The power of names

Leyelle 2024-10-17 13:47:07 UTC #41

Time to get into the language lore. Many phants have "normal" names as well as phant names. most phant names translate to full statements, but this is often because they are describing sounds.

Example: Alayla means "the sound of wind over the water" basically, it's the sound of lapping waves.

Pasha means "the sound of rustling grass"

and so on and so on.

One100 2024-10-23 01:19:19 UTC #42

The names I choose for my characters are entirely dependent on either their destiny or their personality. My character Vita Acheron's name means Life, River of Sorrow. Meaning his life would be depressing. Which really was the case. On the other hand, my character Adebayo's name means "He was happy" He was happy...

Tubacabra 2024-10-23 05:02:49 UTC #43

Some of my names just pop into my head, but for others I use this website. It's a full database of nearly every name in history! There's also a place name and a surname site!

https://www.behindthename.com/

heyroxi 2024-10-23 12:09:28 UTC #44

I am bad with names so the names I am using are names of the people I know, and names of my pets. Me and my brain! If anyone notice it, I am using very simple names e.g Tuk, Leon, Rowell

MelancholicOtaku 2024-10-23 16:20:51 UTC #45

Names are one of the things that I have trouble with mainly because I wonder does the name really fit the character that I’m creating.
For example my Mc name Elyn is Greek meaning torch sunray or shining light. The irony of me giving the character that name is kinda funny to me but for some reason every other name I had in mind didn’t fit.
Names are tricky because it’s the first way that a reader feels connected to the characters.

applebun 2024-10-23 19:07:27 UTC #46

For me it’s based on what I’m writing. If it’s set in the real world, I will look up names from the culture the character is from, and choose based on what suits them best. Sometimes I’ll also get inspiration from people I know or local legends or fairy tales.
For fantasy settings, I either go with mythology based names or make up new ones from scratch, based on what sounds good or sometimes even on whatever letter they start with. For example, for my current fantasy project, I have lots of names that start with A, E, K, L, or M, so whenever I design a new character for that I try to pick a name that starts with, say, B, I, P, U, or any other “unusual” letter.
My “make up from scratch” policy for fantasy names has a downside though, that being, they can have an unintended meaning in other languages. For example, I named a character “Tia” once and all my Spanish speaking friends got super confused because she wasn’t actually anyone’s aunt lol

Leyelle 2024-10-23 19:13:33 UTC #47

yeah, some of my characters made up names have real meanings in other languages too, like Alayla

applebun 2024-10-23 19:36:05 UTC #48

oooh, what does Alayla mean? And in what language?

Leyelle 2024-10-23 19:51:12 UTC #49

It's an arabic name and it means "night" but in the world of my story it means "the sound of wind blowing across the water"

aquashark 2024-10-23 19:57:13 UTC #50

i got meanings for all of my names, my episode names are actually all in latin. My character names have a mix of meanings from the main healer being called Eleanor which means 'light hearted' or 'shining light' to the main character himself being kurai kioku, kurai is Japanese for dark and kioku can mean memory, recollection or remembrance.

edit: kurai can also mean gloomy, ignorant and sober. Which has to do with later on in my story.

king-goldfish 2024-10-23 19:58:16 UTC #51

My world is Slavic-inspired, so almost everyone has a traditional Slavic name, which means I have to come up with a name, patronym, and surname for everyone. I also have a huge cast of background characters. At this point, I will just take any name I haven't already used.

I don't typically pick names with a specific meaning to fit a character's personality or work out thematically because I figure their parents wouldn't have known that when naming them. Typically, I think, what would their parents have realistically named them? In volshebnik world, that probably means they're named after a family member. That means there are a lot of shared names in my novel, though not as many as I think would be realistic because I want to avoid confusing people as much as possible. (What's that you say? If I wanted to avoid confusing people I should have picked literally any other culture's naming conventions? I mean... shut up.)

There are stories where I'd choose names for thematic reasons over worldbuilding ones, though. Definitely in stories where family lineage is not as important as it is in this one.

Leyelle 2024-10-23 20:00:04 UTC #52

honey, I have like 3 characters named Maria in my novel DITRD, because the mains are all Hispanic. sometimes people just share names. some of the Maria's are male (Jose Maria, Andrew Maria)

Mohini9000 2024-10-23 20:31:32 UTC #53

I don't put much thought to character names other than relate a part of them to the character. For example, Tsukasa is a guy who people reading my comic would think is a girl, and I deliberately gave him an androgynous feminine-sounding name to suit this aspect of his character. Ditto for Haru, but Haru is a girl.

Erica is a name that I gave on the spot.
Pierre is a holdover from when I first came up with him in 2019, when I first came up with the idea for Haru and Tsukasa, and same with Juan.
Evangeline was the most feminine-sounding name I could find for my next character - which is really ironic for a "not-like-the-other-girls" type of character, but originally, she was supposed to be an ultra-feminine mean girl-esque character that I would play around with, but I realized that those are a thing of the past.
Lastly, we have Sarah. That's actually short for Sarvazad, which is her legal first name. Sarah is an British Parsi of Indian origin. Sarah's character is meant to be a nod to musicians like John Lennon and Freddie Mercury.

Now, the names of the chapters are deliberately in all lowercase as a nod to some modern-day music song titles. They are also quite simplistic and give a grasp into a chapter.

The title of the comic series is simplistic - Haru and Tsukasa. It's also a nod to another comic strip - Calvin and Hobbes - which is also about a pair of best friends.

Leyelle 2024-11-03 17:27:33 UTC #54

The most boring name meaning of my ocs I think is "Judith." I didn't know it's meaning when I picked it, but it literally just means 'Jewish woman' (technically "woman of Judea) so yeah...like it fits her but it's so boring lol

applebun 2024-11-03 17:36:16 UTC #55

Sure but there are probably some situations where this name would actually be hilarious. It’s fairly common where I live, and I think most people aren’t aware of its meaning (oh, the things most people here are not aware of…). Just imagine a right-wing, antisemitist politician or something naming their daughter Judith because “it’s a traditional name, blah blah blah”… and then their surprise when they find out what it means. I need to put this into a story someday.

The most boring name I have in one of my stories is probably Chris, but the character who ended up with it is a talking cat, so… maybe not that boring.

Leyelle 2024-11-03 17:54:50 UTC #56

lol, i always find it funny when people name pets human names. And yeah there are some contexts where the name might be funny because it doesn't fit, but in her case, it's kind of like "Well yeah. duh."

applebun 2024-11-03 18:04:29 UTC #57

My parents hate it when people do that, though we do have a guinea pig named Leia because of Star Wars.

Naming the cat that wasn’t even technically my idea, one of my siblings named it. I kind of regret letting them name some of my characters, one of the names they came up with was literally Misosoba (???) but I still haven’t found a suitable name for that character so I just go with this lol

Leyelle 2024-11-03 18:06:35 UTC #58

Xd, I have a character named Leia with a cat named Lord Licorice. We've had two pets name human names, but both are rather rare ones. A cat named Ida and a dog named Zera.

My siblings help me come up with a lot of my story ideas so I can't even count how many of them they've contributed to the naming of at this point. They've got good ideas though. Often times even when i come up with a name i run it past them to see what they think

applebun 2024-11-03 18:13:54 UTC #59

It’s so cool that your siblings actually help you with your stories. Mine only do that when I ask them, like, 10 times, and one of them only ever mocks my stories instead of helping. It’s still nice when they help, though.

Leyelle 2024-11-03 18:48:37 UTC #60

Aye. I guess I'm lucky I have siblings who like helping with stories and writing characters and such too. They help me out of writers block a lot