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How do you choose your character's name?



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Tue Feb 21, 2017 5:27 am
DrLavender says...



jimss, I love your sense of humor! Honestly. And better late than never! You make a great point about other languages, they indeed can be a huge deal of help. I love the names Shujaa and Chrys. Good point on not making every name diverse in stories of realistic fiction, which is my cup of tea at the moment! Again, I know I gotta write fantasy soon! The characters who I kill off sometimes share traits with people who I may not entirely appreciate the existence of, but then again, the majority of my work involves suicide and depression. The guidance counselor has called me in on several occasions to make sure I'm okay after having read my work, and I simply remind her I'm a writer.

Thanks for your input!
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Tue Feb 21, 2017 6:10 pm
StellaThomas says...



Jimms - Batista is such a cool name, omg I love it too. Your other names are also swell :)
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Tue Feb 21, 2017 7:21 pm
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Holysocks says...



Something I forgot to mention too that I take into account a fair amount when naming characters:

Keep'n it simple! Not to the point where names are boring, but I mean mostly for the spelling. If I have a character named Qlhawliliouxic, how exactly are people going to pronounce that? Most likely in many different ways that may or may not be anything close to what I intended the name to sound like. Plus, someone with a daunting, unpronounceable name is likely to seem harder to relate to.

...Though that's why I love nicknames. >:3
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Wed Feb 22, 2017 4:55 am
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Featherstone says...



Yep, I write fantasy. The other pro to doing it with that method is it allows the use of symbolism for my prophecies and such- for instance, Cornix is associated with the constellation of the Crow and a crow marks his coming. For Agrona, it is for her skill in battle and goes back to some old lore I made. I find it is good for a) giving flavor, b) for symbolism elsewhere in the story, and c) character development.

By 'c', let me explain using Agrona.

As aforementioned, it means 'harbinger of death'. When she was named that, she was being raised by werewolves. She lived on instinct in a kill or be killed world. Later, she changed her name to Tasha- a very common human name, obscurely associated with honor, discipline, and law. This marks the beginning of her change from a feral wolf-child to a member of the Hunters (law enforcement/protectors of the innocent). By the end of the story, she is a disciplined, honorable warrior who upholds the law and fights for good.

I hope that made sense. Anyways, you ever need help with names, feel free to PM me. Or just tag me here. It occurs to me I should have put this in my first post, but better late than never, right?

Good luck with names,

Feather
"All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost."


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Thu Feb 23, 2017 2:40 am
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Tenyo says...



I name my characters after random objects in my close vicinity, and when I run out I name them after things I wish were in my close vicinity. If my characters change them half way through I'll go with it.

Their names very rarely symbolise anything to do with their personalities, and I'm quite happy with that. Names are things that are bestowed upon us and we learn to live with them, they're usually a reflection of our parents rather than ourselves. I like it to be that way with my characters as well.
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Sat Feb 25, 2017 5:06 am
Kale says...



DrLavender wrote:Kyllorac, I love that you write fantasy! I've always wanted to give it a go, but have confined myself to realistic fiction for now. Too many plots I want to write, too little time to do it. Using a name generator is pretty cool! I recall a website in which you'd also get an automatically generated background, which I thought was pretty cool! Never used the site for any of the actual writing though, I think I should just for inspiration.

Generators in general are great for inspiration, though the reason why the Rinkworks Name Generator is my favorite is because you can literally command it to generate names that fit very specific linguistic conventions. Say in your fantasy world, all names contain 3-5 syllables with "int" as the second syllable. You can tell the Rinkworks name generator to generate names that fit that convention.

It's really useful and versatile, though learning the commands does take a little work.

If you ever get into writing fantasy and doing your own conlanging, the Rinkworks name generator is excellent, and I don't know of any others as versatile or customizeable.
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Fri Mar 03, 2017 3:01 am
Rosendorn says...



I use linguistics. Specifically, phonemes, which is the sounds that make up a name. Only, I do it manually while Kyll does it with generators.

I deal with alternate world fantasy and because I use set cultures as my base so intensely, I pick a handful of languages in the region and browse through names of those languages. I keep loose linguistic guidelines in my head but it's so by ear I don't trust myself to actually type it out. I know all my names sound different to my ear, but I have no idea how.

So, there is a process. It's just "uh, I make sure they all sound similarish but I can't really tell you why they're similarish" and the only time I go for meaning is for chosen names (the Emperor's name is Akmal, meaning "perfect." His birth name was something different I haven't decided yet).

I legit picked my MC's name because when I switched from a Western to a Mughal fantasy world, I wanted a name that sounded similar to "Catherine" and Kerani stuck.
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

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Fri Mar 31, 2017 1:01 am
SacredPen says...



I choose mine based on simply my gut feeling, as well as how the names would sound if I had to do attendance in school.

I, as a teacher, would feel severely uncomfortable reading names like "Xerxes" or "Anegrid"
in the morning, so I try to come up with common-sounding, human-like names like "Collin Sanders" or "Carlos Davidson".

The only exceptions are my personal favorite OCs, Zhoma Sacred, Puritan Sacred, and Iverse Sacred. They all have alias names that their parents gave them so they wouldn't feel distant from their nonhuman roots, but their preferred names are Sacred, Jason, David, respectively.

Wouldn't you have an alias if your name was something like that?

The only other method of name determination I use is the connotation of a name to myself, like the name "Devin" or "Derren" sounding antagonistic while "Harpsichord" and "Kiralyn" sound nigh-childlike to me. Personal preference.
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Sat Apr 08, 2017 5:39 pm
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MrPhox says...



Well I don't know why I chose X name for the main character in my story. The name don't really have importance, just the story.

But since my story is fantasy in a parallel world, I invented names for the other characters. Since they are not humans and there are no humans and they don't know what is a human, they don't have "human" names.

I have a link for making names, but its in French.

http://www.syl.vlana.fr/gen/generateur-de-nom.php
  








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