I've been going through Russian names recently, and I just tend to google lists of them and pick out the ones I like. Trying not to be too cliched with endless Sergei's and Nikolai's. I'm quite fortunate that names seem to come readily to me. Even if I can't name a character immediately, I don't stress about it and it comes to me. I found my MC's full name from someone's dad on Facebook, and the surname for the shadowy antagonist from watching Archer.
Choosing the names is one of my favourite parts of planning out a story! I spend quite a while pondering names for my protagonists until I find one that feels right to me. I use a baby name book (as well as my imagination) to help if writing something contemporary or fantasy, but if a historical story I use something like Faire Names for English Folke https://s-gabriel.org/names/christian/fairnames/ There's one like that for Roman names too, but I haven't used it in a while so I can't remember off the top of my head what it is.
How the heck did anybody come up with Cersei? One of the best names in all of fiction. Though Copernum deserves an honorable mention (probably many more I'm forgetting). The secret seems to be choosing names that taste on the tongue like English names do... exotic names only distract from the story. They can be both, but that's much harder to achieve.
Typically I think of a first name I already know then look up a last name to go with it. I just think of the two names together until one sounds right. Sometimes I'll just have a letter I want it to start with and I'll look up a list of those.
As a reader, it frustrates me to no end to have a MC with a name I cannot even begin to fathom how to pronounce. In fact, I'll even not read a book because of it. So I carefully select names that can be shortened to something easy. i.e. even my own nickname here, a reflection of the things I derive pleasure from, yet CE is a shortened form I'd readily use.
If anyone is looking at historical fiction set in the US, the SSA Popular Baby Names sit at https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/ does list of up to 1000 of the most popular names from 1879, plus charts for a single name's popularity over the decades. Good place to check for anachronisms.....
Lots of my characters names are puns... sort of, my favourite thing is to take an existing word or name, often one that has significance to the character, and then change it a little or a lot, until it sounds cool. Here are some examples. Again randomly became Ajan... I wanted an evil scientist character, his name is Dr. W. Tungstein...
I let my brain do the work, although my main characters first name is taken from one of my fave tv characters
When I wrote years ago, I would use the website "behind the name"'s name generator, choose which cultures I wanted the name to come from, pick the max # of names, and just button mash the generator button until a name popped up that I liked. Then I would change a consonant (or two), or add/subtract an element. At one point, many of my names were variations on Eastern European and Turkish names, maybe combined with some simple last name. More prominent characters get simpler names, in geneal. I think my names are most influenced by Star Wars naming styles, except for the silly apostrophe and triple consonant crap. I like short and to the point. I laughed the other day when I discovered a really old story of mine which contained character names that I later used in another story, but attached to totally different characters. I love cannibalizing my stories
I mostly write Fantasy and the like, meaning I invent names more than choose them; if I'm writing a 'realistic' piece I just pick one damned near at random. I put little thought and effort into it, just cycling through candidates until I find one that clicks. More often than not I get it on the first go. Fantasy names are a trifle more complicated, but only a trifle. I think about what sort of culture I'm representing. I took a page out of George R. R. Martin's book; I believe I heard him talk about naming conventions in an interview. How he used blunt, short, solid names for descendants of First Men (Ned/Eddard Stark, Jon Snow, Tormund, Craster, etc.) as opposed to the more florid Valyrian names (Targaryen, Velaryon, Celtigar etc.). I try to do something of the same, so I just glue syllables together until it sounds nice, and like it belongs to one of my fictional cultures. Sometimes I make modifications on existing names, such as my use of Nordic names as a base (example: I got Iespher [ees-pher] from Jesper, Otr from Ottar, Kalren is a variation on Karl, and so on) for one of my cultures. A couple of other examples are Lithiel, which I got from Lilith, and Malgrieve, which is simply the Latin mal- affixed to the English 'grieve'. TL;DR: I make shit up, with a little help.
A couple of years ago I wrote a children's novel that is set in 1929. I wanted names that sounded authentic to the time period. First I divided the characters into groups based on their age. Then I used Social Security data to pick first names from ones that were commonly used based on the year when each character would have been born. Then, since the setting was an unspecified place in the foothills of Applachia I went to Wikipedia that found lists of governors, senators and congressmen from Georgia. Then I made 2 tables in MS Word so I could alphabetize a list of first names and a list of last names. I gave each name a number starting with 1 in the middle of the list. I then sorted the lists based on the numbers. Then I renumbered and resorted the lists several times to randomize them. Then finally I combined the two lists to get each character's first and last name.
If I hear a unique, funky,creepy, etc. name, I write it down in a small notebook that I carry around. When I have a character that is funky, creepy, etc., I look in the notebook and voila!
On this subject, Russian nicknames are common, and interesting. They tend to riff off the last part of the name, not the first. So "Vladimir" usually doesn't shorten to "Vlad," but to "Mirya." "Yevgenii" goes to "Genya." And so on. Though not always. The nickname for "Yekaterina" is "Katya," as I know from personal experience.
I don't watch GoT, but "Cersei" always reminds me of "Circe," the fatal temptress in The Odyssey. if she's that sort of character, I wonder if that's what G R R Martin had in mind.
Dickens would visit cemeteries to get names for his characters. I don't remember if it was Dickens or Conan Doyle, but there's a story that one of them encountered a man with the last name Marley/Mortimer who commented about how rare their name was. Dickens/Conan Doyle then replied that within a year the person's name would be famous and within the year either Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol or Conan Doyle wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles.
I need to have a name before the character will develop properly, so I go through lists of baby names or unusual names. I don't see the face of a character in my head until I have found the name. Does anyone else do that?
Sandra, I am very similar. The name is of utmost importance in developing my character. Without a name, they have a very limited personality and picture in my mind.
I decide on the personality of a character, then use name etymologies to sort them out. For example, my main character in my novel is Vincent Arden Achan, so his name translates to "to conquer high trouble." It fits the overall theme of his life. I also take the character's nationality and cultural upbringing into account, and pick a name that fits with how I see them fitting into their community as a child. Or, in the case of characters who are known only by nicknames or mononyms, I grab a name that fits who they are now, not who they were brought as. One of my villains goes by the code name Zagan, a demon known for being intelligent, influential, and powerful.
I take words that sound cool to me and give them to my characters... Which makes me feel a bit embarrassed bc I saw a parody of YA movies/novels by this dude called adamtots wherein it makes fun of main characters having unusual names (in the comic, the mc is called 'Wicker Basket.') Or just names that generally sound cool to me, or demon names. Gotta love 'em demon names (although one site said if I said the names aloud I'd end up summoning said evil demons soo... Let's hope that's not true?) I also tend to make cool ones up. Hopefully they aren't too ridiculous, although when I was about 11 I tried to convince my friend that my real name was Kristaynai (they believed me though!)
I write fantasy, so I also make up names like many others in this thread. However, for a certain tribal culture I have a different method, as names are traditionally transient in it and change as each individual passes through different life phases. So each name for them is more like a nickname, and I use words from their language to make them. Here are some examples of names for the tribal culture: f. Gwoz ('star') f. Nuzayagłam ('white teardrop') m. Hedinaw ('father of none') m. Yåhi ('frog') Here are some examples of names for a desert culture, in which women are named with adjectives and men with nouns: f. Suubizit ('vibrant') f. Fȧȧlim ('silvery') m. Sidiimi ('star') m. Zhiivia ('wing')
Just recently, for surnames, I've taken to grabbing the first dvd I lay my hand on from my shelf, and picking one from the list of credits on the back cover. Wait, I'll do it now... hold on. Pullman.
I'll actively think of names that sound good for that specific character. If nothing comes to mind I'll Google a bunch of names, common or rare. I might alter a name to look "pretty" to the eyes but I don't take too much creative liberty when the story is set in the real world. For fantasy, though, I go crazy. Sometimes a name will just pop into my head that sounds good to me and I'll immediately write it down on a list where I've got a bunch of fantasy names that could pass for real names. It's very fun, imo.
Most of the time I just think of a few words or ideas that describe the character, and then I search up those ideas and words in different languages. Then I change them to sound like a name. For example, one of my characters dies in the first few scenes, and so her word was death. I found that yunke-lo means death and yumni means whirlwind in the Lakota language. So I morphed them together into Yumirtira. Sometimes I can just take the root word and make that the name. (I think Aloe would be a pretty name). That or I'll spell out a name in a different way (ex: Veronyka).
