‘m pretty sure any writer will tell you: your character’s names are IMPORTANT.
Their degree of importance will vary from author to author, but for some, such as myself, it will make or break that character. If I don’t believe in my character’s name – if it doesn’t fit perfectly, I find it extremely difficult to write them. Which sucks if they’re your main character.
My top tip from this post, however, is this: NAME THEM ASAP. If a name doesn’t evolve or appear relatively soon after you start working on their character development properly, I can pretty much guarantee that the character will not be named easily. If you’re like me, that is. In which case, their name will be a thorn in your side. Potentially for years. (I’m speaking from experience here – you don’t want that to happen. Ever.).
You can, of course, simply force yourself to get on with the business of writing, but it will always get at you – like a loose tooth that you’re dying to rip out, but can’t because dammit, your hands are gone. Sometimes this can lead to hating the character – which is hardly ideal. The only way to fix the problem is to get your hands back, and rip that tooth out, but in order to that you’ve got to find the perfect name.
Depending on what you write, naming characters can be either easier or harder. If you’re working in a world that has names from our world (that is to say, reality), your job just got a lot easier. If they’re fantasy characters, where you can make up the names you’re travelling on a double edged sword, for reasons I’ll outline later.
So. Real World Names
Bliss. When working with characters that take their names from the real world, I obsessively find out the meaning of the names I consider before settling on one. There are two reasons why I do this:
- I can’t stand it if I go looking for the meaning of a character’s name AFTER I’ve decided on it, and become comfortable with using it, only to discover that their name means something in complete opposite with their personality and what I’ve shaped them to be, OR just completely unrelated to them. It bugs me.
- If you’re not too sure about who your character is, or what they’re like, name hunting is the perfect way to nail down some of their basic characteristics (e.g. how intellectual they are, how much kindness features in their nature, etc.). This gets even more useful when you’re developing minor or supporting characters. They’re always going to be more amorphous in the early stages of story development, while your main characters are likely to be pretty strongly defined, but pinning their character to what their name means will help define them for you.
This has made it a LOT easier for me to choose names over the years, as well as making things a little bit trickier in the instances where the name meaning I want, I can’t find a name for (working within a specific culture’s names makes this happen more often).
However, it remains a really useful tool for enhancing character definition.
Made up names on the other hand…
Depending on your ability to make up names, this could be either really easy or really really hard for you. If it comes easily, great – you are set! If not… 🙁
I generally find that in order to name my fantasy characters, I have to know them better. Once I have a strong idea of who they are and what they’re like, I’ll be able to make up a name for them with greater ease. For me, certain sounds will either fit, or not fit at all for a character. Knowing that is just part of narrowing down the spectrum of sounds, consonants, and vowels you can use to make up your character’s name.
Now. If you find making up names hard, here are my top tips:
- Try finding a real world name that you like, and which seems to fit them, and then distort and reinvent it slightly – add letters, drop letters, change the order of sounds around. Just have a good play.
Generally speaking though, you don’t want to overdo it, and put in half the alphabet in order to scramble it. It’s fine if the name still sort of resembles the real world name you based it off. - Find key aspects of your character, take those words, and play around with them. Try combining different elements of them together and see how the sounds sit with one another.
This is a lot easier if you understand the underlying roots of words – for example, in mortuary, the root word is “mort” which comes from Old French, and Old Latin, in which it means “death”. - Always be on the look out for names, words, and sounds that you like the sound of. Keep your unnamed character in the back of your mind, so when something comes along that feels like it could fit, you’ll connect the dots, and hopefully come away with a name for that character.
For those of you out there struggling with naming your characters, hopefully this has been of some help – or at least a starting point for figuring out some new ways for you to name your characters.
