Hello! I am needing help finding just the right name for two of my characters. The first is a young girl (15-16), her father is a police officer and her mother is not in contact, she lives in chicago, born and raised. She is a singer in a band consisting of 3 guys in their twenties. She participates in recreational drug use and alcohol use. She is rebellious and constantly in trouble. The second is a man around 29 years of age. He is also a police officer. He has just recently moved to chicago from a small Tennessean town. He is a good guy who is always helping others and is very kind. He was engaged, but she died in a car accident with her secret lover before they had been married. For the male character, I think I like the name Sawyer, either as first or last. For the female character, I really have no idea what I am feeling for her name. So any suggestions would be awesome!
last names are generally from a person's culture. If she is say Some sort of scandinavian, Gustafson would be a Swedish name. So figure out the characters heritage and the last name will come. For first names lets start with the Girl: Jessica, Rachel, Irean, Emma, Joshalyn, Mimi, and lena are a few off the top of my head. The man: Mark, Ken, Charlie, Brandon, Andrew, and Stuart are some. hope it helps!
When I'm looking for a name I like to go to the social security list of most popular baby names and do a search for the year the character was born. That will give you a huge list of possibilities and maybe something will stand out.
Behind the name is useful. I've used this site for all of my character names. They also have one for surnames.
Find lists of most popular names from a year around the time your character was born, or slightly before. Google something like "most popular names 1995" and you'll find a lot to choose from.
This is a good advice. If you think what kind of parents your characters have, that may affect the decision. Maybe Mom liked the opera Aida, so she named her daughter after that. Maybe the dad was a big Sinatra fan and named the son Frank? As for the Swedish names, note that Americans seem to drop one 's' from the names (the genetive marker in Swedish). Gustafsson is the original Swedish name (e.g. Andersson, Jansson), so if you want it to look more authentic, it could have two s's (if, e.g. the character had Scandinavian heritage. Norwegian, Danish, and Icelandic names are slightly different).
Of course, though, in America, there is so much mixing of cultures that it's just as likely the character had parents of mixed or different backgrounds, or that one parent became enamored of a name that is of a different culture than his or her own.
That's true. Also, it's a good idea to pick names that are different from another. If one character is Lisa, another is Lise, it can get annoying and confusing for the reader.
And one other thing -- when you come up with a first name and last name that you think sound good together, run it through google to make sure it's not a name you think sounds good because you've actually heard it before -- i.e. it's not some minor celebrity, or sports figure or criminal whose name you heard somewhere.
