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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Sept 14, 2018 17:03:49 GMT
Years ago, I used to collect and scour through baby name books, but I don't do that anymore. Names usually come to me in a similar manner to ideas. I see something, hear something, wake up from a dream with a name in my head, or I'll be plotting and the character will tell me what their name is going to be. Sometimes I don't know until I'm writing and it's time to write the character's name in the story. My creative brain tends to work well under pressure when it has a keyboard in its hands.
What about you? Where do you source your character names?
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Post by kateelizabeth on Sept 16, 2018 22:01:50 GMT
I used to use baby name books, but now it's just usually whatever pops into my head. However, I have used 1st or last names of people that I've known, whether good or bad, and maybe a few teenage crushes, here and there.
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Post by corabuhlert on Sept 17, 2018 0:07:43 GMT
It depends. Some characters show up on my mental doorstep with names already attached, others need a bit of research. I have a naming book with names organised according to ethnic background and I also use naming websites and generators. This site is really great, because it has first and surnames for dozens of ethnicities. For historical settings, I use "top 100 names by year/decade" lists.
I've also borrowed names from the credits of movies and TV shows and from sports team rosters. For my In Love and War series, which is space opera and therefore needs a lot of names for planets, cities, people, businesses, etc..., I have a pattern and use the surnames of characters, cast and crew of fairly obscure non-US movies and TV shows, depending on which ethnic background I need. For a story set on a deserted and highly radioactive world, I named cities and places after known victims of the Chernobyl disaster.
For my other SF series Shattered Empire, I named all the various past rulers of the Empire after German politicians. I always expected someone to notice, especially since the parallels are not exactly subtle, but so far no one did.
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EllieL
Junior Member
Posts: 55
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Post by EllieL on Sept 18, 2018 14:54:40 GMT
It depends here as well. If I'm writing a medieval story, names more to the period are important. Same as historical westerns. If you pick a modern name for either of these, it can throw the reader straight out of the story. For contemporaries, sometimes the name is just 'there'. For those not, I tend to start with a Google search for popular names, and go from there. Then, once something has caught my eye, I'll either write it down and continue searching, or stick with it. If I create a list of possible names, I'll go through them with first and last names, and see which one fits best.
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