Does anyone have any tricks or exercises for coming up with great character names? Maybe lesser characters can get buy with “Bob” or “Susan,” but for characters essential to a story, it seems a shame not to have names for them which either directly hint at their character, or the sound of which (when said aloud or in the mind) just seem to conjure a hero or a dastardly villain... So that I don’t derail my writing choo-choo for want of the perfect names, I have been inserting “X” or “name of guy in coffeeshop” in lieu of a character name, but eventually, I need to get back there, roll up my mental sleeves, and start conjuring. Thoughts? Thank you!
I'd be cautious about having character names that are too "on the nose" in terms of being connected to their characteristics. This will probably depend on what you're writing - if it's something with superheroes or a similar vibe, I can see it working, but probably the more realistic the genre, the less appropriate it would feel?
As I wrote in another "name thread": names are given by parents when a child is born, so it has nothing to do with someone's values or coolness. https://www.writingforums.org/threads/looking-for-mc-name.132211/#post-1227589 Of course, you can give a cool name within reason: it should be an existing one that sounds familiar (except for fantasy) and easy to remember. It is said that a politician's chances are better if (s)he has a short name with only one or two syllables. If you really badly want to give a badass name to your character then let him choose a nickname that suits him. To come up with names I suggest you to visit a name generator and let it generate a tremendous amount of them so you can find interesting ones. For fantasy names have a look here: https://www.writingforums.org/threads/how-do-you-choose-names.132426/page-24#post-1639084
I guess it depends how you construct a story. I normally have a plot and then am inventing characters to fit within that plot. So I'll just start with any old name, nationality and interests then as I go question whether that really is the name that fits the character. As I get more involved with the piece I am writing, naturally it begins to make more and more sense that a character should be a particular way.
What's in a name? I tend to like characters for what they do and who they are, more than them having some 'Cool' name. Though you can search names lists, and some have meanings behind the names, if you are looking for something 'Cool'.
Actually, I try to choose names common for the era the character was born and part of the world/country where he/she was born. Nicknames are usually given by others and aren’t necessarily “cool.” I wouldn’t obsess about it. I don’t think most readers care. For myself, as a reader, I am put off by and distracted by unusual (particularly hard to pronounce) names. I suggest that you write your story with names. A “find and replace” is easy to do if you decide to change a name later.
I end of changing the names as I write the story. It's not so much as coming up with a better name as it's me coming to know the character better. Pick the best name you can, begin writing, and change it down the line if you need too.
In my experience, changing a character's name also tend to change the character - or perhaps it's a matter of discovering who the character is for the author. Either way, I'd be wary of changing names too willy-nilly. Also, "great" names don't exist. People aren't great because of their name. People are great because of what they do, what they achieve, and how they treat people. I believe Adolf was a popular German name until Adolf Hitler came to past. Barrack Obama wasn't a name at all until he became the president of the US. As for fiction, Harry Potter - who the heck is that? - until JK Rowling wrote about him. Who would have thought "Harry" would be a "great" name? Potter is pretty common too. And c'mon, Frodo and Bilbo are both awful names. Katniss wasn't a name - it's a plant. Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia and Darth Vadar - Luke is common as heck and the rest of the names are totally made up. Make great characters and your readers will pin that "greatness" to the name you've assigned them. Don't get it backwards.
To be fair, she was named after the plant in the book, and teased for the name as well, but yeah. It killed me when I had to change a character name because I found out it was very close to that of a noteworthy real person in a similar profession to my character. Still reads wrong to me.
Couldn't you just change the spelling around a bit, or maybe change a middle name, a surname, but not the full name? How noteworthy is this person? Unless it really is as famous as Trump or Obama, you're probably fine, surely? You just need a disclaimer at the beginning saying "Any similarities with anyone in real life is purely coincidental."
Yeah, that's what I did, modded the given name a bit. Nothing huge, but it still feels like glasses that are ever so slightly bent.
Unless the character is of dubious nature, maybe you can just keep the original name? What makes you think you can't use it? If there are not enough similarities between the fictional version and the real person, then surely there's no case against you since names can't be copyrighted?
Start throwing out names before you start writing or as you get to that point in the story. I had a bounty hunter I couldn't decide on a name for, so I decided to pick a gimmick for his character and threw names in the hat. You could do something similar
I like perusing the lists of names on the Social Security site (https://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/). You can look at the most popular names by decade, etc. Sometimes one will speak to me. Other times it's just helpful to get a feeling for what names were popular at any given time.
I read the book Beyond Jennifer and Jason when I was twelve (everyone wanted to know why I was purchasing a baby name book - lol). It's really terrific cause it examines the way we perceive names and divides them into lists like attractive, sexy, unusual etc. It's a little dated now but some of the information is still sound. Plus you can also type into google lists of attractive names or sensual names or old fashioned names and start your own lists. If you collect and save them you should have all these great names floating around in your head for when you're working on a story. For my WIP I started off naming my mc Daniel and decided to make him Hispanic and called him Javier Kavado instead. I wanted something somewhat sexy - Javier sounded sexy and I love words that end in o hence his last name. The other mc Finlay is named after a boy I recall in grade school who was so charismatic people used to call him name and wave to him. The name has always had that golden aura for me because of him. But don't sweat names I've changed names half-way threw stories before - it happens. Another trick I do is I go to IMDB and find a star who most resembles my character and look at the characters they played so that I can find a name that reflects that image.
"John Doe" is a generic name in the English language. I once made a pun name. It was "John Dough". That guy was a baker. He had a co-worker. Her name was "Dee Base". It was short for "Deeanna Base". I just stopped at the story outline and never continued. "John Doe" is a character of another story. In this story, I just wrote a long paragraph in my notebook and called it a story. It's short and sweet and to the point. Then, that story inspired me to create another story and then another - to the point where I had three interrelated stories. There was a time where I was role-playing with another person in a text-based format. I created my character. His name was Mr. Cheesy. He was a crazy man, thinking that the world was going to end, and thus built himself an apocalypse shelter. Then, doomsday came, and he and his family hid inside that apocalypse shelter. He had a wife and a daughter. The wife was named Mrs. Cheesy. The daughter was named Miss Cheesy. When I was a teenager and learning Spanish as a second language (I already spoke English at school and Putonghua at home), I created an English-language story, in which I constantly used Spanish names. Granted, they were a family, so it made sense that they would have similar names. Enrique. Marisol. Arturo. Paula. I wasn't trying to make my characters Spanish or Hispanic or Filipino. At the time, I just liked the sounds of Spanish names.
I like common names. Names everyone knows. It's their friend's name or their brother's name. Weird names can throw me off as a reader. I keep the names simple and the stories complex.
I find it far more fun to cook up names for Aliens. Cause nobody is going to buy that Steve and Stephanie are common throughout the Universe. Also I can make jokes about how some sound similar to common things that exist in reality, which is at times an added Easter egg for a quick snicker. Sa'bork (Sahh-borK) Said to0 quickly sounds a lot like spork.
I think if something of a character's name gives a hint to his or her character, it is a great way for the reader to keep the character in mind. You can change the spelling a little. This, of course, works if you are writing a story in the same language/world. Harder to do that with an off-world story. It can be fun to do.
I renamed a character to have my wife's name at her suggestion. The character is a terrible person, she drugs the antagonist's man (who is also the namesake's fiancee) so that he'll violently rape the antagonist. Fortunately my antagonist it too awesome for that to succeed. It amuses the hell out of my wife when, one book later, the antagonist and her man have my wife's namesake assassinated -- although not for the attempted rape; the city they live in, that's just interpersonal politics-as-usual.
I prefer simplicity when it comes to names. The idea that the character just so happened to have a name that marks them for greatness irks me. It's just a pet peeve of mine. The cast of my main project at the moment are named Chris, Alex, Jay, Micah, and DJ Cottontail. I pulled their names out of thin air in the space of about 2 minutes. I knew I had a girl and four guys, that I wanted two of the characters to go by gender-neutral nicknames, and that I wanted them to have names with distinctly different sounds. I just picked the first names to come to mind that met that criteria so I could get on with writing the outline. They were never intended to be their final names (Jay and DJ sound too similar for starters - even though one is a profession) and I only know the meaning of two of those due to their religious connotations. I've kind of gotten used to them though so I'll probably only make minor tweaks. My two other projects have 'less common' names by English standards but are common in the countries they're set in (France/Germany and Russia). I used baby name popularity statistics to find suitable pronounceable and believable names.
I think "great" is in the eye of the beholder. I pick names I like and use them. Don't really care what anyone else thinks. ;p Of course, if by "great" you mean believable, then I would take a good long look at your genre (fictional or not?), then the protagonist's nationality (when applicable), their parents' nationalities and what kind of people they were, and common names they might know / would have been popular in the area of the protagonist's birth at time of birth. That information compiled should lead you to decide whether to come up with a name or go on a Google hunt for popular names by year and country. Protagonist history can also be important, especially if they were adopted or their parents immigrated--in which cases you can get away with a name that doesn't match their family's nationality. You will want to make the latter apparent in the text however, otherwise readers assume you plucked a random name out of the phone book or something.
I've done something similar in my WIPs, except "guy ##", "girl ##", "Professor Smith", assuming, of course, there's a search and replace function in Word (?).
I'm actually not fond of this. It always strikes me as gimmicky and cartoonish and unbelievable, and when I see it in a book I think the author is trying too hard. It takes me out out of the story. Just write a memorable, believable character. For ideas, I use baby name books, baby name lists for the year the character was born, lists of names for regions of various countries, and, occasionally, an old telephone book I keep in my desk for generating names and business names. ETA: The "go into a relaxed state ask the character a question" way to access your subconscious works, too. When I needed a name for a character's wife, I asked, "What's Harold's wife's name again?" as if I'd forgotten it and the answer came instantly. Getting into a relaxed state and asking the character what his/ her name is can work really well, too.
