Name That Ten

Ten Things to Help with Creating Character Names

Briam Klems's 7 Rules of Picking Names for Fictional Characters.

Use the search engine at Behind the Name to find the origin and meaning of a first name.

The Character Name Generator will help you generate a name and a personality for your character (you can also customize with several ethnicities and birth eras.)

To figure out who your character is (which can help you come up with a good name for them) try Rick Hamper's Character Profile Sheet.

How writer Mervyn Love uses maps to name his characters (which has historic roots in actual, real-world naming.)

Need a name that means something secret or mysterious? Here you go.

Find out what your naming personality type is with this name quiz from Name Nerds.

Seventh Sanctum has twenty-four different generators here to help you name everything from an angel to a vampire.

Try my telephone book name game here to exercise your character profiling skills.

Find names from all over the globe at YeahBaby.com.

Scrabbling Ideas

I've been playing Scrabble® since they tried to teach me how to spell in elementary school, and after chess it's my favorite board game. It's an excellent way to spend an unplugged evening with the kids. We regularly have Scrabble® nights here at Casa PBW, and (when I can get a couple of teams together) the occasional Scrabble home tournament. Last weekend Mom and I paired up and kicked everyone's butt all over the board.

I also have an electronic version of the game that allows me to play against the computer. A game takes about ten minutes to play by computer so it's the perfect mini-break past time. I usually win about half the games I play up to the expert level, at which point I always lose, but I do try to be graceful about it. Plus one of these days I am going to beat it; I just have to figure out how to make a word out of Q, J, K, X and three Is (I swear, the expert mode always sticks me with the worst letters.)

A Scrabble® game can be used for other things, too. Tonight while I was playing against the computer these were the first three words that landed on the board:



I arranged the words in my head -- Lost City Loot/Loot Lost City/City Lost Loot -- and realized I had three different basic premises for a story: Someone finds treasure from a lost city; a lost city is discovered (and looted); a city loses its treasure. While I probably won't get story ideas from every game I play, from now on I think I'm going to be paying more attention to what lands on the board.

At the moment I'm putting together a trilogy proposal, and I needed six names for the protagonists. My usual methods weren't producing much, so on a whim I took out my hands-on Scrabble® board (Diamond edition, naturally) and started playing with the tiles. I had the first four names I needed in a couple of minutes, and after switching out tiles for a while I hit on the last two. I even got a bonus in the process; the name of the character who brings the final two protagonists together.



Although the limited number of letter tiles can seem restrictive, I find it's actually a good thing. I think in some cases too many choices can be overwhelming. I had to do some creative thinking while I was working with the letters versus using as many as I wanted, and that helped me focus on what was important. If you want more letters, you can make your own from squares of cardboard, or pick up an extra game from a thrift store just for the tiles.

Other ways you can use a Scrabble® board:

Set up keywords and rearrange them to find new ideas for titles, settings and other named story elements.

Work with the tiles to coin words for world-building purposes.

Sort out the names in your story by first letter and eliminate sound-alike given names (this prevents your cast from sounding like a new branch of the Duggar family.)

Have you ever used a Scrabble® board to work out something with writing? Are there any other ways you can think of using one to help? Let us know in comments.

Noun Names

Recently I picked up a mid-series novel (which was not written by anyone who visits here, but we'll let the author remain nameless anyway) that I was pretty interested in reading from a technical standpoint. Often I like to see how other writers handle some problems that are inherent to writing series stories. This one did an okay job with the problem in question; a little on the soft-serv side but not anything that chased me out of the book.

There was one thing the author did have in the story that just about drove crazy me, however: a character with a noun name.

Using a random noun to name a character in a story is a tricky business for a bunch of reasons. Prevalence of use is the first hmmmm on my list; since we got over the sixties there just aren't that many people walking around with names like Dancer, Starlight, Saffron or Journey. Of course noun names make terrific nicknames, and as such I use them all the time, but as proper names? No.

Then there is reader reaction, which can't always be predicted or anticipated. The noun name in this case happened to be something that I personally intensely dislike, so you can understand why I wanted this otherwise very nice character dead by page ten. You can't assume that everyone is going to share your enthusiasm for any noun names you use in a story.

If you are determined to use a noun name, consider having it fit the story as well as the character. A cowboy in a romance named Nevada or Buck would not be as glaring or jarring as one named Neptune or Metro. Also, if you don't know what a noun means, look it up. Peyote may sound cool to you, but it's a botanical from which the hallucinogen mescaline is derived. Not really something you'd want to name a DEA agent.

Other things to consider when contemplating the noun name:

Hateful nouns: Of course there is always some dingbat out there who thinks it's funny to name their child Booze, Wifebeater or Zombie. But most parents generally welcome a child into their lives, and choose a name that has both meaning and love attached to it.

Nouns in other languages: be sure you know what that very cool word you spotted during your European vacation translates to in English. This avoids multi-lingual readers being jolted out of a story by characters whose names mean Vomit, Abortion or Toxic Waste.

Pop culture nouns: What is a fad today will be a joke (or worse) tomorrow. Just ask Pop Rocks Smith, Mood Ring Jones and Cabbage Patch Perkins.

Date nouns: Days of the week and months of the year are probably the least offensive noun names, but often they can become visually confusing for the reader, ala On Tuesday Thursday went to the store or "Do you have an opening in July, April?"

If you are determined to use a noun name for your character, first do a search of the noun to see what meanings and connotations are already attached to it. If any celebrities have used it to name their kids that's usually a sign that it's a terrible choice. Another litmus test is to consider if you would use it to name one of your own children in real life. Whatever objections you think up are probably going to be mirrored by at least some of your readers. If you have a trusted writer friend (aka someone who won't steal the name from you) ask them what they think of it.

One final thought: employing noun names for characters is like cooking with cilantro. Don't expect your choice to be popular with everyone; some people will love it, but others will think it tastes like soap.

Name Clouds

I have long been looking for a source of names for people of different ages, and I found one surprising source: The Social Security Administration. Using their baby names search engine, I can pull the top 100 most popular names for U.S. boy and girl babies born every year after 1879.

Finding this site also helped me solve another naming problem that frequently plagues me: what to name married couples. First I just pulled the 100 most popular names of their respective gender and birth year and ran two columns side by side, but I wanted to mix them up and see them in different combinations. Which gave me an excuse to go and play with Wordle.

Here's a cloud that contains the most popular boy and girl names from 2010 (click any image to see a larger version):



Here's another cloud, using the most popular names from fifty years ago:



Finally I Wordled the most popular names for babies born in 1880:



The best thing about feeding my potential lists to Wordle is that I can keep switching around the name cloud to get different combinations if I don't like the first results. This would probably work great with pairing first and last names, too.

Btw, for you folks who love to play with words, art and phone apps, Wordle creator Jonathan Feinberg mentioned on his blog a new app called WordFoto which reimages your photos into photo/word art. Although I can't personally test it out (my mobile phone is the throwaway kind that only makes phone calls), I meandered over to the app store and checked the price. It's $1.99, which seems quite reasonable.

By Any Other Name

Growing roses is one of those things you do if you're kind of a masochist, as they can be the biggest pain in the garden. But the payoffs are very nice, and if you're interested you can check into the variety names and find out a little more about them.

Some rose names don't need a lot of explanation. For example, here is my Don Juan:



When you have a lush, romantic, beautifully fragrant red rose that climbs a trellis as quickly and easily as a thief in the night, what else are you going to call it but Don Juan?

Some roses have more complicated names, occasionally in different languages. Take my Rosa Tanabamar Caramba:



I wish I could do justice with my camera to the exciting, blazing colors of this rose. It can't be done; you have to see them in person to get the full smack in your face. Caramba is a Spanish interjection that means anything from good grief to damn it, and that suits the visual impact of this bloom exactly (although I think I would have named it Wildfire.)

Sometimes names have a great backstory that comes along with them, like the Sunset Celebration:



Back in 1988 Sunset magazine celebrated its 100th anniversary, and to help mark the occasion a hybrid rose was named after it. This variety, known as Warm Wishes in the UK, has a fairly wide range of colors (which are all golden-pinkish sunset shades.)

Funny thing about this one; I'm not convinced it is actually a Sunset Celebration. It's pale yellow with a darker apricot center, which fits the descriptions I've read of the variety's many colors, but the shape of the petals and leaves make me think it could be a variety of Floribunda someone mislabeled. I'm certainly no rose expert, so I'm having a more knowledgeable friend who is take a look at it the next time she's in town.

So what do the names of roses have to do with writing? Everything.

One of the most potentially memorable aspects of a character is what you name them. Names can be anything from beautiful, clever, exciting and illustrative to ugly, stupid, boring and dishwater-dull, but they should say something about the character the moment the reader is introduced to them.

I have a very specific process involved in character naming, which almost always includes historic resources, but I invent many names, too. Most of my characters' names have at least two meanings: one for the reader, and one for me. I frequently coin names from anagrams or acronyms; Jayr in Evermore was named after a few letters found inside a worn ring. She was also named after something else that I didn't tell the reader but that had intense personal meaning to me. In a way it's a private brain-jog; every time I used Jayr's name on the page I was reminded of why I chose it. I also like finding or coining unusual/uncommon names because it usually discourages other writers from appropriating them for their books.

What do you think about when you consider naming characters? Do you have a process that works for you, or are you more organic and just let the names come to you? Let us know in comments.

Extreme Character Names

I stopped by Seventh Sanctum to test drive their latest online name generator, Extreme Fantasy Names, and about laughed myself into a stitch over the results:

Chastity Solitaire
Curse Lord
Eternity Typhoon
Grave Amberviolet
Honor Rubyseeker
Machete Lanceknight
Opera Victory
Purity Roguelord
Reaper Killerhunter
Sheol Maverick
Song Rogue
Totem Grimdread
Valentine Talon
Warden Chaos
Warlock Shadow
Wind Direcaster

Actually I like extreme character names if they're single words (Machete Lanceknight might be really silly and over the top, but Song and Reaper by themselves aren't bad at all.) I also don't mind if an author uses extreme names that seem ridiculous to me because it's a personal style thing, and getting upset over it would be like me spitting on every woman who wears sunshine yellow (which I don't. I promise.) I'm also sure some of mine are just as laughable.

I gravitate toward unusual, rare and coined names, but I don't think the majority of mine are especially extreme. Still, I've been forced to rename five female protagonists and two males; the most common complaint has been that my female name choices aren't "pretty enough" and the male name choices are "too uncommon."

A bit of Darkyn trivia: if Jayr hadn't already been mentioned in Dark Need, my editor would have made me change her name to something else before the publication of Evermore. Another "it isn't pretty enough" situation. Still, despite its apparent ugliness, Jayr's name has (to my knowledge, anyway) never earned a single reader complaint.

The two extreme character names that are forever burned on my brain: Bellis Coldwine and Lovey. The first is one of China Mieville's characters, and while his Dickensonian approach to naming characters generally doesn't bother me, that one always crawls up the back of my neck like jabs of an ice pick. Every time I see it, I envision a barfly projectile vomiting a couple gallons of cheap Sangria. Don't ask me why, I just do.

I can't remember who had a character named Lovey, only that it was a romance novel. While it may not be considered by most readers to be all that extreme, my Pavlovian response to it certainly is. Lovey is what my least favorite relative used to call me during holiday visits as she was appraising how little I'd improved over the last year: Oh, lovey, that pixie cut is just not right for a girl with a big old face likes yours orYou should eat more, lovey, you're all knees and elbows. So every time I see or hear the name Lovey I want to go kick a nasty old lady in the shins.

How do you guys feel about extreme character names? Have you ever been tempted to christen a Chastity Solitaire or Machete Lanceknight in one of your stories? Any extreme character names permanently branded in your memory?

The Weird Name Game

I've been playing with the generators over at Seventh Sanctum again, and I found the Weird Name generator that doubles as a fairly decent name/title/story idea prompter, too -- or at least it does for me.

Upfront disclaimer: the generator does produce some laughably weird names, such as Marquis with a Mouth of Fire Who Inherited the Canyon of Frost (so much for his inheritance) and Frozen Monk with Lips of Emerald (where is Isabelle Allende when we need her?) But it also came up with some pretty neat stuff, too, like Duchess of the Silver Knife and Uniform of Dreaming (the latter not really being a name at all, but a terrific story starter.)

Here's a list of some other interesting weird names I generated:

The Illuminated Knight
Bow of Silence
Profane Spear
Singer in the Misery (there's the title I want for my biography)
The Astral Official
Bracers of Fire
The Screaming Walker
Chime of the Vault
The Crazed Courtesan
Winter of the Shrine

Also, some of the more ridiculous weird names had interesting story concepts incorporated in them that you might be able to use once you weed out the silly stuff, i.e.:

The Angry Hero Who Takes Shadows
King That Enables the Ever-changing Ossuary and is Bound by Eternal Dreams
The Courageous Queen Holding the Gold Cutlass and That Keeps the Labrynth of Gold
Astral Wanderer That Destroyed the Room and is Fed by the Crystal Citadel
The Cruel Inquisitor with a Mind of Zoisite Who Makes the Tower of Silence

The one that really made me laugh and would make a killer chick-lit story idea or title: Princess Orientation.

If you have a chance, head over and play with the Weird Name generator, and post what you think would make a great name, title or story idea in comments.

Ten By Any Other Name

Ten Things to Help You With Naming Characters

Freeware caution: always scan free downloads of anything for bugs and other threats before dumping the programs into your hard drive.

1. YeahBaby.com's Baby Name Generator allows you to customize gender, number range of letters, and provides origin and meaning with the very long lists it generates.

2. Author Barbara Delinsky has some suggestions at her blog on How to Pick Character Names.

3. Mervyn Love suggests using a map to inspire your character names in his article here.

4. Jason M. Tucker's article Naming Your Characters points out the virtues of J.K. Rowling's colorful way with character naming.

5. Caro Clarke's many writing advice articles includes this one, Problems with names and how to avoid them.

6. Get up to 50 suggestions for male or female character names with Seventh Sanctum's Quick Name Generator (or check out the many other name generators on the SS's link index page.)

7. With BehindtheName.com's Random Name Generator, you can customize it by number of given names, gender and even nationality.

8. My favorite online naming toy, Kleimo.com's Randon Name Generator, uses names from U.S. Census data, and gives you a 1 to 100 scale to customize how common or obscure the names generated are (1=most common, 100=completely obscure.)

9. Random Names 2.0 freeware offers 2900 male and 4900 female names for you to shuffle through (OS: Win9x/ME/2k/XP)

10. Need a mysterious name that actually means secret or mysterious? 20000names.com has put together an entire page of them.

If you have any links to great online resources for names and want to share, please post them in comments.