Star Signs - Writing Help

TIP ELEVEN - Naming Your Characters

Naming Your Characters

Naming your character. In a way, it's crossing the Rubicon of character creation. People have all these ideas running around in their mind, but the moment they name their character is the moment they become real. Solidified. At least, that's how I feel about it. When I name my character's, it's when they move from fun ideas to consider to when I've decided to fully explore them (or when I think about them so often it gets awkward for me to never say their name. That's usually a sign that I should just do the first, though.)

There's also an incredibly wide range of ways people address the process of naming their characters. Some people just name them the first thing that they think of, possibly even made up. Others wave their finger around a baby name list. Others will scour the internet for The Perfect Name for this specific character, which fits their arc and plays into the themes of the story.

None of these are "right" or "wrong," and I've done all of them. It really depends on what I'm feeling at any given moment. So, even more so than all of this advice, take this less as a "you must do this or else!" and more as a "if you're struggling, here's some things to consider."

Finding Your Name

How does one even go about finding names? I mean, assuming you're not just making your own name up, that's probably your first step. Personally, I find two ways most helpful.

First is baby name websites. If I'm looking for a name with a specific meaning for from a specific culture, I will google that and usually there's a bunch of websites. Sometimes when I don't really care about the meaning, I'll go the BehindTheName's name generator and click through a couple times.

Obviously this is the easiest option, though I would suggest taking them with a grain of salt. The information from these name sites aren't popping out of thin air, someone's writing them in, and they don't always have to provide evidence for their claims. Also, not all of them tell you how common the name is, which can becomes problematic when you're using names from different cultures and don't just naturally know what that name meanings within it's cultural context.

Put a pin in that, by the way. This will come back when I talk about naming conventions.

The second way that I find names is to get them from people. Whether that be by googling lists or finding a census or something similar.

Obviously you shouldn't just copy paste peoples' names, that's a little weird even if no one else knows that. Assuming you don't find that weird in the first place. I don't know how everyone feels on it. However, it gives a better idea of how names function in real life than just finding and puzzling them together from a website. It can also be very useful for names from the past. Baby name websites tend to just group names into "old timey," often even including modern names based on vibes, which isn't something you have to worry about if you just look at people from that time period.

Okay, back to the naming conventions thing.

Fun fact: not every culture follows the First Personal/Given Name + Second Personal/Middle Name + Family Name format. And I'm not just referring to the way many asian cultures write family name before the given name, though that's also something to keep in mind. I'm talking about how many cultures have different ways of formatting their names, and people often forget about that when making characters that aren't of their own culture (especially people who live in cultures that use the Given Name + Middle Name + Family Name, who tend to assume that the entire world does that.)