Alright I'm working my next project; which involves my character Farlan Solo ( last appearance: Alonzo Solo ) hunting down the Vampire King (not Dracula, lol) in Blood's Manor (working name) but the castle is filled with many feamle vampires who are very attracted to him and he's basically trapped in there by the hundreds of female vampires who won't let him out... if he doesn't escape the castle by midnight, he will turn into a vampire as well, and the castle will dissapear, leading Farlan to fail his mission; not to mention him being in there for the rest of eternity, as well. Another important part of the plot is that he falls in love with the Vampire King's daughter (still need an official name for him). I got the inspiration from Chris Brown's "Wall to Wall" music video. And so I'm writing the story and then I realize that I needed some vampire names for these vampires. And if anyone can help me with the origin of vampires (in order to get better names for them), that would help too. Thanks in advance.
Dracula FTW... ok ok. Hmmm, Vampire names can really be anything you want. Play with words and come up with names in your head. That's what I do.
Listen to Valiance- he's got a picture of a vampire as his avvy. Named Alucard. We need more information before we can help you with names- first off, what are your working names for the characters? Second, when is this set? It looks like it's historical/fantasy, but we need that information. Third, do you have any names that you have set? And, fourth, what vampire system are you using? Working names are useful, because they put us on the right track- namely [pun!], yours. Settings are absolutely necessary, as they give us ideas- calling a girl Alice would be interesting if it were set in Japan, but not so much if it were set in Olde Medieval Lande. One of the Final Fantasy games had this problem, and she was renamed to Aeris for the English dub. The names you are going to use are necessary for obvious reasons- they help us with thinking of similar names. Think of it as repeating the first bit of advice. The fourth question, the vampire system, is necessary, because without knowing how vampires work- if they're victorian or urban, monstrous or charmer, blatantly evil or just misunderstood- helps us to figure out names. Balthus works for an evil monster, but a charmer wouldn't fit the name so well. Kelly Rowland would make a good misunderstood urban chick, but call a victorian bitch Kelly Rowland and you've lost the audience.
Well I was thinking that you should use older names, given that the vampires are probably quite old themselves- so look up the kind of names that were popular a century or so ago. Also, you could give them the kind of ridiculous over-the-top nicknames like "Ripper" or whatever, in addition to a propper name. Just my own thoughts.
MC #2 (the Vampire King's daughter) I know will be named Vanny. The setting is the stereotypically dark, scary area surrounded by dark forests and leaveless trees. It takes place on a planet almost identical to Earth (more avanced, though). On the inside, vampires are almost exactly like humans except with fangs, wings, and a thirst for blood. When it's day, the castle/manor dissapears, taking the vampires with it, to some unknown dimension. Wherever they go (it's not really important yet) they don't need to eat when they get back when it's dark. For the most part, these vampires are misunderstood creatures, they're more lazy and less villanous than the vampires portrayed in movies and whatnot. The only time they suck blood is when some dumb human comes up with garlic or holy water or another one of those "Vampire purification weapons." They hate that; they want everyone to know that they die like regular people, but it's better to keep it a secret for the survival of the colony. Vampires in this story are essentially another race (like blacks to whites), cast away into hiding by their differences. The Vampire King, though, has plans to rid the world of all the humans by hiring "militia vampires(working name)", who do fit the sterotypes of bloodthirsty, killing vampires, to murder the humans and let vampires prevail. Farlan's mission is to kill the Vampire King before 12:01 the night where the story takes place, as that is when the Vampire King will unleash his "militia vampires"
Ooh satire, interesting, seeing as this sounds old fashioned I'm going to suggest using prefixes when appropriate, Mal for the bad guy, Ben for the good guy, and should any others match a particular character, well you get the picture.
i personally don't know much about names but to me, Vanny doesn't sound very feminine. Yeah, Banzai is right, if you read about vampires or watch shows/movies about vampires you'll find that many vampires are over 500 years old! Some are even over 1000. So if they were born/hatched (not sure how they become, didn't read that much) that long ago, they would have names like Julius, you don't see many Julius's around right? Or combine a roman name and a czech name, roman for the "ancient" feeling and czech for the mysterious name that no person in america/africa/australia etc. (currently) would name their child. Like Dracula's name was Vlad. I think it's a cool name, but name a kid that today and that boy ( i hope it's a boy you name vlad) will be made fun of. no one dares mess with dracula because of the fang + your neck = bad thing. was that a little help? i hope so.
It largely comes down to how vampires multiply in your story. You mentioned that they are like a "different race," which suggests that they possibly reproduce among themselves. If this is the case, then I wouldn't recommend just making up names that sound cool, but rather research a particular society and choose names from a set pool, so that the reader can detect a consistency to their names. (for example, Roman names are easily identified as such: Julius, Publius, Martius, Lucius, etc.) If, on the other hand, you are going with the more traditional system of vampires "turning" humans to make more vampires, then go the opposite route and pick names from both random societies and time periods, as they will vary in age drastically (they won't all be old, there have to be new recruits eventually). Ultimately this is a very personal decision, as it depends on how you see these vampires, which is hopefully different from the way they have been portrayed over and over again in various pop culture films. I would simply urge that you keep in mind that regardless of how you see them, they do have a culture of their own (as you make clear -- they even have a king, which indicates a hierarchical structure to their society), and their names should in some way reflect that.
except for 30 days of night, that scared me to death, very unlike the show moonlight where some vampire are good etc. some vampire names in that movie were: archibald, dawn, heron, edgar, strigoi, seth, inika. so mythurien when he said he was right then, take random names from random societies, and if they were to breed among themselves they would have their own separate culture in which YOU will have to make up names for every single one of them.
I have a series of vampire stories that I've been writing. Basically what I do is look up names and meanings from a culture and go from there. Usually I go with older names or names you don't hear of anymore. Like others suggested before, most vamps are over 100 years old. But you also mentioned they are a different race. Maybe take some words from other languages and move them around for a name? Or even just play around with names and change the lettering. (Like the name May to Mae) If they are a totally different race I would go with names that do not sound familiar or used hardly at all. A cute name maybe for the princess would be Kya (which means diamond in the sky).
Vampires originated with Dracula. Dracula was a real person: Vlad the Impaler. He was a king of southern Romania known for the cruelty of his punishments. He had as many as 100,000 victims. Look him up. Considering he inspired Dracula, Romanian names stike me as Vampirish.
