Most of them are just names I like - I play with rhythm a lot and since my main story is about TV reporters I make sure that a lot of them roll off the tongue easily so that they work on air. And since I'm writing a 2030s near-future I make sure to pepper in a good number of "top baby names" from the years that characters would theoretically have been born. My main character is named Nina, my sidekick is Vinya, and my villain is Priscilla - none of which are big names for people born between 1986 and 2008 - but I made sure that I included major side characters named Madison (born late 90s), Aiden (early-mid 2000s), Emma (late 2000s) and Sophia (2010s). My main character is Nina Constantinos - and the starting point was that I wanted a TV reporter who had an ethnic surname that some people might think is "too long for TV." Her name was a purposeful riff on the how a few people DO get away with with having a long/ethnic surname on American TV...having your first name rhyme with part of your last name. I started with the name of one national reporter I knew who had a long name that cynical people might think is "too confusing" - Fox News' Uma Pemmaraju (which works for even cynical anglos because of the repeated use of M, U, and A). Then I just switched out the vowels and consonants until I got a Greek name that had the exact same rhyming effect off the tongue. The only name I've given a character that has deeper meaning is that I have a character named Sophie Lee who serves to show the effect that the main characters are having on the outside world - I got her name by giving her the most common baby name in America for the year she was born (Sophia - 2014) and the most common surname in the world (Lee). So she literally has one of the most common names I could possibly give her (If I used the most common American surname she'd be Sophie Smith, and I already have a few other characters with alliteration names so I kiboshed that idea). Granted sometimes names just stick - I have one character (an Aboriginal Australian) who had the working-title "Truganini" in my head before I fully created her, although I really didn't want to call her that because Truganini is a big name from Aboriginal history that I didn't want to hijack - especially since my character is from a different region of Australia than Truganini. But since that was my subconscious working-title for her in development, I couldn't get other names to work once I developed her, so I had to work backward and figure out how she got the name Truganini and the social implications of being named Truganini (she goes by "T.A." now because she doesn't want to deal with the implications of the name). And then some are just accidents - I have an Indian American character who I originally named Vidya (which means "knowledge) but misremembered as Vinya in the next few chapters and then couldn't make work as Vidya again in my head. I got lucky in that Vinya is actually a real name Hindi (albeit a far less common one) so I didn't have to change it back.
I like to use unusual names. Sometimes people don't tend to think their unusual since sometimes it might be a common name where they are. For me, I like to use names like Sky for females, simple and memorable names.
I find it odd that it has become such a popular trend to name a child the moment, or even before they were born, given people seem to like to give their child a name with meaning, one might think they would wait until the child has had time to fucking do something. I mean they name their child Harmony, and the child grows up to be a prick, or they name them Hope, and the little devil commits suicide. It's about 5am here so forgive the sloppy crudeness of this reply, I'll get to the point. There was someone, or some people I should say that did wait to name their children until they were older but I can't remember now if that was real or fiction. End of rant... Now, I like to write period pieces, or should I be completely honest and say I like to try to write them. I normally go with what is normal for that time period as far as naming, and in the case of a culture having meaning behind the names of their children I would follow that rule as it would be normal in that case.
'you' and 'I' are not normal names. Although I can see the Abbott and Costello scene that would come from this: "All right, I, You, you and I will attack." "Wait, me and who?" "You." "And who?" "And you." "Right, me and you and who will attack?" and so forth forever.
I do the same thing in reverse: I keep picking names that I like for children, or falling in love with names I've chosen but realize that this makes them unusable for baby names. I can't name my baby after my villain! How big of an eye roll would that earn me, when they're old enough to read my work? Ha!
I just find choosing names with a significance kind of cheesy! Like someone said, what parent knows what their newborn is supposed to be like? And even if they did, it's sooo...
I'm kinda' with you on this. I've mentioned it in other threads, but one of my all time favorite writers, Octavia Butler, did this with her Xenogenesis trilogy. She names the MC Lilith. I was like, really? Really, Octavia? One of the most weighted female names in Western Culture? You're better than that!
In high school, my buddy and I wrote a story with a Muslim boy protagonist named Ahner (honor). Good lord how that hurts. Pretty sure we did the same thing with other stories we wrote. Ugh.
Well that depends both on how sly you are and how literary you're trying to be. I personally just choose names I like the sound of but in certain circumstances I don't mind a metaphor or meaning there, even (especially) if it's a small one that very few people will catch.
English cannot handle my character's naming... it just does not work that way. You can search for meaning, but unless a character clears up the ambiguity... well... you cannot even write their name. Most common names have at least six different meanings and concepts. Though some like to select interpretation/meanings with such ambiguity - allowing different groups of people to know them by different markers. These schemers are typically the upper echelons of power. Matriarchs will often have a "inter-settlement" and "domestic" variant. Master Uzen writes his name as "Strong Tree", but another Uzen writes it as "Stillwater". So yeah... unless a character gives you the meaning, the English transliteration is utterly useless in my setting. It might be lethal if you write the wrong symbol(s) for "Miyu". Ask first, do not assume.
Well, maybe that wasn't the smoothest choice of name I agree, if you're gonna have a significance, it should be a flirt with the few readers that will know what it means. And for heavens sake, don't explain what it means and why the character's parents chose it. Any name that is too obvious is going to sound cheesy. Although I can appreciate the irony in a book where a character has a name with a meaning that really is the complete opposite to her personality or appearance if the book itself is kind of humorous.
Yeah I agree with that - if we know the name had some deep emotional significance to the parents, that should be at least partially subverted - or fought with.
Not usually, maybe for a certain character, but I mostly find names off baby name websites that I think are cool.
I don't like the idea of names that mean something from the actual character's point of view, unless that character has re-named themself (and that's made clear in the story). I can understand why a rebel fighter might want to have an absolutely banging name which means 'warrior child who will win the war against oppression' but I highly doubt his/her parents were thinking that when the child was born, and, babies don't pick their own names. But, there's nothing wrong with a character's name meaning something to their parents. It's also got a lot to do with genre. If you are writing future fiction, you might want a name which sounds futuristic or is spelled an odd way, Agnis, Ellyam, Casella, Jaxx, Phred, Jarredd. If you write fantasy which is centered around fairies and mystical things, you might prefer names which are softer and more fairy-like while the trolls/wizards/baddies have more rougher, evil sounding names. Personally speaking, I write in the here and now. Although it's fiction, it's based in the US, and in the present time. I have characters who were born in: New York State, Canada, Italy, and a family whose grandparents were Irish, and so I will look up lists of the top 100 baby names used in the area around the time my characters were 'born'. But it's also nice if your characters can tell you why they named their children what they did.
I'm the opposite - Do explain what it means to the parents - especially if the child is an adult and doesn't know the story - that can make for some pretty powerful storytelling. But don't do it for every character.
I tend to way overdue it with L or K-sounding names. I couldn't quite tell you why. But as for meanings... they are usually themed water, flowers, light, music or sound... and they don't tend to tie into anything I write. So I don't know why I can't leave those names alone. I'm in trouble when it comes to theme writing.
