic surname.

Okay, but my point was that we can't know all the baggage every reader brings to the laptop.

At some level, this is similar to the thread about whether our depraved scribblings might or might not influence some reader to do something horrible: we are writers. We write. We are not responsible for the way our readers take our words. We hope most (if not all) will like our stories, but at the end of the day we cannot control their reactions.

I wouldn't name a character "Kali" because I think it's a weird name, and even moreso because I think some readers would be in doubt as to how to pronounce it to themselves: is it "collie," "kaylee," or "kally?" Those kinds of ambiguities would be enough to keep it off any page I'm writing, because I think we do have a responsibility to give our readers an obvious way to say the names we're writing.

But the cultural baggage of those names? No, I don't really think that's something we're responsible for. To be clear, I think the OP's "don't read that" reaction on account of one character's name is unfortunate, but understandable: it's not necessarily something I'd do, certainly not for the sake of a religion I don't even follow. But I understand I'm not everyone.

 

[intim8]

So ... how do you folks name your characters? For my own fantasy stuff, I just sort of pick syllables that sound namelike together in a fake Indo-European language I'm assuming my European-like characters speak, being careful not to use anything I recognize as a real name.

I just let my right brain do it mostly, but I do think a little harder on some. I tend to have the character's names sort of imply or connote their personality, or their type of role in the story. Harder sounding for confident guys, softer and more generic for more innocent people, unusual for the quirky ones. Sometimes I'll just make up names that don't exist to my knowledge. Then throw in a few twists on those stereotypes and/or find unusual shortenings.

Examplies from my current WIP (set in contemporary suburbia):
- Jim - (MC, 1p POV), kind of naive soon to be college freshman
- Rick - his new next door neighbor and friend (an uneasy friendship, in large part because of their sisters), older by a couple years, a player and a pool shark
- Stacy - Jim's innocent fraternal twin sister.
- Tish - Rick's not so innocent sister. Calculating and subtly manipulative.
- Andi - Jim's new almost girlfriend, reserved, but a little quirky. Intellectual and sexually open but not adventurous and wants to take it slow.
- Canna - Rick's ex, now FWB, very sexually adventurous and exhibitionist. (Rick won her from her asshole prior boyfriend in a bet on a pool game) (name inspired by working in the yard the other day, I have some canna lillies out there)
- Alex and Alexandra - a secondary couple in the story, often referred to collectively as "The Als", Alexandra goes by Xandra to avoid confusion. She's an instigator, the one that pushes the others to break boundaries, but only mildly adventurous herself.

 

[DanDelaware]

I write stories set in the current time, so I use lists of the most popular names by generation. I scroll down the list until I find names that seem to match my characters. It's pretty safe.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

So ... how do you folks name your characters?

So far my stories have been set in modern America, so I pick from the social security administration's name database. They show popularity by birth year, sex, and race.

I'm working on two fantasy stories. One is set in a vaguely post-feudal matriarchal monarch where men are not legal persons and the normative romance is an FLR with mild corporal punishment. For that I have people listing their lineage like horses. E.g., Barbara of Sarah by Frederick, who goes by Barbara socially and pretty much never mentions the "by Frederick" except in super formal circumstances like weddings, funerals, and doctors' offices.

The other one has two people who can't speak or even pronounce each other's languages. They talk to each other through a trade pidgin that neither speaks that well. So the names are all mangled translations. Like there's a guy named "Roc soars at dawn" and he's like, "uh... I'm... Big Bird Go Up Early. You call me Big Bird."

 

[ElectricBlue]

The only time I spent time looking into a name, it was for an alien angel in a sci-fi story, for exactly the reason the OP is on about. I didn't want a name that had connotations in any other language or culture, or some game I would have no clue about, or some popular book I'd never read. I especially didn't want any mythological or religious connection, but at the same time, I wanted it to sound alien. I came up with Ixtil, which met all of my criteria.

On the other and, I named another character Clio (not in the same story), precisely because I did want to evoke the mythological presence into her character. I suspect many readers though, wouldn't have a clue about that., it would have been "just a name".

 

[RetroFan]

I write mostly set in the past so am careful to to have an anachronistic name, such as a Brittany appearing in England during World War II or a group of girls with names more suited to the 1950s in a story set in the 1990s. Admittedly some parents can give their daughters or sons older names (which is better than something like Tank, Rainbow or Flower-Child), but too many of them at once in a more recent setting will look odd. For example in one of my stories set in 1962, the main female character is called Penny, and her two friends are Barbara and Judy. More than 60 years on one might meet an 18-year-old girl named Penny, but not too many girls of this age named Judy and even fewer named Barbara. And all three of them together?

Sometimes this can be a problem with remakes. Take for example the Mean Girls remake earlier this year, 20 years after the original, and the names of some of the younger characters. Cady always was a more different sort of name, and Aaron has always been a popular boys' name. And if you were a high school teacher in 2004 and you had students named Regina, Gretchen, Karen, Kevin, Janis, and Damien in one of your classes it wouldn't have sounded out of place, only Janis perhaps slightly outdated for a girl born in the mid 1980s, but not overly so. But in 2024 teaching a class of students born in the mid 2000s with these names? It wouldn't be so odd just to have a student with one of those names, but all six of them at once?

 

[Rob_Royale]

Naming characters is very easy for me. I've been into table-top RPGs (off and on) since the early 80s. Coming up with names is second nature. For a non-fantasy story, I do occasionally rely on Google. If my character is a native of another country or a particular culture, I'll do a Google search for "pretty Norwegian female names" It usually gives me about 20 right off the bat, and it's not hard to find one that fits my character.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

Ixtil

My immediate thought was, this sounds central American, and indeed Google says there is a language and a people one letter off: Ixil.

 

[BrightShinyGirl]

Most of my female protagonists are contemporary women who are sensible and smart. I tend to give them more mundane names, like Jane, Katie, or Sam. Nothing frilly or flamboyant. I have a hard time taking a story seriously if the main girl has a name that just screams “sexy little thang” like Bethany or Angelique.

 

[ElectricBlue]

My immediate thought was, this sounds central American, and indeed Google says there is a language and a people one letter off: Ixil.

Yes, I found that out too. It was quite hard to come up with a name sufficiently alien that wouldn't grate on the eye or ear - but I figured a whole language wouldn't have too many connotations for an English-language reader - plus the "t".

I also paid attention to his (yes, a gendered alien) speech construction and gestures, as he learns how to communicate with the human astronaut (who is, being written by me, a woman).

 

[Britva415]

The author named the character after one of the most widely-worshiped deities. [...]A character named "Lakshmi" in a Hinduism-influenced setting would be totally appropriate

Is the setting of this story with the character named Kali which you're objecting to a Hindu-influenced setting? If it's not a Hindu-influenced setting, is it really so objectionable that you can't read it the way it was intended?

And if it is a Hindu-influenced setting, can you say why Kali is inappropriate while Lakshmi is appropriate? They're both widely worshipped deities. Maybe Kali more than Lakshmi, but Lakshmi according to Wikipedia is "one of the principal goddesses of Hinduism." She's not an obscure one.

I understand that in real life there are millions of Hindus named Lakshmi and (probably) none named Kali, but there has to be more to it than just "that's a prominent deity's name."

 

[Erozetta]

The thing about names in sci-fi/fantasy (and basically any other genre) is that it's my world and I can go with any naming convention I want as long as it's consistent through the story.

But, I basically have the opposite problem as you, If I can't easily pronounce the name, I'm not reading the story 'cause I don't have the time and don't care enough about a character on page one to try and mentally pronounce Kl'autzyia (apologies if anyone has ever actually used that name. Though that's clearly Claudia with some sort of non-American accent.)

 

[mildlyaroused]

For me the name and the character are usually closely tied. But either one can arrive first, then the other follows naturally.

Same here. I don't consciously come up with character names; they seem to choose me as much as I choose them. It must be due to some unconscious preconceived connection I have with a certain name, which then makes me think it fits the character I'm writing. Or maybe the name is meaningless, and my opinions of the name are influenced directly by the character I'm writing. I can never tell quite which way around it happens.