Choosing names

[Dominic]

Much of my own work is music inspired. A song or body of work will strike home and I'll think, "Hey, I can build a story around that!". So, very often, the names of my characters come from songs or song titles. For example, my current story, "Angeline", comes from the title of a long-forgotten 80's metal song that I once had on tape. I can still hum a few bars of it, but can't find a copy for the life of me.
Alternatively, since my stories have a historical flavor to them, many names are drawn from real historical characters. For example, in "Dust and Bones", I found a poem by the Buddhist monk Tsungyan Gyatso that led to me using him as a character in the story.
Work with whatever inspires you. A lot of times you may not know what a name means, but it will just sound or feel right. That's the one you go with.

[Noxmeansxno]

I don't bother to think about names. So, I usually ask my readers and friends for the names. If I like it, I won't hesitate to use it.

Same here. I'll have a character design, and I'll show it to a friend and ask, "What do you think his/her name should be?" Usually the answer sticks.

[Faub]

Most of my characters' names have meaning. They aren't the meanings you would normally associate with those names, they're more closely associated with the story itself.

Sandy and Shelly are the most obvious ones. They name each other at the beginning of the story. Shelly is an oyster, a play on her closed, shy nature. Sandy is an irrtant that can cause the oyster to create something beautiful.

There are others:

Aqua was named by Shelly because Sandy called her "water girl."

Sylvester was named Corbae because he reminded Traffic of a bird.

There are several less obvious ones too:

Rob the cop. It's a pun.

A variant of Racheal can be found in the bible. No variant of Paula can be found in the bible. Paula is a very religious person and attacks Racheal for being Satanic. Paula is also very hateful and pays little more than lip service to her faith. Racheal is a kind and caring person.

[Jesusabdullah]

I do that too, where I ask friends for name suggestions... then I ignore them because I came up with something else. Aren't I a good friend? Taht, or I just use some really dumb name, hoping to change it later before I actually finish but never doing so...

Also, that thing, with the graphs? It is awesome. I found out that there were girl Joshuas in the 80's too (that's my real name). Friggin' U2--this is their fault, you know.

[Zhan_Dvega]

Yeah, that Name Wizard thing is pretty neat...

I noticed a couple things... like the name Rhonda hit it's peak popularity in the 60's, and Chandler's popularity increased exponentially in the 90's

Hmmmm....

[TheSuburbanLetdown]

I love naming charcters; picking a name is like playing God. I usually never try to attach meaning to names, just whatever has a nice ring to it and whether it fits the character.

I try to pick names that would be realitvely uncommon, but onee that would plausibly exist in the real world, like Ashley Carlyle and Maynard Kozlowski.

[Rkolter]

ABOL was named because someone pointed out he didn't have a name and I didn't want to admit I hadn't named him.

TESS is named TESS because I call a lot of female characters Tess or Tessia, based off an old game of Albedo I once played. I even named a cat Tessia, but she got run over.

Yuri is named yuri because in a thread once upon a time someone said that it'd be a cool name for a guy, so I called him that.

Q-CPU is short for Quantum Computer.

Pretty much everyone else in the comic are one-offs named after the person they represent - YarpsDat, Red (my wife), and the Artist (mr).

[Jen_Babcock]

Jennifer: Hmm... It sounds foreign? I think this one just came from the fact that I've always associated the name 'Jennifer' with posh girls in high school. Sorry to everyone offended.

Man, it's cool to know that someone thinks my name sounds foreign.

BTW, don't mind if you associate my name w/ posh girls. I guess that's just how it is in your area. Here, almost everyone born in the late 70s early 80s are named Jennifer, so I don't really associate any one trait to them.

As for me, I just kinda pick names that go w/ my characters. I stare at my character's mug until I think of something fitting. Monsieur Smokey is the only exception though, since he's based on a real stuffed bunny of mine.

[Ida]

I actually have no clue where the 'Posh' thing comes from, but Jennifer is a pretty uncommon name around here (currently 783 people in the whole country, and from the statistics, most of them are toddlers), so my theory is that I somehow associate it with american High School series, which I in turn associate with nasty posh girls - hence the connection.

[Dutch!]

Don't worry...there's soon be a shitload of Mary's waddling around that little spit of land...who'd have thought...a Tasmanian Princess...

Now there's an oxymoron!

[[geoduck]]

I grab names from all over..

Many of my non-human characters have names which are obscure English words which describe their personality or their occupation, although in several cases the spelling got tweaked. Cumshaw, camorra, niddler, clochard, telic, agita, nevus, guttle.. I learned many of these words by subscribing to the Word-A-Day e-mailing list, which I highly recommend.

I just introduced a character named Squeeb, which is/was an insult used by a villian on the Disney animated series Kim Possible.

Digger Odel is a reference to an old-time radio character, an undertaker named "Digger" O'Dell.

Hax is a name that's been used before by various authors I've read, Stephen King among them, and was appropriate for the character.

Members of one species are named after spells from old Infocom text-adventure games.

Sylvester and Mortimer got names that I thought were appropriately geeky, while I just like the name "Rosemary". Her last name, Ripley, is a homage to both the heroine of the Alien movies, and the creator of the Believe It Or Not franchise.

[Keffria]

I keep a little notebook in my purse/knapsack/pocket wherever I go, for the purpose of sketching things if something should come to mind, but also for recording interesting names. (I also like using those random name generators and fooling around with the letters so that they actually sound like real names...)

Most of the names in my various comics have no meaning whatsoever, though Galad and Tristen's names are not-so-subtle homages to Arthurian knights (sort of... though shortened/spelled differently...).

[Christwriter]

From the time I was thirteen to the time I was about sixteen, I went through a "Weird name" phase. The weirder and wilder the name, the better.

Thank goodness I got that out of my system quickly.

A name is dependant on the world the character lives in. In a fantasy world, having a character named Dailen Arrenson or Ianine Morian is ok. It adds to the atmosphere. In a story set in a normal world, having a char named Ianine Morian would have less impact than having one named, say, Jane Alberts or Frannie Taylor. I made it a rule that normal stories need normal names. And by "normal" I mean, set in this world or in an offshoot of this world. My sci-fi stories have normal names in them (current comic is sci fi. Characters are Sarah, Lucy/Lucille, Jeffory, Donald...) and in my way-out-there sci-fi novel, the majority of the characters have normal-ish first names and odd last names, except for the minority that comes from Earth.

Picking names is also dependant on the race of the character. Last names especially. Anglo Saxon last names have a tendancy to be either mideval trade (Smith, Farmer, Taylor, Shoemaker, Banker, Baker,) or a man's name (Johnson, Thomason, Adamson, Jacobson) because that was how people were identified. (Jacob-the-smith, Leif son of Eric, Amanda-the-Weaver, Laura-daughter-of-Sam). Asian names, particularly Chinese names, put what Americans think of as the last name, the family (sur-) name First. So Song Lee and Song Pei-pei would be of the same family, but if the names were reversed they wouldn't be. I don't know what the common names are for most other races, mostly because I am a dumb American and haven't had the opertunity yet.

A good rule of thumb for creating names in a normal world (like say your own version of New York City) is to take common first names and common last names and put them together.

Also: Baby names. There are websites so full of them, they are overflowing.

CW

[Mimo]

I make an effort to give my characters the silliest names possible-

Snowball, Pepsi, Muffin ectera

(there are exceptions- like Max and Uschi)

[RemusShepherd]

To add something to this discussion -- there's a thread that just sprung up where some professional authors and editors are discussing how to name things. Read the comments, not the main post, that's where the best advice is.

My favorite: Make all your character names some anagram of the word 'lesbian'.

[Taiwanimation]

When stuck, look to mythology, geography, and biology.

[Sput]

i randomly type out letters, or steal the names of friends. Garrett Whiteside, first name of the boytoy last name of my best friend ever. Natasha was given by the same friend, Jordan is the name of a cool guy, Apollo is the winged messenger that's in Garrett's skull. Leus is the one inside Jordan's head, Leus is Jordan's net name. Hm.
I too like names that are REAL but kinda uncommon. Used the US census lists for some names.

[Mercury Hat]

For people names, I usually just go with whatever sounds right. Not right by definition, just how it sounds and how the sound relates to the character.

For place names, I just make up something by typing out a random combination of letters or rearranging the letters in a phrase into an acronym or something.

I used to keep a list of names I'd like to use, but now I just go with what feels right.

[K-Dawg]

I'm horrible with names.

Let's run down the name of two of my main characters: Angry D. Monkey, and Happy D. Monkey...geez.

[Fadri]

The final resort:
http://www.behindthename.com/random.html

...

Well, not really, the names obtained from this thing are terrible. -__-U