How to Choose the Right Name for Every Character
Writer’s Methods and Tools for Naming Fictional Characters
“I read in a book once that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I’ve never been able to believe it. I don’t believe a rose WOULD be as nice if it was called a thistle or a skunk cabbage.” ― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
Sometimes it’s easy naming characters. With some stories I’ve named my main character, their whole family, along with their best friends, and archnemesis within five minutes of starting. Other times I’ll rename my main character twenty times.
Regardless of how hard or easy the primary characters’ names come to me, I almost always struggle with secondary characters about half-way through the story. The first five or so are easy enough — anyone can come up with five names for people who aren’t terribly important, but after that, I start worrying about whether I’m reusing a name, whether it’s too similar to a primary characters’ name, or I just start putting in place holder names to fill the spot until I come up with a better name.
For both primary and secondary characters, I’ve started to collect some tools and tricks to help me name my characters. I’ll break the tools down into naming categories: Historical, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Name Generators.
Historical Names
As an American who hasn’t traveled nearly as much as I’d like to, I often end up with American characters. One of my favorite methods for naming these characters is to decide what year I want them to have been born in, then look at what were the most popular names in that year.
For example, if I have a character whose grandmother was born in the 1920s, I’ll look up what names were popular in that decade and probably name her grandmother something like Lillian, Virginia, or Barbara.
Babycenter.com has a great collection of U.S. baby names arranged by decade from the late 1800s all the way to 2019. In general, baby name books and websites are a fantastic resource for naming characters.
If I’m writing historical fiction and need to go a little farther back then the 1800s, or to some of the other regions of the world, Nameberry.com has a good collection of historical names. A few of the categories their selection includes are ancient Roman names, Colonial names, Gothic, gods & goddesses, and cowboys.
Fantasy & Science Fiction Names
Fantasy and science fiction names are some of my favorites. Generally, I like to come up with entirely original names, but, on occasion, I will use some established names as well. There are generally two different ways I pick fantasy and science fiction names.
- Language Blending
- Themes
Language blending is my favorite way to create fantasy names. What I do is I go to logos.it, a multilingual translator and search a word that I think describes my character, Logos will return a translation of that work into dozens of different languages, I will pick the two words that sound the most interesting to me and turn them into a name.
For example, let’s say the character is a hunter. I’ll put the word “hunter’ in Logos. I get back 118 different translations. I choose the Basque word “ehiztari” and the Flemish word “jager”. From these words, I blend them to create the character name “Jatari”.
If I have a specific theme or type of character I’m trying to name, 2000-names.com is one of my favorite sites to use. Beyond a number of country-specific names, they have a specialty name section that has a broad selection of categories to choose from. Some of the categories I’ve found most useful include dragon names, evil names, angel names, and androgynous names.
Random Name Generators
Finally, there are the name generators. This is my least favorite way to name characters, but there are some very good generators out there. Here are my top four:
Name-genereator.org — I like this one for the sheer number of filters you can use for generating names.
Fantasynamesgenerator.com — This site has an exhaustive list of options for generating your fantasy names, to include characters, weapons, and pets.
Reedsy.com — I’ll be honest, 90% of why I like this one is the layout of the site. The card style visuals just kinda make me happy. It also has a good selection of names.
Starmanseries.com — If you need a little more than a name, this site also gives you the option of generating a character biography and family tree along with the name.
As a writer, naming characters is something I almost always look forward to. It’s a small part of story crafting, but an important one. After all, your character must have something once they’re left alone with only their name to call their own.
