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Congratulations! Your mind has just handed you a bouncing baby world to build for your story. You're all set, you have all of these cool characters, cool monsters, creative villains, but you have no idea what to name them. It's a difficult thing to master, especially in High Fantasy. The names Zach, Brittany, and Taylor will be of little help when it comes to crafting a distinct world made up of elves, dwarves--- or whatever it is your mind came up with.
There are so many things that need naming: money, magic, landmarks, countries, people, customs, languages, even entire worlds. It may amaze you to know that this list is only scratching the surface. See, it would take me forever to walk you through each and every thing that needs a name.
So, today, we're simply going to learn the art of name calling.
No, I'm not going to teach you how to curse and bully each other. We'll save that for a special segment: the process of creating insults. Today, though, we're going to answer SovaZen's question:
How do you choose names for your characters and places (We'll save places for another piece)?
First, let's establish rule numero uno:
Almost every name you come up with will have probably been used by someone else. Does this mean that you shouldn't use it? Of course not, you silly nittlebug. If you're doing it right you will love the final names you come up with, so who cares if it's similar to another name out there? The important thing is that it represents your character how YOU want it to.
You'll also probably meet this reader, who innocently says, "Oh, I love that name, it reminds me of this famous character from this new series. Did you get your character's name from that?"
Let's face it; you'll feel unoriginal at some point, but we all know that taking inspiration from other works is fine!
And it may even turn out that you have no idea what they're talking about as I did when I found out that I am the only person on the face of the earth that hasn't read Throne of Glass. Apparently, there's some small, unnoticeable character named Rowan?
*Wink, wink* No hate, please, that was total sarcasm. Please don't kill me, Viya.
This, "I'm so unoriginal, someone please burn my manuscript," psychodrama, is something that I am going through right now because my character is named Rowan too. He's completely different, and, spoilers, Rowan isn't even his real name. Still, I'm going through an early mid-life crisis, and I am considering giving him a biker makeover and new moniker.
What I want you to get from this is that you're the author. You can create, keep, destroy, and change anything you want. If you figure out that maybe that once special name doesn't fit your character anymore, find a new one! Rowan still fits my tall, dark, and handsome hunk of a man at the moment, so I'll probably be keeping it.
