As for how I choose character names? On the rare occasion that I write fiction, I choose euphonious names, ones that'll flow well with the sentences containing them. No use having a character named "Maximilian" or "Mildred" unless your setting specifically calls for it.
Sometimes I'll get lucky and a name will just pop up (like it did for Jack.), but often I research names - I like to go by the meaning of names and how appropriate they are for the character I'm writing at the time. If I find a name I really like and it sounds like it'll be too complex, I do sometimes change it a bit.
I usually name characters after people in my life (I'm so bad with names). I'm not sure how the main ones came to me, as they were created so long ago though... Do you have anybody you know in your writing?
My step father appears in my work. His name was Charles Bradly White, but he hated the name Charles, wouldn't respond to it, and despised anyone who mentioned it. In my work that character goes by Chuck, but retains a fair number of his mannerisms.
A lot of my characters get their names from dogs Floyd and I meet on our morning walk. Some of them get their personalities from them too. There's an aggressive Alsatian called Carlo who finds himself the source of a lot of my villains! I find this helps me to remember who's who as well, as my memory's not what it should be. It's handy to see what everyone else does though, I'm going to run out of dogs eventually.
For first names I usually look through baby naming books. I always have one or two of them lying around somewhere. For last names I either go to a last name generator and type in the first name I choose, then see what works well with it. Or I choose a last name that corresponds with the characters 1) main attribute 2) heritage or 3) purpose to the story. Sometimes names just come to me. Ill be taking a shower or driving and suddenly there is a name just bouncing around the walls of my head, and I know I have to use it.
By inspiration of people I have actually met. I tend to use real life events that have happened to me personally in my ramblings. I also base all my characters off real life people that I either once knew, or still know. So I use a name similar to the person I had in mind: If their name was Joseph, I might name them Jacob. I'd also HIGHLY encourage using characters that are not white. White washing is a huge issue in a lot of novels, and the most interesting people I've ever met have been from other cultures . And in those cases I tend to go look up a list of names to that nationality, and sift through it until I have one that I like. Or if I've heard it before, I'll look it up just to be sure I'm not using some piece of foreign slang. Also, we all like super fancy names for our characters: The best names are the ones that actually sound real. So Rhiannon Chebotereva may be a REALLY cool name. But Brianna Cole, is much more memorable . My two cents anyway.
I usually just use name generators. But, for one (Joseph R. MacLeod) I used my initials, with different names. Then for Brian Barza (Later called Brian Bjn Barza-Thorsdottir) and Nate Relop, I used my best friends' initials. And for every character in my second book, I got names (first and last) from streets in my city. Then sometimes I see names that I just HAVE to use, like the surname "Oostergooster" (found on a list of worst last names) for Cornelius "Cero" Oostergooster, "Dederer" (from Dave Dederer, a musician) for Steven Dederer, and "Ng" (from the song Ana Ng) for Christina Ng. Oh, and speaking of Cero, the rest of his name I was finding the fanciest names I could find, creating Cornelius Ecclesius Reginald, and his initials make his nickname, kind of like Jeb Bush, which I didn't even know about at the time.
Oh my god, Oostergooster is the most amazing name I've ever heard. What a find. I'm going to keep thinking about that and snickering for the rest of the day. I've also been known to give characters needlessly fancy names, but in my case that's ended up with me naming them after stars and constellations, so I have an Arcturus and a Cygnus. I also gave some poor guy the last name Oxford once because I was tired and there was a dictionary nearby, so I just went "Fine, we'll go with that".
Yeah. Every time I think of Oostergooster, I laugh a little. I also had a character whose last name was Oxford, but instead of being named after the dictionary, she was one of the characters whose name came from a street.
Hello I think the best way to come up with the best namea for characters in a novel wound be to name them wisely, like they have not been named by the same person, for example: Charlie Smith sounds like and average everyday person, where as; Bellinda Rickinghall sounds like a character from a very posh and wealthy background, at the start of my manuscript, all my characters seemed to sound like they had the same parents, so i gave them different names like Tryston or Kalice.
Either I look up foreign names, smash my keyboard a few times or find ones whose meaning is either fitting or ironic.
This illustrates another thing that needs to be taken into consideration; how names in different cultures work. Thorsdottir here, for example, is an Icelandic patronymic name, literally meaning "Thor's daughter", and telling you two things about the person; 1) she's female, and 2) her father's name is Thor - Iceland being one of the few places which still use a patronymic (and in single parent cases, matronymic) naming system. Now, you COULD have a name like that, but it requires a specific background in order to work. Many Icelanders find that when they emigrate, their names cause a problem (e.g. trying to get two kids through an airport when they both have different surnames from you and from each other) so often simply start using it as a family name for official purposes. Here you'd have to have a specifically female Icelandic ancestor, probably a mother (since female surnames tend to disappear more quickly than male upon marriage) who was an immigrant to another culture. As I say, it's still perfectly possible with a bit of background info thrown in - but if you're going to use names and characters from other cultures, it's worth doing a bit of research to find out if those cultures have naming conventions/quirks of their own which are substantially different. Things like patronymic/matronymic naming, family-name-first structures (e.g. Chinese names), and even Roman-style cognomina, where a nickname becomes an official part of your name (as the Romans somehow managed to develop such an astonishingly small number of forenames and surnames that they literally ended up referring to one another as "the bald one" or "the one who fought in Africa") might even lend a bit of colour if you're going to create a different culture. There's even a useful set of wikipedia pages that lists naming conventions in many different cultures: Clickedy.
I like to use anagrams, just as a whim of mine. Some set of words or a sentence that personifies a character broken down and mixed into a feasible name.
Good rule of thumb: Always keep pencil and paper handy wherever you go, because you can find names is the strangest places, as I have. If I'm truly hard up I just flip open a phone book and point. Yes, I've done that millions of times. But the pencil and paper, especially if you're watching a movie and someone's first name sounds interesting, it's a priceless resource.
I have some wonderful ways of developing a character's name. Random generators are usually my go to, however, some of them don't hold meaning for the story. Next, I'll refer to a phone book I keep beside my desk and usually flip through the pages and find a first name I may like and a last name that is appropriate. For the fantasy stuff, I create anagrams of words that describe their traits. Another method is to mix and mash names. For example, using the first few letters of a surname (Brown) with the first few letters of the give name (John), place the last name - up to the first vowel or whatever makes sense - first and the first name last. John Brown becomes BroJo. Matt Allen can be AlMa. In this case, created last names aren't necessary but are optional. My favorite method is writing down whatever odd or uncommon names I come across. Socorro and Ginette, for example. Those are my most commonly used methods of creating names. I prefer the latter few methods (phone book, mish-mash, uncommon names) over name generators for the sake of originality and creativity.
For me, it depends. The name of one of my MC's is a one I got from a book when I was a child and have loved ever since, but I eventually decided it wasn't quite right as a first name and therefore turned it into a last name/place name I was watching a Lisa Eldridge make up tutorial the other day, and loved the name of a lipstick color which I plan on eventually using. Most of the time I go to baby naming sites, and look for unusual names or spellings, and sometimes I specifically look for a meaning. I keep a list of everything that's interesting in its own document, and update it if it's used or may be used. As I mostly write fantasy, I think it's important to keep a long list and keep it fairly organized (though I have yet to find the perfect method, so if anyone has any tips, please let me know).
I'm Norwegian too and working on a fantasy series with a country that is somewhat based on Norway/Scandinavia. I've decided on very few names, but I notice that it's a struggle to use names that I connect to a specific person. With certain names, such as Synne for example, I'm not sure that I will be able to use it because two out of the three people named Synne that I know, I absolutely despise. So that if I were to use that name, it would be for an unlikeable character. It would also be strange to use a friend's name. So yeah, I feel you!
In the story I'm writing right now I have Dag, as a norwegian name, Mel (swedish, short for Melker) and Jaro, which I'm sure I heard someone call their dog on the train a while ago. Any way, I like to use names that can be a bit difficult to determine where they are from, unless I want to make it clear that they are from a specific country. Or I just use somewhat international names, that are short and simple.
I kind of use an onomatopoeia thing where the sounds match their character. For example; Apharael is a very commanding, regal and strong figure so I gave him this grand Latin-sounding warrior-angel name. And Marcus is a cool, slightly tough name for a cool, definitely tough guy. Et cetera, et cetera. Also,obviously, racial, national and religious elements take part as well. A guy with a Latin-American Catholic background would be qualified for the name Gabriel is it suits him.
I normally don't settle on a name until I've written that character a bit, unless they are a one-off character that's named for some reason. Often I'll use etymology, or sometimes I'll defy it. For example, one of my female MC is named Halima, or Hal for short. Halima means "gentle, mild-mannered, and generous." In fact she is quite brazen, speaks her mind, and towards the beginning of her character arc she was quite selfish and a lot of her life revolved around acquiring money. For surnames and some other names I'll use street names I've passed by that are interesting or I've lived on in the past. One of my characters is Tomrick. One Donahue, one Vermel, and even one named Xenophon [yes that is a real street name]
I have a tendency to use the name John. I'd make characters like John Parkton, based off of John Crichton from FarScape. Or John Johnson. Stuff like that.
I have in the past had too many characters with name John. It is such a neat name that works really well with an eccentric last name as a balance. And it's common so it comes to mind easily.
