Hi, I’m currently working on a story, but I’m a bit stuck. I need a period-appropriate name for my character. I’ve gone through dozens of sites and stuff, but I can’t find any!! –Rachel
Naming characters depends on the genre of book you are writing. For fantasy, it’s fun to use different languages. I used Hebrew words to name some characters in my Blood of Kings trilogy. For my bad guy, I looked up the words that defined him, “evil,” “torn,” “divided,” “liar,” and eventually settled on naming him Esek, which means “dispute.”
I also came up with themes for different cities. For example, Carmine is a city that makes wine. It’s all vineyards. So I brainstormed a list of words having to do with wine: Vert, Rioja, Pinot, Basalt, Malbec, Terra, etc., which gave me a nice list of character names. For a wild forest-dwelling people, I used Inupiat/Eskimo names. For a coastal town, I names one family’s children, Riif, Shoal, Gil, and Aljee, playing with ocean-types of words (reef, gills, shoal, and algae.)
Things like this help you give your different cities character from one another. Another trick for fantasy names is to use an atlas and look up different countries like Russia, India, or Argentina. Use cities, lakes, rivers, or mountains as they are or by changing them a little to get very different sounding names. It’s a good idea to look up the meanings of such names, though. That way you won’t accidentally name your characters a word that means something gross or derogatory in another language.
If you’re writing a historical piece, it’s easy to find names online. Simply Google “popular names 1850” or whatever year you’re looking for. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, a good trick is to look up a historical event around the time of your story. An article on the Civil War will name soldiers and generals and perhaps inspire some names from that time period. When I was looking for first and last names for a steampunk novel, I Googled a list of the passengers on the Titanic. That gave me a wide variety of names from 1912, both upper and lower class.
If I’m writing a contemporary book, I have a baby name book I use—though you can find dozens of baby name sites online. I also have an old phone book that’s a great tool for finding first and last names.
Hope that helps!
Jill
Great tips, Jill! I think I’ll use some of your strategies in my works. So far, I’ve done a little foreign-language hunting (had a few redos because of idiomatic vs. literal translations too :- ) and also some random phonetic names with Scrabble tiles and word search puzzles. I really like the idea of naming people after their location (vineyards and oceans in your example)!
Sean,
Scrabble titles and word search puzzles? What fun ideas! Thanks for sharing them.
🙂
Jill
Those are awesome! Thanks!
Interesting ideas. I used to cut out little pieces of paper with letters on them and mix them up. Now I tend to just think up a selection of syllables and put them together. I’ve also been known to shut my eyes and type random letters on my keyboard, or type as if I were typing a specific word, but with my fingers in the wrong place. I’ve come up with some pretty good names using all those ways. I also use a name-database sometimes–like you said there are lots out there. My stories have an odd collection of made up and real names =) I have also, on occasion, taken a regular name and changed the spelling. Just thought I’d toss those thoughts out there . . .
Thanks again, Jill!
Best,
D. S. Dahnim
Thanks, D.S.! Those are some great ideas. I love your mention of typo character names. LOL That’s awesome!
Someone also mentioned looking at street signs for names of characters and places. I thought that was interesting too.
Jill
Yeah, street signs would work too, though I’ve never heard of a character named West Twenty-Second. Wait a minute, that has kind of a ring to it . . . =) There are some pretty strange street names out there I guess. Also, town names might make good character names. And tree names, and flower names . . . etc. There are so many possibilities for us authors, it’s almost scary! 😉
Best,
D. S. Dahnim
The street name idea is cool. I once needed a cool last name for a character and, if I stink at anything more then description, it is last names. So I just took a last name off a text book I had then that I thought sounded cool with my character’s first name and went with that. I also have a baby name book and websit that I like to use but I never thought of some of the things you sugested. I will have to give that more thought and it gives a place more character and the book more diversity if you really think about each place in depth. Sometimes I don’t think about how to make the places different from each other. Something else I need to work on. Anyways, thanks for the advise and I will have to put it into practice.
a really good website is called behindthemane.com, which gives u the most popular names, the meaning of them, and many other features. i think u will find it vewry useful, as i have come up with many names with this website!
from,
savannah
Ooh. Thanks, Savannah! What a neat recommendation!
Thanks!
Jill