I'm experimenting with this. For a while, I would take the first letter of the name of a person I associated the character with and go from there. Now I'm trying to do half meaning/half appearance. Like, there's a lonely middle aged guy I'm writing about and I named him Phil, for no other reason than Phil strikes me as a suitable name for a lonely middle aged guy. I don't know why it does. It doesn't really matter.
Interesting input! Thank you everyone. I suppose I put too much thought into naming my characters (just like I did with my kids I suppose ). I'm honestly surprised not more writers put more thought into it- which is really interesting! To me, characters are like children, once I name them I have to live with that name forever. It's my creation, I may as well give it a decent title. Haha. With that being said, I think the next story I write I will try to base my characters not on meaning- but rather on intuition. It sounds like an exciting way to name a character, and I've never really taken to that technique before.
Find, replace. Once you open yourself up to using that function you won't feel as much pressure to decide on names at the start. But granted, when you get familiar with a name replacing it can seem wrong, but in a story everything can be changed.
I have changed character names before. In one case, when I began proofreading the first draft, I realized that two of the principal characters had similar enough sounding names to be confusing, so I changed one character's name to make it more distinct. Sometimes, these details don't matter much, but there were enough shared scenes that the similar names were a problem.
Real people are given names as infants and develop personalities in next 20 or so years (hopefully)... Fictional characters, on the other hand, don't have the luxury of those painful decades of slow maturation (hopefully), but need to have well developed personalities well before the reader learns their names. Personally, I prefer to avoid randomness in writing... to a certain degree, of course In one story, I've given my Chinese emigrant character a random Chinese name. During the writing process I've decided to include a short back-story to explain some of his actions - soon I realized the name I've given him is not likely to be used in the province he came from. Would anyone notice? Well - I will. So the name was changed to a more appropriate one. It was actually painful for me, renaming a character I've become close with. I guess it's a cultural thing, and it has a lot to do with the language you write in.... or the way you use the language you write in... For example, culturally significant names (biblical, for example) carry a lot of "burden" with them - naming your character Samson, or Jesus, or Abraham, just seems dull and pointless if you don't keep their biblical context in mind... Sure, you don't have to mention it, but it's highly unlikely your readers won't notice it... Maybe it's just me, but personal names are words, right? And all words have meaning, right? So, personal names mean something. In every day use, we are free to ignore both the sound and the meaning of words (including personal names). But when we are writing, we use the language in a more intimate way - we notice the melody, feel the weight and perceive shades and tones of meaning...
If you draw too much attention to it as part of the story, it could probably sound a bit forced and I think that's a trap that some writers fall into. However, if the name (and it's meaning) is actually central to the character themselves (take JR Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood series as an example - names such as Rhage, Phury and Vishous) I think it can work
There are so many good uses for intentionally choosing a name that has meaning behind it. I like it when an author shows that a character has an opinion of their name. For example a character might have been named and raised by parents who were nature lovers to the extreme and therefore has to live the legal name of say, Sea Breeze or Star Shine. The character could be shown to have an intense hatred for the name, keeping it a secret, only using it when legally necessary. It would give insight into the characters relationship with family.
My problem with symbolic names, especially the ones inspired from the bible is that they end up being quite common and overused. I usually tend to forget common names a lot easier than unusual ones just because I see/hear them all the time. I still use symbolic names from time to time but I try and dive into the more obscure names not only to be different but also to be more subtle with the symbolism.
Obviously names have to fit the culture your character belongs, I'm researching several characters that are Native American and Irish - found an amusing, yet a really handy source http://www.lowchensaustralia.com/names/generators.htm
