Character Names!

With my Victorian characters, I just tried to pick names that were just-about-unusual-enough-to-be-memorable, but still as normal as possible, so for the main couple I got Caroline West and Joseph Delaine. Then for the mage characters, I just picked them by Rule of Cool, because mages choose their own names and 90% of the time they say 'screw meaningfulness' and just pick something that sounds cool. But I kind of enjoyed combining unusual/made-up/mythological/foreign-language names with more prosaic ones, so I ended up with a lot of names like Salanda Page and Kyriel Fletcher.

edited 13th Jan '11 9:26:51 AM by cityofmist

Scepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom. - Clarence Darrow

I like making names that are unusual and totally made-up. I usually start with the name first. I also like to make names, just for fun.

My favorite method is to hold down the Option key and type in an ordinary name, and read the arcane symbols however I want. For the lulz, you know. I get results like:

"Iltvierre Youreed" "Kayorl Ihyor" "Ori Kibeer" "Aro'erri Achiorrichi" "Eerice Ilterniakh" (one of my personal favorites)

etc., etc.

Would you kindly click my dragons?

Despite most of my characters being super powered sociopaths I give them all really normal names. My logic is that these people were named by their parents at birth, and they would not know who the kid's personality at that point. This means names like Marcus, Shaun and Rachel. I also have Jane, but that's because she doesn’t remember her name and is thus a Jane Doe (everyone calls her just Jane, so the Doe part doesn't come into play that often). This has resulted in a problem for my Chinese character as I have no idea what a normal girl's name would be, and It has to sound good in English.

Mia

or of course Chen, Chin, Cheng, Chong, etc.

I named my main character Zee, which is a nickname for Zelda. You can guess what she was named after. Her sister is named Stacie, which is a meaningful name, family-wise, since their long dead grandfather was named Eustace. I use relatively normal names in that universe, since it's my "real-life", such as Brandon, Shauna, Donovan, Annabelle, Bree, Owen...

In my Fantasy-verse (Haven't come out for a name yet), I have normal names, Matilda, Darcy, Dave, Tammy, Quincey...and out-there names like Thales, Agni, Moltem, Ismene Nivian, etc. And like Tilitzd said, they all fit the characters.

By the way, I'm starting a new series and have everything all plotted out except for the main character's name. Her name was originally Britta, but it doesn't sound right on her. I'm between Grace and Felicity, both of which fit her fine. Can someone help me with this one really quick?

edited 15th Jan '11 7:54:25 PM by thebarbiemonster

Don't let the pink fool you.

I usually keep a baby book of names on me most of the times though I usually go into a project with different ideas and intentions. My Legacies project revolves around superheroes, so the characters have names that are a reference to writers or artists, portmanteaus or simply abide by tropes like Alliterative Names. Examples include:-

• Alan Broome. Portmanteau of the Silver Age Flash Barry Allen and his creator John Broome

• Dean Donlowe. Alliterative Name and has the same number of syllables as Hal Jordon, whom the character pays a homage to.

• Irma Spink. Irma is Germanic for Noble One. The character is essentially a slightly cynical, but genuine version of The Cape.

Theres sex and death and human grime in monochrome for one thin dime and at least the trains all run on time but they dont go anywhere.

I normally just look on baby name sites for names that not only sound cool, but fit the setting and the character's ethnicity. Sometimes, I look at the character's design and a name just pops into my head. Names may or may not be meaningful, depending on my plans for the character, but it's amusing when they're unintentionally fitting.

I'm not a Pokemon Trainer, you zetta sons of digits!

What Belle-Mage said. I use baby name websites for names that I like. While I do have quite a few characters with normal names, for the most part, I just find normal names like Bob, Jane, John, Bill, so on and so forth, to be very bland.

I like the name 'Qualozet' that I came up with. Awesome McCoolname, definitely, but... it just fits the character I have in mind for it so damn well that even though it looks a bit ridiculous, I just can't think of them with any other name now... and he kind of needs a name like that anyway.

Most of the names of my background characters are puns - Weldarc, Cotan Jent, Tithin, Annila. Curare is of course named after the poison that can both kill or cure. Kylin after the mythical creature. Camelon is one letter away from Camelot, which matches his chivalry. Yuvil and Zygy are names I saw in a maths textbook. Sarah's middle name is Sophia (wisdom) because she's the Smart/Calm one. Axel Nikolai Dodge is suitable for a Chaotic borderline mad scientist.

Pie is yum. So is toast.

A lot of the names are puns and/or word-plays. Some examples are:

The half-vampire half-siblings all share surnames with 19th century vampires: Christian RUTHWEN, Nicholas VARNEY, Jenny WESTENRA, Sara CARLSTEN(My own Swedish, deliberately not that accurate translation of Carnstein).

Many of the [[Fantastic Foxes Sionnach]] [[Kitsune Sidhe]] [[The Clan houses]] are named after the local word for fox or a possitive ability associated with foxes. (Houses Mickelsen, Nyyrikki, Reynard, Lowrie and Fuchs are some examples.)

The Mc Conri clan descends according to a legend from a wolf turned [[Humanity Ensues human]]. That makes it suitable that the name of the clan is Gaelic for Son(s) of the wolf king, and that the wolf-guy's human name is Conan (Meaning wolf.)

The name of the young wizard Henry Mill is a far-fetched word play on Harry Potter. His Arch-enemy is his former friend, the scottich wizard turned vampire Cederic Edwards. (Said vampire comes from the scottish town of Cullen.)

However, most characters are named according to the random given name + random surname of the right nationality method...

I reject your reality and substitute my own!!!

Our artists would put name tags on the people in their drawings. Some of the drawings we really liked and started writing the characters into stories. We only found out later that they were using their buddies' names and we had created characters that were nothing like namesakes, sometimes humourously so.

Whether you think you can, or you think you can't, you are probably right.

Well, here's some.

Oxenstierna D. Yuki-Rin - Berwald Oxenstierna (Sweden) is my favorite Hetalia character. The Will of D. from One Piece is there, because my OCs are from the One Piece world. I was born in February, when it usually snows, and, "Yuki", means snow in Japanese. I added Rin because I liked it.

Wolfgang Katsuragi - I always wanted an OC named Wolfgang and a different OC with the last name of Katsuragi. I decided to put two and two together to kill two birds with one stone.

Hana Yakushi - She is named after a very good friend of mine I knew from third grade until we graduated middle school and went to different high schools in different parts of the Los Angeles area.

Kartik Abingdon - Kartik is very well-educated and cultured, so, I needed a classy-sounding name. I like the name Kartik, and the last name of Abingdon seemed classy.

Phil F. Oldman - His full name is, "Phil Fee Oldman", and he is a filthy old man.

Aria Yakushi - Yeah. I named her after the Aria Resort in Vegas. Plus, Aria sounded like a good name for her.

Halifax-tan does not approve of that

• Bjorn Westlander - started as a name for my D&D character, pretty randomly (it was "Bjornin" at first, after a minor Baldurs Gate NPC), but then I noticed that it was my old nickname translated to Swedish.
• Angelo van Logenswaard - for "Angelo" ask my friend, Pete the Paladin, that's his Baldurs Gate character's name. Van Logenswaard, however, is a reference to Lancelot from the Arthurian legends - very fitting since the character is a knight (and the original was a Paladin, well duh).
• Collech Brengan - a dwarf based on my friend. His name comes from my friend's surname. As for "Brengan", first it's a pun on the Bren gun and second, do you remember that show about a group of secret government agents investigating the paranormal? They had a guy who could turn his body into metal, named Moose Trengan or something like that (the Polish dubbing made me seriously wonder how did it sound in the original).
• Megan Knight - when creating the character for Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines, I didn't like the male Brujah character model, so I created a female instead and named her Megan, as an expy of my Vt M character Mike. Then, I created a female street racer/car thief for a Vt M campaign, reused the name Megan and given her a punny surname (from Knight Rider). Even punnier when you notice where the first name came from.
• Lex Vincent - a similar case. The name Alexandria (shortened to Lex) was pretty random, and since she's an expy of Megan, I decided on another pop-culture reference (this time to Gunsmith Cats' Rally Vincent).
• Shane Craven - completely random. The surname is even misleading, considering that Shane is a former paratrooper.

"what the complete, unabridged, 4k ultra HD fuck with bonus features" - Mark Von Lewis

Wladislaw Mieczowitz.

edited 29th Jan '11 7:36:16 PM by ArgeusthePaladin

Support Taleworlds!

Shinji: Because I wanted a Shinji that wasn't a whiny bitch.

Mika: I had a friend who used it as a screen name.

Aoi: Because it means blue-Green., and they were suppose to be the Blue Oni but characterization marched on.

Sora: For the longest time he was the nameless mentor, but after I cam to realization I named him Sora because he has Brown hair, and Light based powers.

Rin: Her powers are cold and weather based, and if I remember right Rin either means cold or ice.

edited 30th Jan '11 1:02:44 AM by americanbadass

[[User Banned]]_ My Pm box ix still open though, I think?

I have a lot of preferences in names:

Anglo-Jewish: Johnathan, Rachel, Aaron, Naomi. Jewish names are cool.

German: Manfred, Hans, so on. German names are best as masculine names. As are Scandinavions.

French and Italian supplies good feminine names.

Russian names are cool for both.

In Sword and Shield, I named each race from their country of origin/greatest influance.

The elves got Norse names, the Humans are Anglo-saxon, centaurs are Greek, Dwarves are Germanic, so on and so forth.

I am a nobody. Nobody is perfect. Therefore, I am perfect.

Holy necropost, Batman!

To answer how I got my character names is a long story, though I can say that I absolutely refuse to use Meaningful Names, though I do have names that are shout outs. The main cast (or "Nerds") in my comics are all named after people I know, as are some of the secondary characters (mostly villains), though none of them are supposed to "be" those people at all. This is basically an artifact naming system from the early days where my comics were a collaborative project with several other people, all of whom had characters named after them.

Other names come from a variety of sources. I generally had a running gag of characters or groups with one-syllable "plain" names like Joe, Fred, Bob, and so forth. In those portions of the comics that were farther towards the "serious" end of the Sliding Scale of Silliness vs. Seriousness, I used the same "random names of appropriate ethnicity" approach as several other people.

Mine are entirely random *

except two. Explaining one would be a spoiler, although I can say that it's not a prophetic name, it's more in line with Clark Kenting/Sarcastic Confession. The other, Christine Fairchild, is supposed to sound like Rothschild, as she is the daughter of an industrial magnate.

The sci-fi story is supposed to be somewhat comedic so everybody gets names that are in-story chosen randomly by a computer. My main character's name is literally "cat", just translated into another language.

edited 27th Aug '11 7:35:02 PM by Merlo

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am...

In my case, I usually stumble across names that I find interesting and try to adapt them to my characters, though I occasionally stumble into what I can only be called 'happy coincidences'. Just to name a few of my main cast (not that I've written much down as of yet)...

• Marlow William Tiberius Wicks: When I was 8 or so and had yet to understand the concept of a Mary Sue, I created a fan character known as "Waluigi's Twin", and his real first name was "Marluigi" (an amalgamation of the Mario Bros. first names). Later in life, when I was trying to come up with a gunslinging smart-@$$ for this grand drama involving demons, I found my old drawings and used them as a base. I changed his first name to Marlow because Christopher Marlowe's adaptation of Doctor Faustus is what inspired my drama, and his last name to Wicks to reflect his short-temper and proficiency with fire magick. I was originally going to give him the middle initials W.T. and never explain them as a form of in-joke, but then I found out William Shatner's middle name, and my character's a rather Large Ham...
• Damien Hasero / Nero Maes Hadi: Coming up with this high-ranking demon's real name was simple; many other works use Damien as a demon's name, and I was playing the .hack//GU series (starring Haseo, the Terror of Death) when I was trying to think up a last name. As for an undercover alias, I lucked out when it came to anagrams; 'Nero' based on the ruler of Rome, 'Maes' after one of my favourite characters from Fullmetal Alchemist, and 'Hadi'...well, it sounded middle-eastern, there's this war going on in Iraq, and this character is supposed to be feared...
• Colby "Monya" Hasero: Originally a greedy demon just named Monya, after a character in the video game La Pucelle (Monya-Monya, one of the cat pirates). Then, I decided to give him a Sibling Rivalry with Damien, making him Monya Hasero. Later, when I was in a bit of a slump, I read a graphic novel called "The Makeshift Miracle", whose protagonist was named Colby Reynolds. Although I just thought it would be an embarassing name for an otherwise tough demon, later changes to his character make it look like he's trying to imitate famous pundit Stephen Colbert at times...

There's tons more, but to return to my opening line and the main topic of this thread, I just notice names from other mediums that I think sounds nice and adapt them if necessary.

Usually, just because I like the name. I have a document that I write down every name I find that I like the sound of in.

Milo, however, didn't come from that document. He didn't have one for a long time, and I asked my brother "What's a nice, short name?" and 'Milo' was one of the first answers. He got his last name 'Weaver' because I arbitrarily decided that they all had occupation surnames.

Be not afraid...

I love making up peculiar, subtly punny names for my characters, though the pun is often secondary to them being fun to say. Like Ossian Pulver, or Emmer Kranz, Llewelyn Greer or Una Due... and so on. Names are so much fun.

I'll hide your name inside a word and paint your eyes with false perception.

I find it harder to think up last names than first names. As of late I'm very attracted to Swedish first names...

SPATULA, Supporters of Page Altering To Urgently Lead to Amelioration (supports not going through TRS for tweaks and minor improvements.)

I really don't care much about character names, especially the protagonists, who are mostly South Koreans.

The only name that has slightest meaning is Deus Machnum, self procraimed virus/god of machine.

I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.