I'm terrible at keeping names of my characters the same. I always end up changing them over and over again. The way I choose my characters' names is I name them after real-life people I've known or met who were born around the same time as my characters. I also take into heavy consideration the race and ethnicity of the people I name my characters after. This way, I can make characters that have extremely accurate-to-life names. But my resources are very biased. I'm from South Florida and most of the people I knew growing up were of Christian families and were themselves also Christians. Also, there's the fact that different races and nationalities that speak the same language still end up give their kids different kinds of names. What if my character has an ethnicity or nationality of which I don't know or recall anyone with that ethnicity or nationality in real life? What if my story is set in a location full of these kinds of people? I'd have no available resources. Even if I do have people to name them after, I always keep changing them because I get tired of them for whatever reason. I want to make a final decision on what my characters' names are going to be. I don't want to have to keep changing my mind. Otherwise, I'm never going to get the story written down properly. What do you think I should do?
Draw lots of faces on your 'sidewalks' in chalk, and you talk to them a while, and then you scrub them and you go again?
Here is the plan see... You hire a big mean guy that likes knives. Then whenever you change the names of your characters in your wrting, you lose a finger. While not the most practical method, a bit of negative reinforcement might persuade you to not lose any fingers. On the cereal, perhaps write without the names, and then add them in and the end with a find/replace. That way you don't have to worry about changing names, and have a continuous story without any issues.
I charge 150 CAD an hour plus expenses. Give them placeholder names until you finish the story, knowing the whole time that the names you'll eventually settle on will be way better. When you've finished the final draft, so a quick search and replace with the names you've settled on, then publish before you have a chance to change your mind. BTW, if you submit to an agent and they accept, there's a small chance that they will recommend you change a name or two and unless you're names have some sort of deep thematic meaning to them, following their advice is generally not a bad idea.
Hello, friend That depends where does your character live, and if their world is from a fantastic or real world. That depends where does your character live, and if their world is from a fantastic or real world. If they are from a fantasy, go to a name generator, pick two names and play with letters. However, if your characters are from the real world, I would suggest you research for the name from the country you want to explore. Or see from that same country an exotic name. If you are waiting for the perfect names, don't do it. Just grab a name that you enjoy and try it out. I hope this helps. Keep on good work and have fun.
Years ago I used some publicly available tables on name frequencies, as well as other census data from the US, to build my own name generator. (That's where my story was based. You should be able to find these for other countries as well as specific regions.) I randomly generated several names, picked the ones I liked, then used those to build my characters. The reason I went this route is that my characters are informed by their names; I couldn't change the name without changing the character. With my main characters though, I tend to choose "meaningful" names that fit the character I've already created. I draw from whatever suits my fancy at the moment. I use names from mythology, or other fiction, or famous people (usually just a first name, or a first and last name from two different famous people, if I go this route), or look up name meanings. These can be used as a shorthand for their roll in the story, their traits, and their relationships . This doesn't mean that I just lift characters from other things, but it helps me remember who is supposed to be doing what as I write. Their names tend to be less "realistic", but unusual names also help them stand out from the rest of the cast. And it can always be changed in the final edit if it just doesn't fit or is too obvious. (Of course, for me anyway, "too obvious" could also mean I've accidentally imitated a character/figure more closely than I intended or made one that is too predictable and need to make other changes beyond the name. This is why I pick these names after I've already created the character, to try to avoid this problem.) I'm curious though, why do you get tired of the characters names? Is it that you use them too often? Or they don't fit anymore? Or they're too generic? Or something else? Edit: Side note on the name generator, I also made sure to include some characters that were the first name generated, and not picked from a list of generated names. This was partly a character building exercise, but also to make sure I included some people that felt different and to prevent myself from writing only people that would feel familiar to me.
I usually use census data. I decide on a country to select the name from based on the character and their heritage, then I go through common surnames and first names until I find a combination that I like. For spear carriers (extras, named uninportants) I click through a name generator until I find two names, either at once or separately, that I like. I don’t trust the name generators as much because I don’t know where they got their data and how accurate it is.
Weirdly enough, I actually got a rejection request to rewrite because of doing something similar to this. I was writing a story for a Native Pride magazine and the editor told me that the main character didn't have a Native enough name. I named him John, basically after a friend I had in grade school, and all of my research showed the most popular name for Native American boys is (surprise surprise) John. So I guess market and perception have something to do with it all too.
I'm writing a novel set in Croatia, with one MC being Croatian and the other being Italian. For the Croatian, I looked up the statistics on Croatian names and named him the Croatian equivalent of "John Smith" (Marko Horvat, if you're wondering). For the Italian, I did a little historical research (deep family history is important for her character) and found an Italian family that was prominent and large several hundred years ago, meaning that her lineage could have carried forward but somehow lost the details (important to the plot), so she may or may not be a member of the family tree, and no one can prove one way or the other. From there, I just chose a common Italian first name for a woman, and arrived at Celestine (Celeste to her friends) Foscari. In short, the Internet is your friend in these matters.
