For my first novel I used the names of a lot of my family members. It makes it a kind of keepsake that they will always remember I wrote it. Also when other more distant family reads it they will know the names and have a fun time with it. A few of the younger nephews and nieces are characters as well. For the next book in the series I used three of the the teenager family members names by request. So i made them young triplets making a mess in a trailer park. As long as you have family that doesn't gets butt hurt when you use their names for a small part in a book its fun.
I make sh*t up, sometimes out of thin air. Other times I co-op words that just seem to click. I have a character named Magnox, that came from a television brand name (Magnavox). It really all depends. Sometimes I catch myself recycling names from known media subconsciously and have to change them.
To find a name that suits my character, I think about the personality of her/him and search it up on Google because I can't think of good names. If the character is like from the old ages or roman or others, I would search "roman names" or "greek names" or any name related to it.
Literally just Spiaire (Irish for spy) Uomo (Italian for man) for the male lead, his parents were spies from both countries. Literally just Meiji (Japanese for mage) Kitsune (literally just fox in japanese) she's a kitsune woman who uses magic. Still need to come up with their aliases though, since they're both master thieves and steal different things.
I just choose what I consider right. I can sometimes get half way through a story and decide the name isn't right but most of the time the name feels right. I find it's the combination of names that matters most rather than trying to come up with a unique first name. Nobody would think 'Harry' was spectacular nor 'Potter' but combined, they work well.
I use the website https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/ If i want real names it also gives me the option to choose names by country.
https://www.fakenamegenerator.com/ https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/ https://www.behindthename.com/random/
I have a rather bassackward way of doing it. I pick something about my character I think is representative of their character. Take the name Wild Rose. Then I put it in Google Translate and change the language until I get something I like the sound of. Maybe its Telugu which gives me Aḍavi gulābī. Now I use that to base my name on Aldavi Guldavali. I do have a habit if I am world building and making a certain people group to re-use the same language and kind of build my own rules on how to bastardize it for consistency. I wish I was Tolkien with language abilities to write seven dialects of elvish but alas, for me google is as good as it gets.
I've got a few methods. I'm enough of a nerd to try to do the meaningful name thing when possible, although I avoid anything too outrageous. Other than that I usually look at the lists of most common names for the appropriate generation (especially for background characters) or just trawl though Behind the Name until I find something that "fits". I try to avoid giving any characters the same names as people I know in real life in the interest of avoiding awkward conversations.
I choose names based on uniqueness, theme, plot, mythology, etc. It's also important that the name befits a character too. That's why I look into baby names for definitions. Because you don't want to give a goth name to a character who's bubbly and vice versa.
i forget what i posted here (i have to have posted something to keep getting notifications for this thread), and after scrolling 5-6 pages back to find my initial post to no avail, I thought I'd just give up and post again. apologies if you come across my older post and its basically the same thing: my main characters come to me with names already. i mentioned on this site somehwere that i dont really sit down and plan a plot. i wake up and jot down the dreams i have which are basically scenes, no real plot. They are scenes and i just free write with those as starting points and thats how my stories are developed. the names come with the scenes. I "see" the character and immediately associate it with a name ("Royce stepped inside the building" "Orin ran away" "Raven scowled at the note posted on her door"). If i DO sit down to plot a story and characters, I tend to use 20000-NAMES.com. It was my go-to site when i started writing way back when i was but a wee babe (....binging BBC shows at the moment...). I tend to get hung up on last names, though. never first names
I read a lot of books and get inspired by the characters I read about. Sometimes I take names that are similar to the ones I see in books that I like. Also, very often I read ancient literature, in which you can find a lot of strange, ancient and interesting names at the same time.
Scrivener has a name generator which I used a couple of times for my last story which needed names for a Greek character and an ancient Celtic farmer.
Suck em out of my thumb, mostly. Although, I got stuck naming a succubus, so I went to a fantasy name generator (cant remember which one though), pulled a list of 10 names and chopped and changed until I made one up that I felt fit the b*tch
Mervin Clapperflap. Simon Tringlebop. There’s something appealing about the sound of a three-syllable surname.
It’s like this thread was made for me. I always account for name origin and meaning when I name my characters. Becuase I mainly focus on settings in the real world, this is relatively easy for me. Let’s take the protagonist of my NaNo project, Katsumi Kuroda. Katsumi, as it can be implied, is Japanese, born and raised there. Thankfully, there are a lot of good resources on finding the meaning behind Japanese names such as this website and behindthename. So what I did was look up Japanese female names that tie into her characterization. In this case, it was something to do with purity and a definition that conveys fierceness. Here are some names I went through: In the end, I went with Katsumi (克純), as 克 means "triumph over", and 純 means "pure". The first half has to do with the progression of her character arc, and the second half has to do with characterization. I do the same for last names. In her case, Kuroda means “black rice field/black rice paddy”, as can be seen here. In this case, the surname is foreshadowing for something in the NaNo project. It also doubles as a tie-in as being most common in where the story takes place, which is Kobe, Japan, in the Hyogo prefecture. I wasn’t always this diligent with naming characters, so some of my older projects have names I’m not very satisfied with, but too lazy and stubborn to change.
I make up names that sound fun by slamming words together in my head. If I use a name that sounds remotely sensible, there is usually a surname attached that shatters that illusion.
For me, it heavily depends on what I'm writing, and what the character is like. Usually I'll just use baby name websites to find names for my more "regular" human characters, like Dimitri, Aashir, and Zuri, who all live in an alternate version of Earth. Sometimes I use words in other languages as names, but I only like to do this under certain circumstances, like if the story takes place in another world or that character isn't human. Examples would be Aske, a non-human character from another world, or Tao Xin, a non-human from the same Earth as the first few mentioned characters. Using uncommon words as names is fun, too. There are tons of possibilities! I try to keep a list of cool words for naming fantasy characters, but right now it's mostly gemstone/crystal names. Lastly, we have making up words. There are two ways I can go with approach; either base the name after an already existing word, or make something up from thin air. If I can't think something up, I go to a site like Fantasy Name Generator https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/and get inspiration from there.
I smash the keyboard randomly and use the letters to make a name. Ex Oidfuhdue - Odi Fuhdue Cuwygehr - Chewy Gehr Skucyv - S'kuc Yve Stupid but fun.
In the last story I wrote (it's a play), it literally says MAN, WIFE, COLLEAGUE, etc. and it is all happening "SOMEWHERE near X". I am hoping that it might function like that, at least in a play, I don't remember ever reading a novel in which the characters or locations had no names. The story is taking place in between the old and the new life of the characters, so it made sense to me there is a bit of confusion or the sense of being in a limbo.
