How do you name characters? ‘A rose by any other name, may smell as sweet,’ but what about our characters? Are all names the same? Can they be interchanged and still carry the same meaning and impact? Does a Fred give the reader the same impression as an Alfred? What kind of person do you picture with the name Marci, how about Mariamne, or Mary, or Meraera, or Malith?

 

Names have power in our stories. But how do we create the right name for every character?

 

Here is a list of some places to help you name characters in her novels.

 

Baby Books

I started with a baby name book. For each character, I’d pick a letter to start their name with and then went through looking at meanings and spelling variations until I found something to suit my character.

 

Internet Name Sites

Next, I moved to Internet searches. Most baby or new mom sites have a dedicated page(s) for names. I like to choose a name based on its meaning. Here’s a few possibilities for searching by the meaning.

• Behind the name, allows you to type in the meaning you want and it provides a list of names from around the world that have that meaning. Or you can search by nationality. http://www.behindthename.com/search.php

• Name Berry allows searches by meaning as well. http://nameberry.com/search/advanced

• Belly Ballet gives you lists of names with their meanings. http://babynames.net/all/english

 

Writing Software

Now if you don’t want to waste hours on the net and have Scrivener, there is a name generator built in. You can to pick a name based on gender and nationality. (Edit > Writing Tools > Name Generator )

 

Apps

I have also found some apps: (these are free for Android, but they might be found for Apple as well—or something similar)

 

• Name Generator
• Fake Name Generator is fun. It will give you a name: Frist and Last, along with an address, occupation, fake SSN, and a long list of other stats.

Google Search by Time Period/Date

I write most of my books with a medieval feel, and use sites for Old English names.

 

• BabyName.ch http://www.babynames.ch/Info/Language/laOldEnglish?listType=LanguageOfOrigin&page=1

 

I have also looked for names popular in the old west. More recently I Googled ‘most popular names in 19—’. When you know the age of your character you can get a feel for the names many parents were giving their children the same year as your character was born.

 

One-Stop Name Everything

By far, my favorite sight is Fantasy Name Generator. This one has an extensive list of possible fantasy characters to choose from, including: hobbits, elves, angels, dragon, dwarves, and a host of others. But is also helps you with “Real Names,” “Place Names,” “Other Names,” (this includes a huge list with thing like: book titles, army, award, candy, invention, instruments, plague, magazine or newspaper names and so much more.) https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/

 

Do you have any tried-and-true ways of naming characters? Share your insights and happy naming.