Feb 5, 2024
How do you choose your characters’ names?
Names are a funny thing.
Hardly anyone I know is happy with the one gifted to them by their parents, and many people go by a nickname. We are writers may have picked our own. (We talked about pen names last week.) And in many traditions, names hold power. So, how do we pick the right ones for our characters?
Let’s start with my minor characters. I actually put more work into them.
First, I have to figure out what their role in the story is in relationship to the main character. Are they going to be a supporter? A romantic interest? Or the villain? Then I try to pick a name that fits that role. The bad guys/gals get assigned harsher sounding names with more consonants and guttural sounds. The romantic interests are given one that is smoother and more pleasing to the ear.
I used to attempt to make sure the name didn’t belong to a real person by changing the spelling, but I’ve given that up. There’s lots of people with non-traditional spellings, and it’s become a futile effort. Of course, I include a statement when I publish a story that all characters are figments of my imagination.
The other criteria I use is trying to include names with different ethnic backgrounds. The internet is a great help in the search. Yes, it can take me down the proverbial rabbit hole, but that’s half the fun.
Then there’s the list I accumulated during my last job of interesting names I ran across. It gets used for characters that add ‘color’ to the story. Ones that appear for maybe a brief passage or a chapter or two and never are heard of again. Or I might borrow a name from a book on the bookshelf that’s less than an arm lengths away.
That leaves the main characters.
They’re a different process. As the idea for a story works around in my head, the main characters name themselves. Sometimes I’ll hear a name in a song while driving down the road and it just fits. Other times I’ll wake up in the morning with a realization of the perfect name for a major character. I don’t the foggiest idea where the name “Harmony Duprie” came from, but I grew to love it while writing the Harmony Duprie Mysteries. Jake, who appears in those same books, was supposed to be a throwaway character. He didn’t even have a last name for most of the first book. (I’ve told that story before. He wasn’t supposed to be a continuing character, but wouldn’t leave me alone.) And Eli got his first name from a song.
How do the other authors on this hop name their characters? Find out by following the links below.
As always, until next time, please stay safe.
Feb 5, 2024
How do you choose your characters’ names?
Yes, I much prefer the pen name I picked for myself. I don’t know what the hell my mother was thinking of.
Names are funny that way. When we named our children, we tried to take into account how the names would ‘work’ when they grew up.
Our two just got called by their surnames at school. I pity kids whose names are different from the norm – they suffer I think.
I don’t know why parents believe their kids need to have ‘unique’ names. It sets them up for a hard time.
One girl I know is called ‘Cadence’. I thought that was a term in musical theory?
When I was at primary school, I knew a boy called Kenneth Tucky, poor fellow. That’s one I wouldn’t have got away with using in a comedy.
Parents can be crazy.
My character names come from all over the place, too. And, I have one kid who likes and uses the name I gave them, and one who doesn’t. So, I guess I’m 50% successful naming children. LOL. @samanthabwriter from
Balancing Act
We gave ours middle names that they could switch to if they didn’t like the first names they were given at birth.
I do wonder at what drives some parents to give their kids such strange names. We have one daughter and called her by a name that can’t be shortened. When she attended playschool at the age of three, the play leader greeted her with ‘Hello, Katie.’ Our daughter stood as tall as she could and replied ‘My name is Kate!’, which had all those present both smiling and thinking about the importance of our names.
Good on you for raising a child that was confident enough to stand up for herself.
I have a name that has a non-traditional spelling. For the longest time people could not get it right.
For my characters I look through lists on the internet and pick names that speck to me.
Names ? Six people in my class were called Catherine, not counting those with a K. Teachers – no #MyNameIs then – wouldn’t attempt Lithuanian Polish or Ukrainian names, so pounced on the easy-enough.
Another peeve – UK passport office insists that your first given name is your real name, even if you’ve never been called by this name, or, crucially, signed in it.
My oldest brother goes by his middle name. I’m not sure how it’s listed on his driver’s license.