How do YOU name characters?

[BENZOOKA]

I just, um, make them up. If it's in English, or otherwise a more international context, then it much more easier since I can use Finnish words. They work like a charm. Every Roccat product I've seen, has a Finnish name, for example.

Occasionally I might use names of athletes from different sports (if they need to be regular names, or reflect a certain nationality, etc.)

 

[A Weary Exile]

Usually I try my best to make their name fit within the game's canon, for instance, when I played an Argonian in Oblivion I'd come up with something Argonian-sounding. Two names I tend to use a lot, especially in Fallout 3 and New Vegas, are Rodrigo or Hector just because I've always liked those names.

EDIT: *Sigh* I have to stop assuming I know what the OP is talking about before I post, bad posting habit. -___-

When I come up with characters for characters in a fictional world I usually pick an existing language to base their names off (French, Italian, Spanish, etc.) and just make adjustments to names from those languages.

 

[SuperSuperSuperGuy]

I look to my games for inspiration... In the short story I wrote for school, I used the names for the Velvet Room attendants from Persona 3 Portable: Theodore and Elizabeth. Not terribly creative, but it got the job done.

 

[rayen020]

name generators are useful. Also try to use your own name to come up with an anagram. When i truly hit a brick wall i just open a phone book to a random page and find an interesting name. not published, some college.

 

[napmil]

I'm a writer and when I name my characters I usually try to look up suiting names for my setting. As an example, I wrote a story with themes from Scandinavian culture, so the names I chose were inspired by common names from there.

At the moment I'm writing a story where the names are stuff like Antonius, Canon, Lia or Valerian, which is to say really weird ones.

So my advice is to try to understand the setting your writing in and work your way from there. If you're inspired by a real place, look up a list of names from that place and pick some out that look interesting.

If that doesn't work for you, just take a quick glance around the room and combine the words of the first two things you see.

Kellogs + Warcraft (Kelwar)
Heroes + Sacred (Hersac)
Nostradamus + Lamp (Noslam)

If nothing of that works I recommend going to seventhsanctum.com and look up one of their random name generators.

 

[deserteagleeye]

reCAPTCHA helps http://www.google.com/recaptcha/api/image?c=03AHJ_VuvpFadUvElActuGkwzSmgJxTGGbR5SUJyS2rs7kInhPI43_mvGrL7gzITno9gFSySEwrdFuP5UQaObs7YkWAZTivgXdiMW14EQghw6Ujq7YHaxgWzmhVfhSHlF1fx5jGkFv0iOSYMlIguWMGnf72BYtp4ShHQ

 

[OptimisticPessimist]

Badly. I think I've only ever had two, maybe three well-named characters.

 

[Ultraman950]

I'm college-educated, but by no means professional. I do like to RP a lot, though.
Dunno if this helps much, but here's my method (well, series of questions):

1. Was this person born naturally/are they using a nickname or something?
If yes to the former, think what the parents would logically name the child. It might be related to personality/ability and might not. If yes to the latter, go nuts.

2. Where are they from?
It's best you choose a name that originates from the country/continent/whatever they/their parents are from. Not mandatory, but still a good idea.

3. Are you intentionally trying to be symbolic?
If yes, search through a baby names site and find one with a meaning that at least roughly matches what you're going for. For e.g., one of my characters is a fire- and light-based superhero named Dawn (duh) Cynthia (ironic name; Kynthia was the Greek goddess of the moon) Anastasia (light-bringer). She gave herself this name, though.
If no, then you can pick names of people you know or just grab a name from the aforementioned baby names site.

Try to keep the names consistant and clear, though. People will remember your characters better if you give them names they naturally associate with this character's attribute; for example, naming a really strong guy Samson. But also try to avoid making it too blatant (unless it's being played for laughs, or if the character gave him/herself the name, or it was given to him/her by others).

Hope this helps. Good luck with your project.

 

[thejackyl]

For the first names of characters - If its a fantasy setting, I will use something that sounds like a name. For surnames I will usually use either an anagram of someone I know, or will spell some word backwards. But than again, I'm pretty unoriginal like that. I also like to use names that are phonetic.

If it's a story in a real-world setting, I would look into what area of the world you are writing about, and find some names from there, and just pick some first name you think sounds good with a proper sounding last name.

As for towns; Again, I suck at this and usually go back to using anagrams and spelling words backwards

Edit: It's a shame I trashed the stories I was writing. Or I would pull that notebook out and give you some examples.

 

[FalloutJack]

It really varies. I have alot of characters that I can stick into alot of places. For the record, the Escapist actually gave me "Johnny Aces", from a little writing challenge thread.

 

[Rough Sausage]

I struggle to come up with names I'd like, I hardly ever use my own name because it isn't very original, and Rough Sausage loses it's comedy value eventually. Sometimes I'll go with random syllables, or sometimes just mundane names like gregory. I'm not very creative.

 

[staika]

Dude I have the exact same problem whenever I write a story and how I combat this problem is by the fabled Random Name Generator. Now what I do is that for each character I write down his/her personality, if they are a major or minor character, and if they are good or evil. After I write that down I go on my Random Name Generator of choice [http://www.kleimo.com/random/name.cfm] I go through the different names and if I find one that I fancy I write it down and then I mix and match the names to get the characters name. This may be long and tedious but it works for me.

Also I am a writer, not professional, and I am in the process of being college educated but not for writing.

 

[loodmoney]

Onomatopoeia. While this advice is so general as to be useless, basically name your characters for the things they do. (Apparently Charles Dickens was good at this, but I couldn't say.)

Slightly off-topic: I name video game characters for philosophers that exist in the same time period as the game is set. Currently playing Mount & Blade as Eriugena.

 

[Firia]

I'm college-educated, but by no means professional. I do like to RP a lot, though.
Dunno if this helps much, but here's my method (well, series of questions):

1. Was this person born naturally/are they using a nickname or something?
If yes to the former, think what the parents would logically name the child. It might be related to personality/ability and might not. If yes to the latter, go nuts.

2. Where are they from?
It's best you choose a name that originates from the country/continent/whatever they/their parents are from. Not mandatory, but still a good idea.

3. Are you intentionally trying to be symbolic?
If yes, search through a baby names site and find one with a meaning that at least roughly matches what you're going for. For e.g., one of my characters is a fire- and light-based superhero named Dawn (duh) Cynthia (ironic name; Kynthia was the Greek goddess of the moon) Anastasia (light-bringer). She gave herself this name, though.
If no, then you can pick names of people you know or just grab a name from the aforementioned baby names site.

Try to keep the names consistant and clear, though. People will remember your characters better if you give them names they naturally associate with this character's attribute; for example, naming a really strong guy Samson. But also try to avoid making it too blatant (unless it's being played for laughs, or if the character gave him/herself the name, or it was given to him/her by others).

Hope this helps. Good luck with your project.

Your advice had just enough quirk in it to be quite helpful. It doesn't help with the assembly of building a name, but it helps in other regards.

 

[MASTACHIEFPWN]

I just come up with them.

They are usually random, but I fit it into the story, I go into long thought processes beforehand...

 

[Flippincrazy]

I struggle horribly. Honestly, naming is by far the hardest part of anything I've written. Eventually something seems to spontaneously "pop" into my mind, and I generally just go with that. Or you know...I cheat and use a random name generator, but you didn't read that...

 

[Gamblerjoe]

I have a long list of names which Im constantly adding to. I occasionally use one of them for an MMO or DnD game, depending on my race and class. they are just silly names I come up with for the fun of it. Some could be adapted to be more like superhero or supervillain names. To come up with those types of names, you have to do what shows like The Tick and Venture Brothers do.

Captain Claymore (Clayton Moore, Captain in the U.S. Army)
The Stare Master (a supervillain with some sort of gaze attack)
Reckless and Dangerment (havoc raising duo)


Here are some great ones from Venture Brothers:
Brick Frog
The See-an-Enemy
The Egoist
Truckules
Unicornelius
Joseph and his amazing techinicolor nightmare coat

edit: I like to write DnD modules. When I need regular names for NPCs I use a couple of different methods. One is that I have other name lists with names for each race. My second method is to look at baby names online (advice I got from reading a Rich Berlew article). I think about what ethnicity to use, and pick from that list. My third method is to look online for list of words in fantasy languages. So if I need to come up with a name for an elf, I would goodgle "elven language" and use what I find to piece names together.

 

[headphonegirl]

I use http://www.behindthename.com/

Its good for finding out the origin of the names and there's lots of names from all over the world, so I have lots of choice

 

[StellarViking]

I once wrote a short story based in Sweden and named every single character after an Ikea product.

My favorite thing to do is just sit back and think of a name or even just another word related to the character I'm thinking of. I'll get the word, and tweak this part and that part of it until I get a name I'm satisfied with.

 

[emeraldrafael]

Usually I'll either define the character and either write/draw them out and see if a name just pops out (you know, like how people say you look like a Fred, or something).

If that doesnt work, and if i dont have name I want to do specifically, I'll think about what they are like personality wise, then look up a name that means that frmo their descent (so if their kind and sweet, I'll find a name that means that).

And if worse coms to worse, i either people watch or do a random contact list and steal a name from there. XD