In most stories, you have a character that you would want to write from. I will say that characters are the types of things that authors and writers alike would touch on in some aspect or another. But of course, your characters, specifically the main cast of characters that you’re going to explore must have some form of name that they are called and those names are important to creating the foundation of your character. Sometimes, names can create their whole identity and you won’t even know it until you go about and create those characters on your own.
Here are some ways where you can name your character.
Play on names.
Now, I have a few names where they sort of play on to each other. This can be twins having a similar name, or a group of friends. It sort of makes me think about fantastic Mr fox’s Boggis Bunce and Bean where their names play along with a song and it gives this sort of lyrical vibe to the three farmers, despite them being the main antagonists.
I have sort of added this play on names with Snippy and Snappi, some of the characters that the main crew will face. Sometimes you write characters, and in my case, despite certain rules says that you should have the main cast’s names starting with different letters. In this particular case; I find it to be a great play along gag to play around with.
Is it also weird that I have a character named Snops. Like ‘Snipz, Snops, Snippy, Snappi, Snippy, Snoppy, Snopz?’
Maybe it’s just me.
Or I’m remembering it incorrectly…
Anyway.
Instinctual names:
Sometimes, I find that some of the characters that I have created, I have written on the fly. Then, the characters that you make get developed on the spot, almost as if they have always been part of the story.
One character is Marielle. For those who don’t know who she is, she the jellyfish that I have posted a few times in my story. She was created by Tynan talking about an event that happened in the past, when her name suddenly shows up. I later dug deep into who she is by drawing her, and she is a small pink jellyfish with a long pink dress. She’s pink galore. Her eyes covered, and has a sweet exterior. I agreed with what she looks and even behaves like quickly.
Instinctual… That’s checked:
Names can be found sometimes you would write a character’s name down, not knowing how it’s spelt, then later finding out that you prefer the name you wrote better than the other versions that sites give. Eg: I have a character name Gregorious. Initially I like this name, but when I found out that the ways to spell it is Gregorios and Gregorius… It threw me off. For whatever reason, the former more than the latter. This is to say: it is a matter to preference, and can be different depending on the person.
Searchable:
Looking through baby name websites and trying to figure out if this character name’s meaning is right. There’s quite a couple of characters that have had the searchable method and you can easily grab a name from there. Search the meaning you want, then you can look into the names it gives you and see if you can find a name you like for that character there. They are your kids after all…. In the author’s mind at least.
Finding names:
There are particular cases where it would take a while to find the names for the characters. No matter how much you try, sometimes it feels like trying to fit a circle through a square hole. It just can’t fit, and the unease it feels to try to fit a name in a character is hard.
There was a particular character where I just couldn’t stick to a name with a particular character. In this case: it is Braedon. Despite the times I took to look into it, I just couldn’t find a name that seemed to fit him. It can take a lot of research and introspecting about figuring out if this is the right name for a character. But when a name is decided, their character develops.
In this case, I ended up convincing myself that he is a bear who likes salmon. So… what can I say? Although in context of the common name Brayden and how that name and diminutives are placed in royal roles… I would assume that circled into it too.
Mashed up names.
Sometimes, you can create names by mashing a few words together. Like Willnox is an example Will which I thought of something Spirit like, having the will to live sort of thing, and nox, which is dragon.
There is also another character, Raimona which I feel like is just a mashup of Ramona and Raymond, but with an ‘i’ instead of a ‘y’, and… Let me preach for a second, but I think it deserves to be a name. It has that potential, and… Apparently, there is a national park with the name Raimona. And I think it’s really amazing. Like you already have names that are similar type, we’ve just got to put a person to that name.
Now I feel like I am going over what I am talking about. I think with mashed names, sometimes, you get cool ones, others, they are so weird and don’t make any sense, yet sort of does. Mashed up names are quite the beast to look into. I recommend trying to do it sometimes. It’s probably more prevalent with those fantasy authors, but see what you can come up with, I at least find it pretty amazing.
Knowing of character names
The way names are found can adapt and evolve over time. This can range from pronunciations if names, adding nicknames or extending them or adding nicknames. This expands the history about the characters written and make them more interesting to know. I encourage you to explore between these methods and let me know how you go with creating character names for your characters!