What inspired your characters’ names?

[Kayas_Kosmos]

Thank you! Yes it's pretty hard to keep up, but with study and practise I'm hoping to get faster at it.

[yansusu]

I'm doing several projects right now and they're all either set in China or more fantasy-like based on Chinese mythology and ancient history so the names are also either Chinese or at least inspired by the language.

For Lovely Writing System, which is set in contemporary China, I chose Su Yan and Nie Chang as the names of my main characters because I thought they were simple enough to read even for people who don't know even one Chinese word. I think it did work since I can't remember my readers jumbling them which did happen with other names.

For Oh. My. Fate?! and Romancing the Son of Heaven the more ancient and fantasy-like ones (which share the same main characters since the latter is the prequel), I settled on Qiu Ling, Jing He, and Zhong Jing Yi for the main characters. They're also short which I think is easier to handle for readers. And since it's the reincarnation type of story I wanted Zhong Jing Yi to be named similar to Jing He to make their relationship clearer. He just got himself an additional surname There's also a chapter explaining his first name (which is written with the characters for spirit and righteousness) which was based on the way he was born so that was why I chose that specific name.
I didn't put as much thought into Qiu Ling's name and simply chose it because it fit with my image of him. It later turned into a play on his father's name though.
The secondary characters have it even worse. One of them got a descriptive name that wouldn't even count as a proper name while most of the others just get some name with a meaning I liked and thought that it would fit them. Some indicate a relationship between them though like names that share one character or sound similar. Unfortunately, there are so many characters that I ended up having some characters that aren't related at all and still have similar names.

As for my other project, Like a Ray in My Night (and the prequel A Little Bunny Looking at the Moon because apparently, I have a thing for prequels) I chose the names Mei Chao Bing and Yun Bei Fen which are longer than the other ones. The story was originally a short story in Lovely Writing System though so I wanted something that was 'more Chinese' and might be chosen by a Chinese author (since Su Yan is supposed to be one).
Yun Bei Fen's name also includes the character for 'north' which was important because he was supposed to join the Teng Yong Sect which has to do with the North based on an adaptation of mythology.

[baasinsimple]

Well, different gods from different mythologies, y'know, Mars, Horus, Jupiter, Minerva, Odin, Ball etc mixed with normal names you'd see in south east, rob, peter etc.

[yvesmarcdorsi]

Thank you my dude.

[amberberry]

Em (Emmeryn) was inspired by a Fire Emblem character of the same name, Emmeryn. They have also a slightly similar appearance or FE Emmeryn's appearance inspired Em, which also helped with coming up with the name. I also wanted her a name that could be shortened easily.

Remy's name is shortened from of Remington which I just think sounded cool. It's also reference to Ratatouille which one of the other characters calls Remy.

Carter's name just sounded nice so I picked it. But his last name Thrussel was picked because it "means "song thrush", and refers to a cheerful person" which Carter definitely is.

Alone in the Night | Tapas

[ratscout]

Haha, mine are kind of funny.

For my main character, Eory, I named him after this bully who my sister knew back in grade school. He was this kid who tapped her on the head with a pencil until she got fed up and threw the pencil and he never bothered her again. XD I thought it fitting since Eory's trying to fight being evil throughout the story to name him after a bully.

Pollyanna's is kinda fun, too.
I was trying to think up a name for her, and I was listening to the song 'Pollyanna' from the MOTHER 1 OST and I mostly decided to name her it to be ironic. There's the saying, 'don't be such a naïve Pollyanna'--implying that the person just said something silly or childish, and Pollyanna is anything but. She's literally a bitter, old woman who's seen too much of the world, but deep down, there might still be a kernel of sweet innocence left that she tucked away.

Inheritance :: Part 2. Chapter 30: Love | Tapas

[Panqiuyan]

I just use my name from English to Chinese

[Kelheor]

Hexameron's main hero is Gil because I really love some old German names and Gil is short for Gilbert Because of it, MC of our one shot "Master of Keys" is named Eric. Despite the original name, Gil is just Gil, we will never say his full name and we won't think of it too.
Other than him, we have James (the camp story teller), who was inspired by James Potter and Eugene (the thick guy with awesome t-shirts), who was inspired by my childhood friend with the same name and the same body type
Other kids names were chosen just like that in 5 minutes, because we thought of them. Of course we wanted them to sound more "childish", so they are Billy and Peggy, not Bill and Margaret.
We didn't use any surnames yet, because there is no need for kids to use surnames in summer camp, but they will probably be mentioned later.
Also, this art by Shobhit Sharma is called "Eldritch" and it was probably the first time my writer saw this word, so maybe it was some spark of inspiration for Eldritch Guest too. Though the Eldritch Guest doesn't have any actual name and I had no idea about this art, so my design is not inspired by it, it's fun how they have some similar elements =)

Hexameron | Tapas

[Rootbeer_Jewels]

All of my characters names are alliterations
Carrie Candyfloss
Becky Bubblegum
Chloe Candycorn etc...

except the pets, I name the pets after the names of the people who invented the candy they're based off.
The cotton candy dog Morrison is named after William Morrison who was one of the people who made cotton candy
There's a cat coming up named Renninger after George Renninger who invented candy corn.

Candy Quest | Tapas

[Darth_Biomech]

Half of my characters are aliens. So I bothered my friend to write me a really primitive name generator, which takes a provided list of syllables and just mashes them together to form strings of random length. Then I let it generate 150 strings, cherry picked from the result "words" that I thought sounded natural and nice, and combined a name and surname combos out of them.
I know there's already solutions for that sort of task on the net, but ones I found were either too convoluted and unclear to customize, or php-based, which meant "no customize"

And naming human characters... is a huge pain, actually. I spend a lot of time to think about which name would fit, and then some human characters STILL don't have names.

[Rodimus13]

The names in my comic are all.....

very descriptive

Build-a
Ranger
Query
Red
Blue
Jump bot

... people in that world were rather no fuss when it came to bot model names.

Hue Are You? :: Grey Camp Intermission | Tapas

[tchotchkeco]

Alexandra "Ohm" Santos: Her first name Alexandra was a play on Alexander the Great. I always kind of viewed my main character as a conquer.

"Khan": Was actually a reference to Fallout: New Vegas. I named her after the faction "The Great Khans" because it was just a game I had so much fun with and wanted to reference it. Fallout was oddly a good inspiration for my comic even though it has nothing in common.

"Jason": Was honestly something I picked at random and the fact that I like the name. Sadly not all my characters have deep reason for their names.

Hopkins: Was a name also based off a video game. Took it from the video game "Bully". Loved that game growing up. The main character's last was Hopkins and I just really loved it. So I took the name as a small tribute to that game.

Detox | Tapas

[JeanGuillet]

I found the Feminine form in Russian Afanasii. " Afanasiia" on 20000-Names.com

that's very cool! I've got a character with the male form of that name in greek, Athanasius.

Where I grew up, there was a local custom of giving children 'spirit names' to describe their souls as well as their regular names. I think this rubbed off on me because everyone has sort of 'false' and 'true' names in my stories, and it's super confusing. On another note, I just gifted my latest nephew with the spirit name Whole-Foods Pool-Fence.

[QueenofBabyLoon]

Why am I not surprised by the fact that you are a horrible uncle.

[ang3lba3]

A complete lack of imagination and a desire to make puns for mine I think. I have two characters named Steve because when I was drafting I couldn't think of names, just the general niche I wanted to fill, then I became attached to the idea of actually referring to people in conversation as Human Steve and Wizard Steve. Then there's Nancy, the Necromancer, who I just really wanted to be able to call 'Necronancy' constantly.

Let-go-lass is an elf, and for secrecy reasons they've tried to take a step back from traditional family names since a college professor who was "just there to study linguistics" ended up a best selling novelist. He's very bitter about it, because his family is too old fashioned to give up the names and terrible at making sound a like names.

Then there's Gallant, the vampire, and I literally just chose an adjective off the top of my head. I was going to change it, but I really like the idea that this incredibly awkward person was once smooth enough someone nicknamed her Gallant.

Obliviousville | Tapas

[Misuti]

I have a range of different inspirations or rules surrounding my character names!

Alcots- named after different plants n stuff like that. For example, three Alcots in my comic are named Bush, Bloom, and Sprout. Less creative, though still consistent. Rip Bush she got a dumb name.

Neowis - named after Russian words relating to them, such as Bednyye and Strakh. The only Neowi that breaks this rule is Ruin, but she has a much different role than other Neowis and thus has a Guardian-centered name

Guardians - Named after mean words. Ex. Cripple and Chaos. It's a strange pattern I've developed, since they're meant to be incredibly helpful!

Cahros - Mainly Asian names, since the species is found within Asia. Though, mostly Japanese, as that's where they're the most commonly found. Ex. Eito and Masahiro

Latlows - Based off of latin words, even if random, such as Furrure and Dicere.

All other characters have human names or really unfortunate names, such as Moss cuz.. He can grow moss on his body. Very creative, I know. Though generally when I make a new important species I like to make patterns with their names hehe.

[Mari]

Nem = Men backwards

=_=;

I was 15

[YangKoete]

Random gibberish and google translate for some! Otherwise I just use real names .w.

[demthorshie]

Most of my characters names were randomly generated/selected/made up. My main character's name though, Roxy, was inspired by a good friend of mine tbh.

[375]

Welp I was a weirdo and their names are either based on objects or Numbers (From This Is Fine) or a word I thought would be cool as a name such as Adolescence from Love Me, Hate Me.