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Lynneti
Dec '20

I've been working on a story for a while now and I canNOT decide on a name for my poor main character.

He does have a name that his mother gave him. However, because of fun reasons, he does not go by it. He also refuses to speak during a large portion of the story, which leads the other characters he meets to giving him a name.

He's a half-elf kid who follows an older human around, to the point where people tease that he is the human's shadow.

So, tell me, how do you decide on a name?

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    Dec '20

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    Jan '21
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Lahin
Dec '20

I thought of the characters first. Then I took their most dominant characteristic and tried to find names that mean that. I know it's a lot of work for something pretty irrelevant to the readers, but yeah, it took me some time but I'm happy with it. :sweat_smile:

therosesword
Dec '20

I'm afraid I name them much like I name my pets. They find their own. Once in awhile I'll put extra thought in it, but not often. I'd say the most thought I put into a relatively recent character was MLJ Clegg from Dead Souls Doing the Samba. Because he's the hero I didn't want a romantic name. I spotted the name Clegg somewhere and it just resonated.

Lahin
Dec '20

I remember going through sites of baby names. :joy:
I don't know what my parents went through to name me but even naming my characters was a lot of pressure for me.

cherrystark
Dec '20

I use a bunch of different ways to name my characters. Jamie and Johnathan were named after characters in other stories I liked. My comic/pop culture loving thief is named Robin (guess the inspiration) *I will admit Johnathan went through a bunch of different names before I found one that fit.

I also use key attributes to help decide their name. One character felt like he needed a tough, one-syllable name but I also wanted in ambiguous on if that was his first name or last name, so he's named Cole.

Black_Conscious
Dec '20

tbh, I also have a hard time naming a character because I want it to mean something that goes with their personality and such, so normally I search up a personality sometimes that is in another language and name or I name them after people in history or somethin

TheGentleArtist
Dec '20

I decide on a name whether I want it to having meaning in a story, meaning for a character and/or based on a character's personality and what not.

MrTwennysebben
Dec '20

Once I decided to name my characters after they'd already appeared in a dozen strips I literally just looked at their hair. :sweat_smile: One of them had a Z shape on the side of his head so I named him David "Zonk" Zonkowski, and the other main character I had in the beginning had an M in his hair so he became Miguel. Other names I borrowed from old friends or coworkers or the rare pop culture reference (Ryan, the guy who was trapped in the basement and befriends a rat, has the last name Willard, after the movie about a guy who attacks people with rats). I borrowed Angelika's last name from a German exchange student I went to prom with. Nicole's last name I borrowed from my old Japanese 101 professor in college.

Basically I just "borrow" names. :grin:

faisalhussein394
Dec '20

I didn't give much investment on character's names unless it's the main character and villain.

Such as the title of my comic; Mukhtar is the name of my MC, and in Arabic means Chosen and his full name is Mukhtar Mohammad A'noor meaning "Chosen, praiseworthy of the light".

Mukhtar: Chosen.
Mohammad: Praiseworthy.
A'noor/Noor: The light/ moonlight.

Although, the villain is revealed, he's not the end all be all villain so, I didn't put much effort and thought to his name.

Leverance
Dec '20

I find my main characters' names through baby sites or here. What's important that some names have a direct correlation to the story or character background and personality. Sometimes is picked at what I feel fits best the character without any deeper meaning (mostly to secondary characters).

It also depends on whatever genre I write in, like expectations in names like Romances and Fantasy has entirely different kinds of readers as well. Like I've on purpose chosen odd names in my Historical Fiction compared to my Thriller BoyLove. Such as the name 'Ranor', who is the best friend to a Viking.

It also whatever I vibe directly with the name to the character, I often use hours on naming sites to find the perfect name other times I find it through stories, television series, movies, comics, books, mangas, or games. Everywhere if one knows where to look you can find the name you're looking for. One of the reasons I've got a long list on Pinterest and on my notes for possible names to use.

SaxofonSislak
Dec '20

I take a look to the things I like, for example my two side-protagonist characters are named like other two from "The Office" hahaha

Lynneti
Dec '20
Lahin

Haha! No kidding. I have spent hours on baby name sites. If anyone were to look at my search history, they would assume I am pregnant. :grimacing:

I asked my mother how she picked my name...
"I dunno...I liked it?"

Well, alright then.

leebasil
Dec '20

There are a couple sites where you can input name choices and receive a list of "similar" names. For example, you can input "Noah" and get back Jonah, Mikah, and Morgan. I use these tools ALL the time. Here's one I found now: http://www.magicbabynames.com/1

For me personally, I like to give my characters names that feel familiar but not terribly common, and I lean toward gender neutral or just "incorrectly" gendered nicknames. I named the four (male) protags of my comic Robin, Cas, Lin, and Olive (shortened from Oliver), and didn't realize until much later that I'd given them all girl names, hahah. But I like the vibes!!

I don't typically rely too much on name meanings unless I'm super out of ideas. I named one character Artemis just because I couldn't think of anything else to fit my androgynous redheaded Utena antagonist-looking theatre kid. But I also named another character Rei because I wanted her to have "kingly" vibes, so it just depends on what I need!!

WoollyPAR
Dec '20

That's always difficult. I usually try to make their names puns, a reference to something else, or translate a word that describes them into another language. If all else fails you could always pull out a random name generator. If you want it to sound like a name that seems more exotic, change the spelling of a pre-existing word/name or mash some letters together and add some vowels. Want a name for an eldritch god? Make up a word that's barely readable and don't concern yourself with vowels at all.

ninjashira
Dec '20

I usually go through Babynames.com or use a random name generator until I find something I like. Until then, the first few drafts of my script just label the characters as "Guy A" and "Girl B" or "Main Character" and "Bad Guy." Lots of placeholders! Then when I find something that fits, I just Find and Replace with the new names.

skippyjoeskilling
Dec '20

Naming characters is so much fun. I especially like giving characters nicknames, because then you can think of a name which tells you something about them or their friends, and then their given name which tells you something about their family background. Here's the thought process I went through for the main characters in my comic Truckstop Demons.
Cal Compson - First name is sort of ironic, since Cal is usually considered a 'country boy' name and the character is anything but. The last name is lifted directly from the family in 'The Sound And The Fury' since the character's home life is similarly dysfunctional.
Lorenz 'Laurie' Furuta - First name is one I stumbled across in a true crime book and just liked, and since the character is half German it fit. Last name is just one of the more common Japanese surnames. I picked his nickname because I think a man going by Laurie is very old-fashioned (like the character in Little Women) and he's a very old-fashioned guy.
Bridget 'Gigi' McClung - I asked a friend of mine from Virginia for a very Appalachian sounding surname, and she gave me McClung, which seemed to fit. Gigi is because I thought it would be funny to have a very butch character with a very frou-frou frou-frou name, and Bridget is the most obvious name for Gigi to be a nickname of.
Cassiopeia 'Snips' Snyder - I started with the nickname. I knew the character was a mechanic, so I wanted to choose a nickname related to that but slightly less obvious. So Snips. Then I thought about what sort of first name would be so awful that you would rather go by Snips. Last name is one of the most common surnames in the region she's from.
I also wrote an entire manuscript for a class where every character's name was pulled from the same mommyblog post of 'the 100 best country baby names'. Laine, Beau, Dusty, Porter, etc. You just gotta find whatever tone is gonna work best for you.

milejdyvan
Dec '20

I will be honest... I did not name my main characters... Because I thought at least those names were really important, I had my friend help me. She basically named almost all of them :sweat_smile: only a select few are names from my head. As for side characters, as was mentioned, behind the name is a great and helpful site for that!

ScarletDemon
Dec '20

I use things like fantasynamegenerator.com for things like creatures, magical trinkets, secondary characters and other people, but the main characters I like to put a lot more detail into their names by taking names from their background, where they are, age along with other things like that. I always do some looking into the culture of the character for names.

Like my story, The Wizard of Wall Street, the main characters are Kalman Varga, Hungarian and Anthony Lopez, Hispanic. Kalman means reminder and Varga means cobbler because he is from a rather humble background. Anthony means "priceless one" and Lopez is "son of wolves".

Van
Dec '20

I dunno, sometimes something just pops in my head that would fit