Stuck on important character names

[Ghost of Harrenhal]

In a story I am playing around with there are two main protagonists. It is actually a POV story and in fact there are 8 characters that I follow but the true heroes are these two young knights with very different backgrounds, personalities and views on life.

One knight is quiet and thoughtful and the other is quite the opposite. For the knight that is more outgoing and fiery I am having trouble giving him a decent name.

Does anyone else have any trouble finding good, hopefully meaningful, names for their main characters? I'm a little worried because a main character's name is something dreadfully important and although I have a lot of the story planned out I still find that being stuck on that stage is rather worrying!

 

[Lord_Rahl]

Hmm, yes. It can be troublesome. I either find that a name just jumps out to me, or I have to go digging. In the case of fantasy stories I look for old and disused names.

Try this address:
www(dot)ealdriht(dot)org(forward slash)names(/)Englishnames(dot)htm

It has a list of old English names and their meanings if known.

Hope it helps.

(sorry about the URL, but until 15 posts I can't put links up )

 

[Lord_Rahl]

Oh, and one other thing. If you can't think of a suitable name at the moment- don't let it hold up your writing! Just call him Fred or something until you can come up with something better. Otherwise you'll spend forever just biting your nails, cursing your inability to think and not get any writing done. ;p

 

[MG1962]

Just make it pronoucable I hate meeting characters Sir XCJSDISkmdsijsjfs in stories

 

[Lord_Rahl]

Okay, I can post links now- so here it is.

Old English Boy’s Names

 

[Lith]

You could slap a placeholder name on him. And he might grow into it. I had one I called La Vond, a vague alteration on lavender, because he's a beefy warrior, and I found the contrast funny, but after 190k words, the name just suited him. And Damon was a placeholder name, but I can't rename him now, or even change the spelling. I always thought Damon was overused in fantasy, but it was handy, and it stuck!

You could always give them a nickname, and an official name later. They'll end up with a lot of names, but who cares about that? I had a location that went as nothing more than the wizard city for the whole book, and only on rewrite did I come up with a name that fit and gave it an instant sort of history.

Anyway, it helps to keep a baby name book handy (since that's about the only kind of name book you'll find), one that has name meanings. And a personal log. I've gotten rather fond of reading the phone book and punning on people's last names- like giving the surname Shearer to a barber and that sort of thing. Names could have such symbolic value, or just evoke a certain feeling that fits the character.

 

[Pyan]

Just make it pronouncable I hate meeting characters Sir XCJSDISkmdsijsjfs in stories

Yes! and don't, for goodness sake, stick apostrophes in it, either. Gap, click or grunt, they're all equally annoying.
Anne McCaffrey got away with it, possibly because she was one of the first to call characters things like F'lar and F'nor, but at least she had a rationale behind it.

 

[Ghost of Harrenhal]

Thanks for the tips everyone.

 

[The Curious Orange]

Most of my characters grew into their placeholder names.

Can I suggest that a good way of establishing the contrast between to two knights would be to name them together, and "swap" them over, so that they have opposite names, ie: the quiet knight is called "Sir Thorn", the violent one "Sir Rose".

 

[gil]

Read a few pages of the telephone book. There are names in there that you couldn't make up, and there are names of outstanding ordinariness which suit minor characters.

And while we're on the subject, unlike the Round Table chaps, it's conventional for knights to have two names - Sir Lancelot Hogg, Sir Gawain Gruntfuttock etc. etc. and then they are addressed as Sir Lancelot or as Hogg, but never as Sir Hogg.

 

[Ghost of Harrenhal]

Most of my characters grew into their placeholder names.

Can I suggest that a good way of establishing the contrast between to two knights would be to name them together, and "swap" them over, so that they have opposite names, ie: the quiet knight is called "Sir Thorn", the violent one "Sir Rose".

Wow you know that's actually not a bad idea Funnily enough the name for my quiet knight was Frederich Black so I guess if the other one was White or something similar sounding then it could still work!

Thanks a lot that narrows things down to a first name only!!

 

[Daniel Hetberg]

If you can't come up with a name that just rings a bell somewhere, think about what the characters are supposed to do for your story. Should they illustrate a specific idea or theme? What are associations you spontaneously come up with for that theme? Some of these associations might find their way into the background of the characters, others might be suitable to give you a naming idea.

Say, the main point you want to write about is whether freedom and responsibility belong together, or if they are seperate. If you start off with 'freedom', 'restriction' is an immediate contrast. When I think of freedom and restriction, I think about relationships, maybe marriage. Maybe one of your knights is married or promised to someone, while the other (younger) one wants to retain his freedom... blah blah blah, here I go creating a tangent when the original question was about names.

 

[jenna]

I don't think names are too important at first draft stage. I've changed my names around for my main characters, races and cities many times! That's what the "search and replace" function in Word is for! And I've been working on my project for a few years now, and I've only just come up with the title of the first book! It can get easy to get caught up on names etc, but the right ones will come to you in time. Place holder names are definitely the way to go..

 

[The Pelagic Argosy]

I love Fantasy Name Generator It's so much fun. Gimme a name that's long, short, airy, childish, Latinish...boom. I just start pouring over the lists until something feels right.

I sympathize also in that I don't feel like I can figure out a character until I know his or her name. I can't use place holders. I have to at least find something approximate. I just can't write a fantasy story starring "Fred."

 

[Daniel Hetberg]

The search & replace version probably also only works well in english, or other languages with a very simple grammatical structure. In languages where you have declinations that actually change the word, it's either multiple search & replace for every case, or you just search for the word stem and then replace everything by hand.

 

[chrispenycate]

My characters don't like being renamed.
I've got one (he's a dragon, but that's irrelevant) who grew out of his name chapters ago. It'll be easy enough to do the substitution when I find the right name, but while he agrees with me the one he has now is just wrong, he's a conservative, and won't answer to anything else.
And names crystalise a character out of the amorphous fog crowd, they carry magic – to label something is to control it (of course, having some of its toenail clippings helps, too)
Still, I always did get the bolshy characters, the ones nobody else wants to work with.

 

[daisybee]

a good source of names are local newpapers, or phone books, or signposts to lord knows where-I jot them all down, simply because some are so wonderful.

I never ever worry about names too much-I think in fantasy you can get that, does it sound made up? kind of mentality, which is a bit daft, because you know - it is! I mean take a look at some celeb baby names, you can't get weirder than that lot.

My mum found a brilliant name in some gardening section of the local community news, Aryantha C. Potts. Real names beat meaningful names sometimes.

Besides, names are not so hard to change.

 

[Lith]

I sympathize also in that I don't feel like I can figure out a character until I know his or her name. I can't use place holders. I have to at least find something approximate. I just can't write a fantasy story starring "Fred."

What if "Fred" was a three headed merman that was born a lion god? But I think I see what you're getting at- modern names often sound funny in an exotic location. A lot depends on context.

Crispy- is that ill-suited name going to be worked into the story as an ill-suited name? Just keep plugging away at it- it's absolutely wonderful when you finally find a suitable name after a long period of knowing the one you have isn't right.

 

[Winter Lord]

Come up with terms like "von" and "zu" which mean "of". (They are of Prussian origin.)

Take your first name, and play around with spelling it differently. (example, my middle name is Craig, which could be written Kraeyg.)

 

[Laerten]

I have found names for a lot of characters by using 27,000 Baby Names, Meanings and Origins at Baby Names World - it contains over 27,000 names and there is a great feature where you can search by the meaning of the name.

Some examples:

Sir 'Valiant' came up in Latin as Sir 'Walerka'
Sir 'Kingly' came up in Latin as Sir 'Bacilio' (I actually like this one!)
Sir 'Scared' came up in Latin as Sir 'Sannan'

There are names from dozens of languages/areas but my favourite names mostly seem to be from the Sanskrit section as they just seem to fit fantasy characters.