What's in a name? Naming your characters
Many of the great characters in literature have epic names, names that roll off the tongue, evocative of the worlds in which they live: Arthelais (Rebel Moon); Gandalf (Lord of the Rings); Daenerys Targaryen (Game of Thrones); Aslan (The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe); Falkor (The Neverending Story); Pantalaimon (The Golden Compass); Dumbledore (Harry Potter series); Granny Weatherwax (Discworld); Kvothe (Kingkiller Chronicles); Sonea (Black Magician trilogy) The list is endless. A tricky question for authors of all genres is what names to give your characters. Today's blog looks at ways to find good names for your character
Setting: time and place
The time and place of your story largely influences the names of the characters. A character born in the 1940s is more likely to have names like James; Robert; Mary or Sandra than Tiffany or Greg. A quick and easy way to establish likely names is simply to do a web search of the most popular names when your character was born.
A man born in Spain in the 1930s is likely to have been called José or Antonio, whereas a Liu or Zhang is likely to have been born in China. Unfortunately there is a certain amount of stereotyping in this, but if your character names don't fit your story, then you run the risk of alienating your readers.
Authors do regularly break the perceived rules (and of course if your character is time travelling from the 3000s they are not likely to be called James!) but in general, a good rule of thumb is to use names that are likely depending on when your story was set, and where it takes place.
Name creation
If you are creating your own world, then you do get to make up your own rules for names. This can be both liberating and uniquely challenging. How do you go about making up names? One route is to simply make up words that sound good. Another is to check the meanings of names and select names that correlate with the characteristics of your characters. For example, Luna (Latin for Moon) often appears in Werewolf stories. In the film the Old Guard, Andy is short for Andromache from Greek mythology.
With my own fantasy novel, Sakhira, the story is set on a desert world, so I chose to use names of Arabic origin, and looked for Arabic words that I felt described my characters. I then used variations of those names for the characters. The lead character, Sakhira is actually a Sanskrit word for 'dear friends.' An early beta reader felt there were too many complicated names, and on the basis of that feedback, I simplified some of them.
Name Generators
Recently, I was searching for names for a short story, and came across a Random Name Generator which is free to use: Behind The Name
There are a range of options to select such as gender, language or genre and based on your selections, the system generates a name for the character.
I searched for a Witch and was offered these names: Swampburp; Shadowscape; Cacklescare; Frogtwist and Hellgash. Of the list, I only really liked Shadowscape, so I decided to ask for an Arabic witch's name, and the options were: Rim; Gazbiyya; Ramla; Fatma and Nur, which are a lot more promising. Of course, if you don't like this site, there are others you can use:
- Character name generator
- Baby name generator
- Another interesting site is the Fake Name Generator which actually generates a whole profile for your character, including address, date of birth, employment records, physical characteristics etc.
I saw a mug once that proclaimed 'please do not annoy the writer: she may put you in a book and kill you', which did make me chuckle. However, a good piece of advice is not to name your characters after real people (unless of course you are writing about them) so that you avoid potential lawsuits.
The wonderful thing about writing fiction is that we have a lot of freedom because we create our characters and their stories. Happy writing!