Hi All, I'm writing a Novel based on Animals in the universe, and also involve prehistoric extinct animals in the novel. My novel has animal gods, Seawitches that the protogonist actually meets. My question is can I christen my characters with any weird names just like that or I have to do a research on Mythology and get names from there.. I also characters coming in from other planets, so do I have to stick to character names that already exists or I can just give them names and carry on.... Suggestions will definitely help..... Cheers Dannyboy
You don't "have" to do anything - its your novel, so use whatever names you want. Except Ursula and Morgana. Please don't use them for sea witches. You could always use a name theme? Using sea witches as an example: they're most often found in British folklore, so why not use Celtic names?
Its great to hear that I can use any names as its my novel. At this moment I'm freezing on the protogonist as a south asian however needs to be accepted worldwide because the disaster going to be caused is universal. It's pretty tough for me to comply to any particular type of folklore cause whereever he goes he meets dangers and tries to overcome them... Can some one give me some suggestions or reference novels that I can go through to specialise in character themes and confused writings....
Maybe you can use an anagram of a well-known name that sounds good? (Cetopalar) Or a feminized fish name (Octopa). Or a feminized name of a male mythology character (Neptuna comes to mind; or Poseida; Trita/Tritona). Or some version of the latin word for "sea" (=mare).
My suggestion is to look for names that come from a certain real-life culture, or make up names similar to ones from that culture, particularly the culture your creatures/people/whatever come from. Yoshiko already made the good suggestion of Celtic names. That way there will be a sense of consistency but it will also give the reader a clear impression of what they are and where they come from.
A name won't really matter as long as your character has personality. You can go a traditional route and truly name him something that is "suited" for him based on his origins or what type of creature, or you can go the nontraditional route and name him whatever you want like "Nemo" in finding Nemo. But, what I usually see is that animal names have some sort of meaning whether it is in reference to what type of creature they or as a representation of who they are deep down. Take the Lion King for example. You have Simba which in Sawhili means "lion." It is a direct translation. Then you have Mufasa which in Manazoto means "king." It is a direct translation of who Mufasa is in that world. Then you have scar. Not traditional IN his world... but still a direct translation of who is in the movie. You can see the same thing in The Jungle Book for the most part.
The above suggestions were definitely valuable, I think I would like to name few characters traditionally and few non traditional and my story will revolve around prehistoric India probably called the Hindustan at that time... I would like more suggestions on these grounds especially if any one has interesting facts to share about The Himalayas....
If you're doing something in ancient India, you may want to do a little research on it, maybe read a few books or scholarly articles on it; if you're looking for names, you probably want to look for actual names of people from ancient Indian/Hindu texts and stories. You probably already know this, but just in case, India isn't - and wasn't - a monolithic cultural entity, so be careful where you pick up names and information from: there is as much a difference between, say, the Chola peoples in South India and the Punjabis of NW India (I think?) as there are between the Russians and the French, so be aware of this especially if you're consciously mixing around names and ideas from two different cultures.
