Names
22 posts in this topic.
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If i get stuck on names, i go to: www.seventhsanctum.com/ , but i feel like I'm plagiarizing whenever i do it, so i just use it for ideas and change 'em around and what not.
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I usually make it up as I do my planing or as I go while writing. And sometimes-this may sound a little weird-the Names come to me in a dream. O.o day dream 'aha!' moments or I wake up and I just know. But I do have a back up method if either of those fail. For towns, countries, and landmarks I usually look up the name I find that describes the thing then if it sounds to boring I translate it into another language. For people I look up different names on baby names sites.
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Try greek and latin names or myths, they work wonders. I usually use names that are found in real world history and that contrast the history or meaning of the place in question. For example, in my world the continents have changed from place and they are not known as Africa, North and South America, Europe...etc., I changed the names according to some fact about them. Say, Africa is now the Gaian land, name derived from Gaia which belonged to the greek goddess mother of the earth. The irony about this name is that there are scientific theories that assure human life began in Africa.
I hope this helped (: -
Making up names for things is one of my favorite parts of writing. When it comes to fantasy, I like to use the cultural aspects of the world in the name making. For example, in the one fantasy I'm writing, character names are different depending on whether they are nobles or peasants. Nobles have names like Saruvio, Ulelian, Thisepio, Clarion, and Alero. I gave them more elaborate, Latin-sounding names that have a fancier, regal feel. On the the other end, peasants have shorter, gruffer sounding names like Gareth, Korge, Genry, Athard, and Magus, in which I used more German and Anglo-Saxon influences. This site:
http://www.rinkworks.com/namegen/
is pretty useful. I'll rarely use a name exactly as it appears there, but I often use it as the basis for ideas and such, making small changes so that it sounds/fits better into the language of the world and such. I think names have an important (but very subtle) affect on how the reader interprets a character. Most of the time they probably don't even realize it either. -
This sounds rather out there, but I use the names of fonts. Some of my favorite font names are Vivaldi, Andalus, and Kartika. And what is cool is that a lot of times, the name of the font and how the font looks fits the personality of the location. Like Vivaldi is this fancy looking font and is the name of one of my "royal" cities.
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Haha, that's so funny. I used Sylfien as the name for one of my cities.
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I look at words that mean whatever I think describes the land, then change a bunch of letters until it has a nice ring to it.
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