How do you name the characters of your stories?

[SirGeneralSir]

what i would recommend, is pick the name of the character as a test, make sure it fits your world then do this, just to test it out.

“James walked into the …… and looked around the dark room, his eyes adjusted and he could see …..” 

“Thor walked into the …….. and looked around the dark room, his eyes adjusted and he could see …….”

“Tiny walked into the …… and looked around the dark room, his eyes adjusted and he could see …….”

make it longer than what I did, but used this as a test to your character name, does the name you have in mind as you run the first parts of the story fit, does it have the feel that you want?

does “James” sound like the name of your character for what they are going to do, in the world they live in.

it might help you find the name that you want.

[JayDee]

It’s true! While cocks, fingers, tongues and toys in assholes are appreciated the most, assholes on their own doing what assholes do are also popular.

[JayDee]

I totally should have quoted Desiderius Price from the previous page as, reading back this morning, without that quoted the above post looks like I just like ass.

[CloverReef]

8 hours ago, JayDee said:

I totally should have quoted Desiderius Price from the previous page as, reading back this morning, without that quoted the above post looks like I just like ass.

I don’t know... I think it could totally work as a go-to response for most online interactions. At least that’s what happened in my head when I read it not knowing what it was in response to! That was fun. 

[GeorgeGlass]

One of my rules for choosing names is to never use the same name twice for major characters. That forces me to come up with more interesting and fitting names than I otherwise might.

For stories with real-world settings, I sometimes use Sweetmamajama’s method of choosing names according to what they mean in their original language; for example, right now I’m working on a series of related stories, each with a different main character, and all of the character’s first names mean “wise” or “wisdom” in one language or another. Also, if a character’s ethnicity is in any way important, I use that as a guide.

For SF/fantasy stories, I try to use some sort of internal logic in naming the characters. Characters of the same social class, or caste, or species may have common aspects to their names, like having the same number of syllables, ending in a vowel or a consonant (or a particular vowel or consonant), etc. And characters from larger groups have more diverse names than characters from smaller groups (eg, commoners vs royalty).

That’s my two cents. (I may have overpaid.)

[Shunskitten]

I usually use a random name generator. Behindthename is my absolute go to. I can pick not only the gender, how many, a last name, but it lets me pick where the name originates. Helps so much with Japanese and other names. I tend to use his or her partners name as a reference, so like, if they’re name is Japanese, or Arabic, or even Russian, I can plug those in and get the characters name. I’m a bit lazy, I know, but honestly it’s helped. 

Used to make them up, then I found out one name I use, that I thought I randomly got, happens to be a actual name (Thanks Saki...)

[InvidiaRed]

On 2/9/2017 at 6:04 PM, Guest Moonlight Knight said:

As the title implies, I am wondering what thought processes (if any) people use in the naming of their story’s characters. Thoughts?

http://www.behindthename.com/

Usually. However, Sometimes the character’s name just pops out. Fully formed.