The story behind names

Masahiro's name turned up pretty easily, for some reason. I knew I wanted a name that sounded Japanese, and I knew I wanted it to be slightly longer - and "Masahiro" just kind of turned up, and stuck.

Akane is actually named during the course of the story, and I (... and by extension Masahiro) picked the name for fairly obvious reasons - Akane means "crimson".

The other names of the characters who have turned up so far - Kazue, Chouko, lady Watanabe - etc., do not have that much thought put into the meanings of their names, but puts more emphasis on the way they sound. Fun fact - lady Watanabe is the only character in the story so far to be addresssed by her last name. Everyone else operates on first-name basis.

My naming-process differs depending on the story I'm telling. Aside from Akane, most of the Grassblades-characters get names based on the sound of them, rather than the meaning - but I've got a scifi story where the main characters are named Vesto and Zorya. Vesto is named for Vesto Slipher, the guy who discovered the galactic red-shift AND assisted Clive Tombaugh in his discovery of Pluto, and Zorya is named for the Slavic twin goddesses Zorja Utrennjaja and Zorja Vechernjaja, the morning and evening stars.

I ADORE felines and ancient Egypt, so I came up with "Sekhmet" quite easily. I used it as a nickname and a username for a long time (some people still call me that!...) and one of the main characters of my comic is named "Sekhmet", because she lives in an alternate world/universe where ancient Egypt has left a far larger mark. That's all I can say without spoilers!

The name "Shanti" was easy to pick, as it came from my wife's username on the web.

As for Infected Blood, that's the nasty name given by most people to the species which my main characters belong to. The actual name is AIMS, but common folks, scared and hateful toward this species, came up with plenty of fake rumors, including that AIMS' blood carries all sort of diseases. Ignorance and racism/speciesism are two of the most horrible human traits, and it's something I wanted to represent as strongly as I could. So, siding with Sekhmet and Shanti, I own that name as if it were mine

... >.>

I says random names out loud until I find one of them sticks and matches the characters

... Thats about it. Ironically Bowen means of Noble born! .... or son of Owen XD

Ha! yes the same here! I wonder what Tebetha means. Oh it means Gizelle (if you follow the variates) beauty and grace, yeah that kinda works too. Hmm wonder if Garfric is a name ...

Some West names came before the characters, others I didn't decide on until the last second. None of them have a meaning as such, though Serge fits quite well, but I know when the name is right and after that there's no changing it.

Jed was originally Jet. Then Ged. Then Jed.

Glista was always Glista.

Morris was like, 'yeah, that seems right'.

Serge I had been struggling with and was like YES THAT'S THE ONE when I found it. Then I forgot about it completely and had to find it again.

If you're looking for names, I highly recommend watching end-game credits from the Assassin's Creed series and other similar franchises. These games are made by teams that are massively multi-cultural and the credits for them go on for a very long time. It's a constant stream of unusual names and you can sit there listening to the music picking out the ones you like, mashing them up a bit or whatever. Games, films, shorts, bibliographies, anything with credits is a really valuable resource.

OMG the amount of re-naming I've done because I forgot their name!

Names are haaaard to choose, no joke. Sometimes I'm lucky and a name will pop instantly when I make a new character but frequently it's long time poring over name directories. It bugs me to no end when I can't find a name to match a character, a name that sounds and feels just right. That time I hate naming as much as I hate designing hairstyles for characters!

For my own nickname, it's a remnant from my years of japanese language classes. Jigoku Neko= Hell cat or Hell-o Kitty as a pun. Because I love cats and I think I may have been reading Pet Sematary at the time so the concept of zombie cats from hell was amusing to me. It's a bit weabooish but eh, it's too familiar to change even if I wanted to after nearly a decade of going by it.

Aw man...hard one. I'm not really sure....hmm. for character names I usually thumb through baby books or websites...it usually comes down to intuition.
I'm TRYING to remember where Thomas and Rick's names came from...That was so long ago....
oh oh....well, this might sound strange considering the content I write but originally Thomas' name came from my dad's middle name. I happened to be looking at something with his middle name. Saw Thomas and I went that fits...but Rick...I think I was just flipping through a name book. Nothing to exciting.

As for my comic...that just popped into my head one day when I was writing a scene. Rick was "confessing" to Thomas about his feelings...so that's how Confessions got it's name.

My names don't have any particular order they follow...

I don't know how I came up with my main character's name (Ephelia), I have a penchant for E-names and I just thought it was a pretty name.

Two of my names are from Ragnarok Online, Magnus and Eucharistica.
In RO I mained a priest and one of their skills was called Magnus Exorcismus, I was like, what a cool name! I love it! It's also pretty and vanquishes undead scum into nothing but delicious experience points.

Eucharistica is also a priest skill, I thought it would make a pretty girl's name.

Then there are these twins in my story named Jay and Yubela, who used to have different names. Then I found out AFTER I renamed them that there are two close Yugioh characters named Jaden and Yubel...

I also have a character named Fulgur whose name I pulled out of my ass. I put my hand up my rectum and just pulled it right out. I later was playing Recettear and saw that the translation team was called Carpe Fulgur. I said "Hey that's my character's name!" Then I found out Fulgur is Latin for lightning and fulgurite is also a rock. Well ok.

Oh, I guess my last name of some significance is Mariel, which I think is a beautiful name, but I got it from when I played SEAL Online way back when. Mariel is a high level angel enemy with a lovely voice!

oh my gosh when I play Pokemon I just named them all after types of sweets and dessert because I felt hungry all the time lmao
My starter in Pokemon Emerald was a Blaziken named Candy. I think my Gyarados was Strudel. My Aggron was Biscuit.

This website may help you Names with meanings

When it comes to character names, I like them to have a meaning relating to something in someway, like thematically.

• Roxanne - “Dawn” / Herschel - Surname of various Astronomers
• Cassandra - (roughly) “Shine upon mankind” / West - Direction the sun sets
• Annika - “Favor; Grace” / Draper - Surname of an Astronomer who was also a Doctor
• Priscilla - “Ancient; Classical” (picked it cuz I liked it) / Fairfield - Surname of an Astronomer // Her whole name is actually the name of an Astronomer

• Hazel - Sounded witchy, like Witchhazel / Spellmann - Surname of an Astronomer // Hazel was also the name of the Astronomers mother, which I found out later, also like Sabrina

• Noriko - “Law child” / Hoshimura - “Star village” // Names also inspired by Noriko from Nanbaka and Makina Hoshimura from Corpse Princess.

• Nadia - “Delicate” but chose it based on Sayid’s love from LOST / Sattari - “Star”
• Gemma - “Gem” / Ramirez - “Son of Ramiro”; Ramiro meaning “wise protector” // Picked Gemma from “Gemini”
• Melanie - “Black; dark” / Moon - “literature; culture; writing” in Korean, plus it’s just “moon” in English

• Samar - “night (evening) conversations” / Lucretia - “profit; wealth”, also partial name of an Astronomer

• Jericho - “City of the moon”

• Regina - “Queen” / Hightower - Self-explanatory
• Angelica - “Angel” / Evangeline - “good news”
• Evelyn - “desired; life” / Greene - “green”
• Michonne - Named for character in TWD, seems to derive from “Michael” / Leone - Comes from “Sierra Leone”, intended to mean “Lion” // And yes her name rhymes

Some of these were picked just cuz I like how they sounded while others have deeper meanings that only the truly determined can make the connections of. It’s like my own Genius Bonus.

But I decided to let the Heavens inspire most of my character names.

Two characters are named Baphomet and Mara, based on demons, i used those names in my series Baphomet's sheep, and now i'm reusing those name for Baphomet's sheep v02.

The main character, i look at a list of Korean names and their meaning and pick one. Thinking Koreans read my thing, but then idk...i feel most of my readers are from USA.

For main characters, I'd google baby names meaning
Then I'll just pick names that fits their personality/characters.

For example, the Emperor's name in my story "The Emperor and His Thief" is Qin YiJun. Where Yi, means resolute/firm, and Jun means king/monarch (at least according to behind the names website).

Love all the responses on this topic, because I love coming up with names, too. When it comes to my pen name, Kit is a nickname for middle name, and Daven is the feminine Welsh form of David, which is one of my all time favourites names for some reason. As for characters, sometimes the name comes to me out of nowhere, like the main character in The Forgotten Gemstone, and sometimes I have to hunt for it, and I'll do every resource, baby name directories, family trees, go to the cemetery and look at headstones, name generators, credits at the end of shows/movies. Sometimes meaning of the name is important and sometimes the name just sounds great. Very cool Topic.

I actually don't spend much time on names usually! With Tapas project, I liked the name Leo (lion) for my MC because a Lion is a beast of it's own. Just a small thought that crossed my mind when I chose it. The Beast's name hasn't been revealed yet since he's still a Beast who can't talk.

With my other novels (not on Tapas) I just googled a list of names popular the year the characters were born and chose a name from there. In my most recent novel, I have a family from Mexico so I chose a Mexican last name for them, but again, I just googled popular last names.

After reading some of these responses I feel like I'm not putting near enough thought into names choices lmao

My pen name is one letter short for the amount of letters in my real last name and I just like the name Scott so I chose it for my last name.

It changes for every character. I actually had many as TBN for a while on my notes, but sometimes it comes from a word I hear/mishear, a movie, or just something fun I find in Etymonline.

Mortimer and Dylan mean "still water" and "tide" respctively. Mort's name is the oldest thing in the entire comic creation process so I no longer remember why, but I chose Dylan's name to contrast in both personality and approach to things, while still being the opposite side of the same coin as they got along well despite that. (as a bonus, their father is named Windebrook, a brook being the middle term between them)

Others have... Far weirder processes. All the Amberhobs' names come from the single scrapped character that they came from named Claws, evolving into a naming system for the entire species of a gem+sharp object or just the latter. Veriesin is a combination of Vera and Taliesin because I was reading a lot about celtic mythology that week. High Priestess Dismacyndra is by far the weirdest, being the combination of my favorite Final Fantasy XII enemy and a mispelling of Cynder from the Spyro series I heard one time.

My main username, Iris-Grimoire, came from a long series of attempts to name something like the term "purple prose". Eventually adopted it as an artifact my mascot, the little dragon wizard in my icon, uses.

extra: a character from the same universe as Splitting Image but not in the comic, Master Sufreed, is named after what I hear in Rivers in the Desert from Persona 5 in place of "so perseverent". I still can't tell that's actually being said.

My user name I actually (oddly) did a YouTube video on it because it gave me an excuse to talk about CLAMP and some of my favorite mangaka.

I got my name because I didn't want to use "aislinndragon" anymore, so I chose my favorite color and just went with that for my persona :3

My character names...some of them are hard to pick and some not.

Rhiannon I chose 'cause my sister would have been named Rhiannon if Dad hadn't thrown a fit (I mean, Mom's the one who pushed her out. I'm glad she told Dad to shut up with me :3 I like the name Ashleen (Aislinn, she spelled it so people could pronounce in the US. Hint: it didn't work. XD ) So I'm paying homage to what could have been for my sister.

And I like the song, though admittedly the character's mom named her after the Welsh witch.

Kanna is deceptive because her name's really Kandace Vanessa (middle name) but her friend, Rhina's mom is half Japanese and she decided to give her friend and Asian sounding nickname, even though Rin herself is really more Americanized and knows only a little bit about Japan.

I'll keep it short. Most names I chose either have a meaning, or I just really like ^_^

I always sucked at naming/or creating nicknames for myself. That's it. Current nickname is just random thing which wandered in my mind. And 102 is code of the region where I live in vehicle license plates system (it was 02, but they ran out of plates around 2008, then it became 102, and it seems they will run out of them again at the end of this year, so next will be 702, heh).

For characters... I prefer to use names which doesn't have a clear analog in Russian language, just for fun Of course if my work set in country other than Russia.

Vothn Thorvaldson is a serious pseudonym. I don't use much my birth name anymore for various reasons. At the beginning, it was simply the name of one of my PC in Morrowind. I got used to it and kept it. I've been using it for around 10 years now.

When I started getting interested in webcomics, though, I started as 'Nabulsi Cheese Secret Cult Inc.', but as much as I love the idea of legally incorporating a secret cult (!), I thought it was too silly for an author name, so I changed to Vothn Thorvaldson.

The story behind this one is that one day, I was behind two ladies at the till at the supermarket, and one was telling the other about premonitions in dreams and the other one was telling her she was not sure about the truth of all that, as a Christian; so the first lady told her she thought all dreams were sent by God and that every dream, if well interpreted, was giving important intructions about how to live your faith etc.
I was only listening with one ear because I'm not a believer, but then I realised that the past night, I had dreamed about counting the nigella seeds in the back of an anthropomorphic Nabulsi cheese, and it took a lot of self control not to burst into laughter trying to imagine what kind of spiritual guidance that dream was providing!