Young Writers Society

If your writing realistic fiction and you know what year your character was born, look up the top 1000 names for that year.

One of the biggest problems I see with the character's names on this site is that the author picks a name that is cool during this time period like Ashton (for a girl) or Keegan (for a boy). This usually happens when teens try to write books about other teens. There is nobody my age who has names like that. Names change over the years. And if you're writing a book about a girl from the depression, her name isn't going to be Stacy.

Sometimes if you know your character's ancestry (you should) you can pick a surname from that country (find lists of surnames on wikipedia) and baby name websites have lists of names from certain countries.

An example:

Alison Krueger. 15 year old girl. Present time.


Krueger is a common enough last name and Alison is a common first name from the time she was born. They are both of German descent.


And don't do that lame thing when you put a 'Y' in every name. (Alyson [Alison], Karyn [Karen], Cyndy [Cindy]) Gawd I hate that. It is a recent thing, a teenage character with a name like that is really unrealistic.


Hope that helped. Sorry if it didn't.

If i'm doing a historical one i type 'top 100 names in *insert year*'
Babynames.com is great too

Otherwise i use friends' names, actors' names, and stolen names from other people's stories (with permission)

Or google 'strange names'

Almost all of my characters have unusual names - namely because a lot of the time they are unusual. Take for example Eden - she's an eleven year old with a huge cynicism that largely outweighs her years - resulting in her becoming 'Eden'.
Another one of my characters resides in the land of imagiantion - she's Eden's sister, so there's a nice contrast to the characters. She loves to escape to the lands of imagination - where she can roam unknown lands; naming herself Orli (I love that name!)
My characters talk to me and demand to be given their names.

Reverse a name. EX. Lutra to Artul

Combine two names. EX. Silverwing

Or just find a name generator. ^.^ *shrugs* Last names just aren't that hard for me and I don't know why.

-Aspen

Yeah the phonebook is a great plave to start
if not try names.com

I like going to: http://nine.frenchboys.net/.

It has fantasy name generators, Japanese name generators, French name generators, evil name generators. It's fun to see what it comes up with. It's helped me in the past.

Nariel

I have the baby naming book mum used to find my name on my computer speaker next to me :p
I find it's really handy. I mean, for NaNo I have a mass murderer, so I named him Cain, which means 'the possessed, the original murderer.'

I sometimes am guilty of using names of people I know for writing done about teenagers in the present day, simply because it's realistic. Jayden is a name I've used in the past, and I have a classmate who has the same name. I would just suggest you don't choose a name of someone who's close to you, because I find they tend to end up like the person you know, more then how you intended them to be.

My fantasy names I look around and pick out syllables from words around me, because, it's fantasy, who's going to tell you you're wrong?
Another thing I've been guilty of is using name generators from the games I play. 'Tamia' is a name I used from my saved game on Never Winter Nights... as geeky as that may be :p

Baby name websites. If I hear a name I like I try to write it down, particularly last names, which are always harder for me to come up with.