Where do you get ideas for character names?

[KeithD]

Names by time period, ethnic origin, and location can easily be found on the Internet--both given and surnames. I look around until I find a name I feel fits that character.

 

[TruthwithaTwist]

All of my stories are based on my life events, so I usually take the person's real name, then give it a twist but keeping it similar. So, "Carol" could be changed to "Cara" in a story. Honestly? I do this mostly so I can keep the names straight in my own head, too. I then go back and double-check that I don't use the real name anywhere before I publish!

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Fairly often, I will not worry about names when I start a story, using instead very common names for MFC and MMC, let's say 'Jane' and 'Tom'. As the story develops more fully, their characters become clearer in my mind. Eventually, it's a question of choosing something I like better and using Word (my choice for writing) to find and replace. Where do I find the names? Well, as noted, there are all kinds of sites giving regional or time-based names. Something often pops into my mind in any case - 'Yep, she's definitely a Maeve!'

 

[davion2308]

I get names from sources depending on what I'm trying to achieve.

Is it representative of an older man or woman? I'll go look at most popular names of 1962 in United States. Are they younger characters? Most popular names from 1999.

After that, I go with one/two syllable names if I have multiple characters to make sure I don't confuse the reader any more than I already do.

 

[moreandmore]

I keep it simple. Name tags at the grocery store.

 

[Maxiine]

Almost all of my stories are based on things I have either experienced or heard about-- they may however be extrapolated, sometimes to an extreme. I usually anonymise names by selecting "nicknames" based on the personalities or other traits of the people involved.

eg Dave (in real life) was a big Cincinnati Stingers fan, so in the story he is Wayne.

 

[shakna]

I guess I have no consistency when it comes to naming things. I do try and keep names different, to make it easier to separate my stories for my readers. Makes searching easier. And does make finding ideas for new names harder.

But... For a WIP scifi at the moment I've got a girl called Evie. Because she's a reference to IE5. Whereas Lorelai from one of my cousin stories is named after the goddess of death, because she's got a new life. And then Lily in my witching tale is called that because I just find the name cute.

If I was doing something historical, I'd grab a historically popular name, like davion2308 pointed out.

Naming things is hard.

 

[Maxiine]

Naming things is hard.

We each have our own challenges. For me naming is easy, but sometimes it's a challenge to get my merry band of characters to pause the orgy long enough to participate in crucial plot elements.

 

[JuanaSalsa]

I try to match the name to the plot / setting. Sometimes this is very easy. When writing a story set in the modern day real world in the USA, I just pick a name from my history of names I've heard that matches the personality of the character. Sometimes, it just pops into my head, such as "Jumbo Jim's Junior Johnson." This alliteration referring to a guy with an undersized penis just *poofed* into my head, and then I basically wrote 7k words around that alliteration, lol.

I avoid names that have a particular meaning to me, like ex names, family names, friends... Sometimes, I take a tame from popular culture and mutate it just a bit if I have a character that is rather one dimensional and embodies a particular stereotype. In one story, a character is pretty much a "Chad" so I gave him the name "Brad". Chad would have been too on the nose, Brad reminds the reader aware of the stereotype, without being too blunt forced.

If my characters come from a particular culture, I google a lot and find different lists. I don't stick with the same baby name site because many are good for one type of culture / mythology, but not another one. So, if I have a story which I want to build on Welsh mythology, I google "Welsh name meaning pure" or something like that. When choosing names outside my culture, I often like to pick ones that have a relevant meaning to the character, but sometimes I just choose one which I like the sound of.

I make sure that the main characters never have names starting with the same letter, and usually avoid the same ending phoneme as well. Characters which belong to the same "grouping" or culture will have similar names.

With fantasy stories, I start from nothing, just imagine the character and a sound pops into my head for them, and I write it using phonics and there we go.

I've read that Mercedes Lackey chooses character names in fantasy by taking common names and changing the letters a bit, for example "Benjamin" could be changed to "Hemgamin" and voila, a whole new exotic sounding name. I also heard once that there was some writer who used a dictionary of rare medical diseases to inspire names for aliens.

 

[KeithD]

I'll add to my picking the names from a time/place method to say that I don't use full names I find. I look for surnames and given names separately and if I find the name I've come up with is one of an actual Internetted person, either historical or contemporary, I usually don't use it.