A Few Weird Ways Of Finding Names For Characters
Although this doesn’t work the same for all of us who write, finding names for my characters from the start is for me always an important task. I need the names to resonate with the personality they’re associated with, and I need to be able to name my protagonists, rather than refer to them as “character X and Y”. At times, I’ll need days to find THE name, and it’ll usually be triggered by something totally unrelated. At other moments, the name comes by itself, or I already have it in mind, and develop a personality around it. Both methods work in my case, which is something I’m glad about, yet I must admit that the first one can be annoying—what if the days turn to weeks or even months? Remaining stuck because I lack a name to go on with a story can be very frustrating.Like in many other aspects of writing, I try to trigger the inspiration for this as well. One of the tricks I use is names generators. It can seem silly or not very “professional”, but while it doesn’t normally provide me with names for my important characters, more than once I’ve resorted to them when I needed to come up with a quick and dirty name for a very secondary character, such as the taxi driver, the almost-anonymous cop, and generally speaking, all of these “courier-types” that I had already mentioned in another entry. It’s a method that works as well, and who knows, it can also help in finding names for protagonists themselves. When it comes to finding inspiration, my take is that anything goes.Then, there are spammers.I really dislike getting these stupid e-mails, even if they make me regularly laugh. However, one thing that can be beautiful with them are the senders’ names. I don’t care whether these are their real names or names they came up with just for the sake of sending their crap. Some or them do sound nice. Or funny. Or interesting. Or all of that at the same time.Today, I got one from a certain “Cunobelius Holsten”.I so totally want to picture a character named Cunobelius Holsten. Most certainly, it has to earn him laughters, lame surnames and the associated angst for the rest of his life. I’m sure that there is much to do, to imagine and to craft simply by taking such a name as a basis to work on.And so it came to pass, that one random spammer may very well end up in a short story someday. Ah, the way Fates drive us.
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Chris Howard
I’ve had pretty good luck with the random name generator, but mostly for surnames and with a high “obscurity factor.” I think one of the best sources for names is to go through movie credits in slow-motion. Skip to the end of the DVD, sit on the couch with a notebook and grab names off the screen. What’s funny is sometimes the crew, the gaffers, the boom handlers, the assistants and CG team members have better names than the featured actors. Good luck with Cunobelius! Great name.(See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cunobelinus)
Yzabel
Indeed, the high obscurity factor gives me more interesting results. not that I don’t want to write about Bob, Jim or Jane, but if I take the care to create c aharcter, might as well give him/her a more unusual name (without falling into the ridiculous spellings either).The credits thing is a pretty good suggestion. I never take the time to sit through the credits (except on funny movies; some of them have fun stuff going on in the credits as well). I’ll be adding this to my list of things to keep under watch for character names. Oh, and thanks too for the link. Some more to add to the genesis of the character! 😉
melly
That’s hilarious :)I usually try to have a meaningful name in addition to one that fits the character. If I need a name that doesn’t sound English I go to one of the “foreign languages” name sites and find a meaning that works for me and that sounds good in my ears.However, it takes me a while to find the right name and usually all my characters are first named J names (Joe, Jack, John, Jennifer)…You’ve got to let us know what character Cunobelius ends up being. A vilain, no?
Jennifer
For the most part I usually know what name I’m going to use. It’s like I can’t conceive of the character if I don’t know there name.I’ve always been fascinated with names though so I usually have a wide variety floating around in my head.The only time I’ve run into a problem was recently. When I started this novel I knew that the main character was going to be used in 7 books (a series) and that she’d be in totally different times periods in each novel. SO I needed a name that would work inth e present in 1825 in mid 1900’s in late 1900’s, during WW2…and so forth. THat was a challenge. I settled on Abigail (Abby) — a fairly universal name.On the point of names, I do believe you have to be careful when chosing a name. Time and setting and such can greatly influence how you should name a character. I recently read a book where the characters name was SO out of place. Good story, but the name seemed so wrong. I think it detracted from what could have been a great novel.Wow I just rambled! Sorry.PS: Melly that’s hilarious that your characters have ‘J’ names. I avoid J like the plague 🙂 (99% of the time) probably cause I hate my name so much hehehe 🙂
Yzabel
Melly, I have no idea yet 😀 Perhaps a villain’s sidekick, who knows. I’m not even sure whether it’d need to be a comic-relief character, or a very serious one; both could work in my opinion, depending on how the whole thing is framed.
Yzabel
Jennifer, that’s a pretty good point, about the time/setting. Because a name sounds great indeed doesn’t make it appropriate for everything. It’s like reading books about, say, France in the 1500’s, and see a “100% French” character named John (since it’s not French at all, it doesn’t work, that is).