Young Writers Society

When I'm coming up with names for characters, I always like to get a personality set down for each character. Let's one of my characters has that life of the party personality, I like to give them very bright and spontaneous names that aren't common.

For example, one of my main character's name is Phoenix. I chose it after I developed his his teenage personality, which was rebellious and such. It really fit with him.

MrPhox wrote:here a place where you can create a name or names for your character(s)

But its in French ^^

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

I don't know who created that website and I don't remember how I find out about this place?

But since its free and no limits, I use it to make names and now I have a list on my HD for names for the characters I commission to be drawn, so I don't have to find a name for its species and a personal name ^^

Thanx. Will use it. Wish it wasn't in French but I will manage.

Usually, it helps a lot to think of a country and time period and google it. Also found this website called Fantasy Name Generators that helps name elves, goblins, dragons, animals, monsters, etc.

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When choosing names for my characters, my most recent being Rhyias and Tazadyn, I typically pick the name before writing the character with my protagonists... I feel like once I have the name it's easier to write in the personality based on who I want the person to be. Every once in awhile though, I'll write a character then the name just comes

http://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/fa ... guxB2hSxPY

This website helps me with getting ideas for names. For example where I want the name to originate from and time period or if I know which kinds of sounds I want I can mash two halves of names together to make something unique.

Hope this helps someone

I have a habit of naming characters based on names I read in news stories and historical texts, especially surnames as it's hard to come up with one off the top of your head. I'll find a name and either save it for later or apply it to an unnamed character. In current short story I've been working on, none of the characters have specified names, including the narrator and the people they're close to, which is both a fun experiment with how you can create and define believable characters without them having names and also partially me being lazy and hating coming up with names (also because the main character is a jerk and doesn't care much about the other people in their life). I've also lifted names for historical characters partially from this oldass family tree of my grandma's family because it's a good way of knowing what names were used back in the day (literally any day, between around the 1770s and now) and there are some really fun/stupid ones which you'd never see today.
Also, while a character's name doesn't really matter overall, it can impact immersion in the story if the character's name is unbelievable for their situation in the story. Think about what sort of parents this character had - what sort of names would they want their child to have? If the character named themself, what would they choose?

Hey, quick Q about the name of a character.

Does Tsubaki-chan sound like a catchy online handle?

This character's the online persona of a trashy romance/erotic manga writer. She operates in the contemporary Filipino comic scene. You know those Japanese manga writers/artists who are vocal online but are extremely camera-shy and soft-spoken in person? Yeah, she operates that way. Her aesthetic is red and black, and she's the quiet, uwu-ish kind of person. A beginner bass player on the side, loves showing her progress online. Loves to interact with fans and other creators, but is decidedly guarded about some parts of her life. She wears a mask in comic conventions, and she never speaks in person. She just communicates to people through her phone notepad and wildly flailing her hands, which she finds cute. Hopefully other people find it cute too.

I've tried other variations of her online handle, all with the goal of being as memorable and optimized as possible. I think any serious creator would want their name to be that. Like, TSUBAKI, Tsubaki, ChunChun, etc. Or maybe I should just dump this entire thing instead for something else lol.

I know this is awfully late lol but I suggest looking up names that mean something. For instance, search "names that mean ocean" or "names that mean fierce". Look at baby name websites, those are very helpful too!

I have found, that the characters that stick with you the longest, are the ones that are so unique, that they don’t seem like a product of your imagination anymore. I have a character named Winter. I chose her name, because her story is very loosely backed on fairytales. I have finished her story in my head, around three times, but have never written it down. Her name was not the best, but her character was phenomenal. It’s too long down the line to change it, and I don’t really want to. That’s why I suggest naming a character sooner than later, but not too soon, because you may not know them well enough.

I have tried to do meanings behind the names, but I’ve found that their names are better if they aren’t forced on them. But, of course, name generators and lists work well for side characters.

Sometimes, I’ll pull a joke on a character, like naming them something that means the exact opposite than what they are. But, again, don’t force it on them. If they don’t fit, then move on. Sometimes, very rarely, the name just comes. When that happens, don’t reject it. Trust me, sometimes it’s better to let your subconscious do the work.

Well, that’s all I’ve got. Have a nice day, and keep writing!

I have an app called Name Generator (yeah, not very creative). You can choose a geographical category and select male or female, then generate names from that language/geographical location. It also generates last names.

Also, this may be a bit unusual, but when looking for names, I've found that it can be cool to look in the Bible. Obviously there are the common Bible names like Matthew or Elijah, but sometimes in the more obscure passages you can find some really cool sounding ones. Because the names are obscure and literally nobody has those names anymore, I feel like they can be good options for fantasy writing. However, when choosing names from the Bible, you might want to take into consideration the surrounding passage to figure out whether the name might be associated with a particular character trait. Sometimes they are; other times they are simply mentioned and nothing more. Anyway, just a suggestion that you might find interesting, if unusual.

Reedsy has some pretty cool name generators where you can filter based on where the names origin is, for which character based on archetype it is and stuff like that.