Young Writers Society

I only just thougt of a good way to find names for characters in a story.

I watch movie credits and pick out a few names that link with a character i am writing.

It's a good way to get real sounding names.

I think some of my characters might have problems with being named after the third assistant to the director of Kung Fu Hustle. Or, God help us, the lighting technician from the Colour of Night.

Seriously though, I've heard of a lot of people using this technique for baby names. I guess it works for them.

Im usually pretty good at plucking names out of nowhere, I dont usually go into any great length for names.

Another idea, close to the movie credits one, are phone books. You can find them by letter real easily! It's nice.

I also use the web site www.20000-names.com (I think thats it?)

Aye. I use the phone book for last names sometimes, but I mostly stick to www.babynames.com for first names.

Baby name sites, literature, jumbled up words, it's all good.

I usually use the random name generator at 'Behind the Name' (uhm, you can Google it... too lazy to get the actual link). It helps if you check some of the boxes or you end up with the fairy names for your characters.

Look at the people around you. Take random names from restaurants.

There are a few sites that I use to find character names:

http://behindthename.com
http://20000-names.com
http://www.seventhsanctum.com/
http://www.babynamegenie.com/
http://www.geocities.com/edgarbook/names/welcome.html

Just to name a few.

I find surnames are more difficult to find so i find two words that relate the the character and translate them into another language. Then i use the new words and forge them into a new shiny word!!!

I'm rubbish at thinking up names. Thanks for all the tips, guys!

That's a great idea! Thanks!

I've been writing so long that I have a huge mental database of names... and since I put a lot of stock in meanings, my friends find it amusing to ask me what their or anyone else's names mean. A majority of the time, unless it's really unusual, I know, which really is wicked amusing sometimes.

I do the movie thing too, occasionally, though it seems to be unconscious. For example, for an RPG I'm quite fond of I just created a new character named Francisco, better known as Cisco, who's incredibly fond of and talented with horses. Of course, right after I send the profile off I realize why that name popped into my head--that's the name of Kevin Costner's horse in 'Dances With Wolves!' That sort of thing happens to me a lot, actually...

I have the habit of taking everyday objects and using them for names, like Wires, Bracket and Lime. That or I take words and them spell it wrong to see what turns out, Science become Sencie and Plight becomes Plyte.

I use video game credits when I need Japanese names for fanfics. Thinking about it, I use names from video games anyway...

I steal names from random books, scramble the letters and see what happens. ^_~

Fish > actually, that's pretty neat, Plight becomes Plyte, etcetera.