My story is science-fiction and it is set near the end of the 13th cosmological decade. So it's set somewhere near the year 99 trillion. I know this seems like an outrageous time for a story about humans to take place, but I got an interesting idea for a far out science-fiction story and for it to work it has to take place when the stars in the universe run out of fuel and things begin to go dark. The story won't work at any other time. This is why I'm using time frames in terms of cosmological decades. Anyways, I am looking for some unique names for my characters. Given the time frame names will probably be completely different if humans are still even around, but its sci-fi so I'm bending some rules. My main character is named Jaq. I like that name so I gave it to my lead. He is a smuggler. He has a loyal lifelong friend who works with him. I need a name for him. I also, need some other names or ideas or guidelines to set the the other names by. Any help is appreciated.
'Ello bare with me, my advice is sometimes not very handy. My one and only advice: Its time for an upgrade. Make some up if you have to. I'm sure you'll find some that sounds futuristic. Or maybe you could give them names that sound almost similar to our modern names. Just give the modern names an upgrade. I hope I helped, I'm no good with help sometimes. You could totally disregard this as help if you don't like it. Here and Now ~Rem Nightfall
Perhaps that far in the future names are outmoded (not needed anymore) or have been replaced by numbers. Everyone has a tracking device implanted in them at birth so who needs personal identification? Dunno, guess I'm cynical that way. In that case maybe people would end up going by nicknames instead? Somebody's real "name" might be #4735.8992.7A, but since that's such a load on the tongue they might call themselves something else. Maybe just "Four-Seven," or a name related to their job or personality, or, if they're into ancient history, they could take an ancient name that they like. (For example...Jaq, which reminds me of Jacques.) It's your story, and it depends on how the history of the world has played out, what their names will end up being like. *shrug*
There are certain trends and traditions which determines people's names. Like you don't see any female with the name "Agnes" that's not old anymore do you? Since your story is really far in the future, why don't you think up of some trends that might affect people's names? Taking an example from tehuti88, people at that time might not care for names anymore or they just find it too troublesome so they start to use numbers and letters or hexadecimals and binaries.
I think that, since this is so far in the future, the pitiful 2000-odd years in which we are most familiar would be pretty much nothing in the course of history. My advice would be to keep this in mind: whatever names are picked, they would most likely be nothing like the names we have today. Language and nationality will have evolved waaaay past anything that would be familiar to us today. So, for human names you could end up with some really strange and diverse stuff. Essentially, your imagination is the best guide. And at the point in which you set the story, almost anything goes. Hope that helps a bit!
99 Trillion years? Man, that's like, so unimaginable. I mean, that's like, over 10,000 times longer than the Earth has even existed. If we evolved from single-celled organisms into what you see today a mere 4.5 billion years ago, there's no WAY humans would be still human in 99 trillion years. I doubt we're at the pinnacle of evolutionary perfection right now. We'd probably look like giant cockroaches by then. Psychic cockroaches. With no appendix or wisdom teeth
I love looking up for names everywhere, and think a LOT about it. Personally, I agree with the trends theory, but, who knows, maybe in 99 trillion years they are in some sort of renaissance, and they use pretty simple names. You can also make up extraordinarily long names, that for example include an origin, a number, a job, among others, and people use just a nick. Jaq could be Jovianambusherquartz56, because he was born in "Jupiter", as a child he liked ambushing girls, he's got a ring with a piece of quartz and he had fifty six cousins back home. Anyways, in my opinion, it's hard to believe that humans are still humans after so long.
As far as I read some futuristic novels, they name characters related from planets, meteorological stuff and stars.
Perhaps the trend that far in the future was to name kids after name brands of soda for boys and name brands or types of pie for females. So some boy names. Coke, Pepsi, Seven for short (Seven up), Dew (Mountain Dew). Girls: Apple (apple pie), Cherry (cherry pie), Peach, Cobbler, Lemon, Lime-key key for short, Pecan. Perhaps Japanese names become popular, or some other language. I think Hindu and Sanskrit sounds cool. Nra, Narayanan, Nara, Kra, Aasia, Indra, Arjuna, Achit, Aditya, Anjali, Metish, Mukunda, Kunda, Neha, Sakhi, Saqara etc. Do a search for Hindu names.
There's no way any of those brands or religions would last 99 trillion years, by any stretch of the imagination...
The religion doesn't have to. Only the Hindi language does. But that is not even the point. They make good futuristic sounding names. Most wouldn't recognize them as Hindi. And why wouldn't we keep records of our history such as the names of Soda in the 21st century, or the types of pie in the 21st century? It is hard to imagine that humans would even be human anymore that far into the future, but if we did I don't see why we wouldn't have extensive records. I would imagine humans would have part artificial brains by then, making us much smarter. One day the humans are studying the 21 century. The time when we first started to become technologically advanced. The boys take a liking to the names of Pop, and girls take a liking to the names of Pie.
99 trillion years... whow... whow... whow... *trips out while trying to write down the binary code for that number* whow... Allright, keep yourself together. Religions last. Names of stars last. Numbers last. Mythologie lasts. Work with those. Sirius always seems to work well in SF (star & mythologie). Not very constructive... but 99 trillion... whow...
99 tillion bottles of beer on the wall, 99 trillion bottles of beer on the war. Take one down, spin it around, 98 trillion, 999 billion, 999 million 999 thausand 999 bottles of bear on the war! We'd probably be mix human/alien species by then and half of our names would mix with theirs Who names, maybe out names will take on a musical note! 99 trillion years....wow
Sorry? Have you even noticed the language drift that takes place in a matter of decades? How about in a thousand years? What kind of language drift would take place in a thousand millenia? How about in a thousand times that? And then multiply that by ninety-nine thousand. Assuming that even the human race is recognizable after all that time, would there be any fragment of any current language recognizble after that long? The earth itself woulf no longer exist after that long; the Sun would be long gone as well, along with any other star currently shining in the sky.
And 'in theory', isn't the universe supposed to re-compress itself and blow up again every 80-100 billion years?
There is no time "after" the end of the universe. The universe, and time itself, begins and ends in a singular event (singularity).
You know, I was thinking about this and, since you require the stars to be burning themselves out and the universe slowly going dark; rather than set it 99 trillion years in the future, it might be more interesting to have the event come earlier, started by some unknown force. All of a sudden, stars are aging and dying at an accelerated rate. This could lead to a lot of very creative stories, and would be more believable (relatively speaking) than assuming that humans are still humans (or that the universe still exists) after 99 trillion years or so.
The universe will still exist, and long after. Humans will most likely still exist too. But these humans will not be humans. They would be unrecognizable to you or me, even as creatures. By then, we would have probably taken on a energy form with no body. These are what scientists call 'gods'. We would hit the end of evolution. We would have long left Earth and met hundreds of alien races (aliens could have been more advanced then us or less. Seeing the universe is so young, I don't think an aliens are currently a 'god' race. We would live during the degenerate era. This is the era after the present when all the stars are going out. The universe is gradually expanding, faster and faster. The Law of Converse says that no energy can be created or destroyed, so the little energy in the universe will have to be less dense and spread across a lot of space. Stars will run out of their energy and die in a supernova or become dwarves. Whatever races live around then, will have to hug onto red dwarves (very closely for energy and heat.) It's like the earliest people around a campfire. By then, English and other languages today, will no be recognizable. Populations would have grown larger and larger and spread around the universe. It is true, Earth and our Sun would have died by then, but seeing are advancements by then, humans and other aliens may be able to save their home world. With the large population, people would like to distinguish themselves from others. As you can learn from history, medieval people did not have middle names. Middle names were made to distinguish between two Bob Johnsons in a one city. Since medieval times are not that far back when looking at time like you are, we would have a lot of names to distinguish ourselves. Of course, no one wants to write all these names. I think, people would have changed to numbers (and of course, numbers wont be what they are now.) For more info, look up 'degenerate era' on Google or another search bar. ...PS: this is from an eighth grader, so all information might not be correct.
In any case, if humans are something like gods, or... well, anything unknown and probably superior to us now... names don't even need to be words, or even numbers. Like the musical tones idea... names could be "heart/mind pulsations that sound like "George"", for example, or "color manations", so that every character is named after that color. What I mean is that you can have any name, even normal or really simple names, and the futuristic aspect is their explanation. The hindi names, for instance, could have completely different meanings (comparing to the original ones) because they actually belong to a different language, with similar characteristics. Wow, I used to believe that just by thinking a lot for a long long time ideas would eventually come, but this forum thing is so much better!
