Five Ways to Name Your Characters
One of the most common problems that authors, especially new authors, complain about is how difficult it is to come up with good names for their characters. Over my many years of writing, I’ve developed a few ways to name characters in stories. Here are a few. Bear in mind, some of these pieces of advice are genre-specific.
Babynames.com:
The site babynames.com is a great source for names from different countries and cultures. You can also look up name meanings or look up the names by the letters that are in them. In general, I recommend against having two main characters in your novel who have names beginning with the same letter, as this can cause confusion. For instance, you shouldn’t have both a “Robert” and a “Roger” among your main characters, because readers will mix them up. Also, while name meanings can be important, I urge you to consider the other factors as well. How does the name sound when spoken out loud? Does the name have negative connotations because of famous people who shared the name (for instance, the name “Adolph” means “Wolf,” which might be cool for some characters, but I strongly recommend against using that name because of its association with a certain, hated historical figure). Also, consider what nationality a character likely has if they have a certain name. A Caucasian boy living in modern California should not have a name like “Shinji,” unless he happened to be raised by Japanese parents, just as a native Japanese boy living in Tokyo should not be called “Stanley.”
Historical Records:
If you are writing in a certain place and time period, it can be helpful to look up names from that place and time period to create your character names. For example, when I was writing my westerns, sometimes I’d do a Google search for names of people who lived I the Old West. Then, I’d take the first name of one person and the last name of another and put them together. One instance of this would be to take Billy the Kid’s real name (Henry McCarty) and combine it with the name of another Old West outlaw, John Wesley Hardin. Together, we get the names Wesley McCarty and Henry Hardin. If you’re writing a modern story, you can also do this with the names of people you know, or other interesting names you see and hear. When you go to a restaurant to eat, pay attention to the nametags of the people serving you, as you might find a name you really like there.
Mythology:
I recommend only using mythology as a source for names if you are writing fantasy or science fiction stories. If you write a modern murder mystery and your detective’s name is “Thor Odinson,” a lot of readers are going to roll their eyes. I’d also recommend not using terribly well-known mythological names either. Names like Thor, Odin, Apollo, Zeus, Horus, Osirus, Aphrodite, Artemis, Athena, Freya, and Isis are far too well-known to be used, unless you have characters in the setting specifically point out the namesake. Names Fenris, Morrigan, Dorian, and Mordred are also far too common, and their inclusion in fantasy might well pull readers out of the story (again, unless your intention is to specifically invoke parallels to these mythological figures). However, names like Nikke, Selene, Eris, Argus, and Dia are a little more obscure and are less likely to take your reader out of the story. You can also look up the etymology of these names and find alternative ways that they were pronounced and spelled, because names in mythology certainly changed over time.
The Bible:
I know, this one is a touchy subject for a lot of people, but bear with me. For one thing, a lot of names in modern America (and in the Western world at large) come from Biblical names. Peter, Matthew, Joshua, Caleb, Paul, Aaron, John, Michael, Luke, Thadeus, and many others all come from the Bible. You don’t need to have Biblical themes in your work in order to use these Biblical names, because a great many people named “Peter” came from secular families who just happened to like the name, or who wanted to honor a loved one who had that name. Also, if you’re looking for names that sound a bit exotic but also feel familiar, the names listed in the various “begat” sections of the Bible (where it’s just one name after another) can be helpful. I’d just recommend looking up what the name means before using it. I made the mistake of not looking up a name meaning once, and named a villain in one of my stories “Zadok,” a name which means “Righteous.” Those who knew the name meaning would likely either laugh at the irony or just consider me ignorant. Thankfully, I never finished or published that story. In any event, the Bible can be a great source of names.
Alter Real Names:
Sometimes when writing something futuristic, you don’t want real names for your characters, either from modern times or earlier, neither will mythological or Biblical names work in your futuristic setting. We can’t all be Frank Herbert, who’s coming up with such names as Muadib, Atreides, Harkonnen, and Feyd-Rautha, or words like Bene Gesserit, Kwisatz-Haderach, Ginaz, and Faufreluches. Some of us are a little too grounded in reality for that, and often overly-complex words and names such as these end up confusing our readers. So, in order to make a futuristic name, perhaps start with a real name that exists today, and then change a few letters. Maybe remove some letters, add others, and rearrange some. Just as popular names in the real world change over time (see the various ways of spelling such names as “Sean” and “Geoff”), so too would futuristic names change over the years. Even so, your main character probably shouldn’t have too exotic of a name. Maybe give the main character a name that’s one, maybe two syllables long, but spelled slightly differently from its modern equivalent. For example, you may want a main character named “Nick,” but in a futuristic story it might be better to spell it “Nyk.” Or perhaps you want to name your character “John,” and a futuristic version of that name might be “Chon” or “Jahnn.” In any event, changing or rearranging letters in an existing name can be a great way to make your character feel more fantastical or futuristic.
These are just a few examples of how to name your characters. There are still many things to keep in mind, such as cultural context, the way the names sound when spoke out loud, negative connotations or associations of a particular name, name meaning, and whether the name is setting appropriate.
