How To Name Your Book Characters 

We writers seem to spend more time on baby name websites than expecting parents 😂 Great video, always lots to think about when naming characters.

One thing not mentioned about researching names from another culture are formal, informal and diminutive forms of names as well as honorifics and situations when those should be used. For example my Polish first name is "Tomasz", however there is almost no situation in Polish language where someone would address me by that name alone. If someone addresses me in a formal situation they would either use honorific "pan Tomasz" or the full name or both. If situation is informal enough to not require that, it is also informal enough to require the use of the informal form of the name "Tomek". Using the formal "Tomasz" alone is unusual enough that it was actually my nickname in high school. Now you probably won't be basing your book in Poland, but since an example of Russian names was given, many Russian names popular in the west - Tanya, Masha, Misha - are actually diminutive name forms, that in Russia would not be used in formal contexts. Some even wouldn't be used outside of family situations.

One thing I like in fantasy is when world building takes naming convention into account. In my own fantasy world, dwarves (for example) have surnames composed of two words (firebrew, diamondheart, etc.). When two dwarves marry (regardless of gender), both parties take one word from each other's surname and form a new surname. For example, in the surnames I mentioned, if dwarves with the surnames Diamondheart and Firebrew married, they might both take the new surname Fireheart. Great video!

I wrote a story that takes place about 5300 years ago and ended up spending a year researching PIE family proto-languages, just to get the names to sound believable. It was intense.

I have a pattern: 1. All the good characters names are 1 syllable or have a nickname that is 1 syllable, they will only be referred to by the nick name 2. Villains tend to have 2 syllable names that don’t roll or flow as well

To be fair, I have a character named Ravenna who was born in 1992, but her mother was a Vampire born in the 1800's

I'm a fellow Ravenclaw too! 🦅🦅🦅 Also, I tend to look up names when I'm thinking of characters, as well. I know for a fact that alot of the names I have for characters have meanings behind them. There's always some meaning behind someone's name and there may be more than one meaning. And somehow, your character has to embody that name in some way.

I like that I was already doing a lot of this without thinking about it! I usually research origins and meanings of names whenever I stumble across a name that just *clicks* with the character. Unless I have a character name right of the bat (which rarely happens) I usually end up call my character something like Apple or Odd Eye (currently the name of one of my unnamed characters who I'm still trying to find the right name for), or something that relates to them in some way to identify them. Once I find the name, like I did for "Real Devil" last night with the name he picks for himself when he goes from being a sorcerer to what is essentially a minor god. I still have to work out what his birth name is, but for that I've got to stumble across the right name either accidentally or in a list of names from a certain origin. I also need to get an idea of sorcerer culture in my universe, and how that culture would influence what Real Devil's parents would name him. I am currently struggling with naming one of my main characters. Seonghwa is the perfect name for him, but his species is a species I've created, so it doesn't feel right using a Korean name when the gumihos will have Korean names. From what I could find, it means 'to be a star/to become a star' based on Park Seonghwa's name. Which fits this MC really well because his species believe they become stars after they die and they help guide the living through their lives. So, it would make sense for parents to name their kids something related to that. I don't want to come up with entirely fake names, so I'm stuck on what to do because I assume that with a made up species, that I should probably come up with a made-up naming system as well?

Why would anyone take a Masterclass when they could just listen to Alexa! I'm learning a bunch! Thanks for the excellent content.

What I love about you videos other than that incredible content is your humor and you are legit a fun person to hear. I giggled many times as I was working out at the gym. The Alexa joke got me 🥲🤣

Yay for the Welsh shoutout! I've been watching lots of your videos for a belated nanowrimo start and this is so helpful.

This is great advice!.. but now I’m insecure about my character’s names. Fifty fifty 😬

I tend to pull from my own family names like you mentioned "the homage," but I do struggle over names. I have used the names of famous dead people in the story to give the story a time period. I enjoyed the video thank you.

There's this website called behind the name, and it is literally the best. It has the etymology and history and usage, and popularity. There's also user submitted names, which are names submitted by users of the website. And the best part: the polls. Basically you can make a poll on like which name is better or what should the surname of your character can be, and they're really fun to vote on. There's also a surname and place name site, but the place name site has like 4 names on. The surname site isn't as good and the firstname site, but it has a lot of good names!

I legit run your videos while I write/brainstorm cause it like etches into my brain. Also, you sound like a really nice person. 😌

I have a character who has a slightly unusal name that's not completely exotic but rather not common in the place she lives. And since she's been little only her parents and her grandma have called her that so that now only they are allowed to still use it while she basically forces everyone else to just use her nickname (a short form of the name). Hearing her full, real name from someone other than her family makes her uncomfortable. And idk if this is the reason, but I, too, don't like my full name like at all. I let my parents use it and my coworkers (mainly because it's so awkward to come up with a nickname after everyone just got used to your name) but I hate it when my friends use it and I'd never willingly tell it to anyone online. So I guess what I wanted to say with all this was: think about how people think about their own names. If you want your character to have a special and unusual name, consider that they may love or hate that name and that they may want to be called by a nickname or something else, especially if the real name is very long. And also consider that not everyone react the same way towards that. Parents may not be happy when their child tells them they hate the name (I did that when I was younger, I'm so sorry Mum!) and people who've known them for a very long time may just be so used to the name that it's harder for them to accept the nickname. And of course, many people will simply not know about the real name OR the nickname (e.g. when they only see the name on official documents or on like the passport).

I really like your videos, and they help me when I'm writing a lot!!

i have a trilogy i'm working rn that takes place in 2016, but instead of looking up popular names from the mid 2010's, i decided to add some special patterns in the characters names, so like the main character's name and his family are all named after places in america, and his best friend and her family's names all start with ka-, so i thought that would be a fun little detail to add lol-

god, i really hate it when authors are super heavy-handed with the symbolism in their names. even if its fitting for a characters, naming them cassandra or silas or christian (or JC initials, or shepherd as the last name) or medea or anything myth-laden is really not my thing. it either spoils a part of the story or their character arc or their backstory. or, when none of that happens, you just wonder why the author named them that in the first place. bad name choices rip me out of a story real fast. i mean, you usually get used to it after a while, but at first it sticks out like a sore thumb.

As someone with a really uncommon name (although it became more popular about 6 years ago) I respond to any name that sounds like mine. Emily, Emma, Elaine, Lynn, etc. Anything that starts with e or ends with Lynn I will assume you're talking to me. No one remembers my unusual name lol

I love it when you go 201 on your channel!

My main characters name is Steve Butler because he father was English and mother is Greek.

I just pick a name up out of the air - but perhaps that's not the best thing to do - however, I did go to the right year to check the names - so I'm doing it right.

I'm only 27, and I went to high school with girls named Daisy, Esther, and Tricia. Granted, it was a large school. If you've got an old name you want to use in contemporary YA, it's fine if you just say the character is named after an influential aunt or grandmother who passed away.

My WIP is kind of weird in this way. The first names I came up with were for the main characters, Taira and Kenma, both female. Taira comes from Terra, earth, and the Norse rune Kenaz means that the name Kenma has an association with fire for me. The I discovered that Kenma is an actual Japanese _boy_ name and is often associated with a character from an anime. Oops. Anyway, after that, the other names ended up following the same pattern- foreign-sounding to an English speaker, two syllables, easily pronounceable. Kenma's best friends are Priti and Guntur, who's nicknamed Ellin after his surname, and there's her adoptive father Jiàn and Ellin's older brother Lodan. Ellin's surname, Llewellyn, was a friend's choice and it's so weird within the context of the story that I decided to keep it in as a joke. Nobody can pronounce it, including Ellin and Lodan. There's only one character whose name doesn't fit the pattern, Joanna, and she's quite minor, and her name only doesn't fit in that it doesn't sound foreign.

My maiden name is an old German one for someone who makes or sells parchment. I always thought it was pretty neat as I have always wanted to be a writer

I am working on my character and I was really drawn to a particular name. When I looked it up I found out it has a meaning that matches up with who she becomes in the story. Now I just need to figure out what naming convention will work for her name to make sense amongst the other names I pick. It is a unisex name that is popular as a boy's name in the region I was considering using but it is a common name there. I have to try to figure out if it is ever used as a girl's name I guess if I want that naming convention.

Naming characters is the worst! I've been working on an epic fantasy off and on for years and my main character is still....MC. *sigh* It's gotten to the point where I'm almost attached to it but obviously need to change it to something else. I'm still using WORLDNAME as a placeholder as well. Thankfully most of the other characters are named at this point but man is it annoying not finding something that "fits" just right! For some reason the stories that aren't as fleshed out are the ones that have the characters who throw their names out immediately, and the ones I have a better grasp on overall wait ages to cough up a name. If only I could figure out how to combine them... For now I have a story waiting on names, and named characters waiting on their stories. All in different genres. Someday...*fingers crossed* (Not so) fun fact: I got 40k words into my first NaNo novel before one of the secondary characters finally introduced himself to somebody and suddenly had a name. I DEFINITELY recommend googling names though. The first mystery I planned out had a character (victim actually) who apparently shared a name with an up-and-coming...MYSTERY WRITER (albeit one I hadn't heard of at the time). YIKES!

I love how you addressed the binary.

I need it for wattpad

I died when you mentioned the name Hannah Smith because that's the exact name of one of my characters.😂 I wanted her to have a super common name but now I'm wondering if I should change it.🤔

In response to somewhere around 6:30 ~ Fantasy Name Generator, any fantasy name you can think of for like seemingly a hundred fantasy races or even entities.

My actual name is Christina, and it would constantly get turned into Christian, Christine, Kristen, Krista, etc. The list could go on. Made going with a pen name easy. I also cut off half my name in real life so people would quit getting it wrong! So, in real life, I go by Chris.😂🤣😂

Naming characters is probably the hardest part of the writing process for me! In fact, this might be why I write children's books mostly starring animals... You can give an animal a funny name, there's no pressure to make it "realistic" 😋 !

imagine you're a teen writer and your mom comes into your room while 10+ tabs of baby name sites are open in your laptop. 😂 btw i've always enjoyed baby name sites specially sites with very specific details or thos nickname or name variation options. 💓

This was relevant! :D E.g, it was common for myself and other friends to give our nicknames to English friends because theyd most probably butcher them :'). It was less weird. And family or serious situations used our proper names (e.g. one nickname I had was Nami, some others are Jaz, Nev, Dev). And with family we had our own nicknames too.... As Alexa notes some names are religious/ culture inheritance, some are by time of year of birth ( Na- is one eg of name beginning)! :)

I have a female main character who has a boy's name and I was so fond of that name, she had to have it. So I made up this tradition that her family named their first born this name, despite gender.

Oh goodness this is very helpful for me because I can not figure out for the life of me, names of my characters. Mainly the two main characters.

Yeah but fantasy worlds could have regular sounding names like Bob but it wouldn’t be short for what you might be quick to assume it was (so Bob isn’t really called Robert or Barbara). For example Lord of the Rings and A Song of Ice and Fire/ Game of Thrones both have a character called Sam but neither was short for something like Simon (Samwise / Samwell).

Ooh, in my life I have met people with my name like... 5-6 times. Ever. That's crazy.

I have a LOT of different cultural inspirations in the same fantasy setting. Like, I've got a name that's Italian-ish, Latin-is, Korean-ish and and Somali-ish. The thing is, they are all either outcasts or refugees from all over a war-torn world. Once MC & co. venture out on their journey, regional naming conventions will start being more organized. This is ok? I hope so... Also yay Ravenclaw!

For historical names, at least one group of people has done some digging into what names were used by which groups over what time period. At least the Society for Creative Anachronism is supposed to be history-oriented: heraldry.sca.org/names.html That doesn't mean there aren't gaps or errors in the efforts, but it's a start toward not calling the next Jacobite lead character "Jacques inghean Cineada". FamilySearch's records contain a wealth of European name examples. In general, if a baby name site isn't referencing where they came up with "X is traditional Y name", there are others sure to be better.

There were 5 girls with my name in high school, and I was ALWAYS the one people forgot about when listing them. Smith, Pitt, Warburton, Robinson and "some other one". I'll never forget a guy in my grade saying that to me, thinking I was one of the ones he listed when I was, in fact, the forgotten girl.

My story "The Untold secrets Of Melody Grace" 1 main charcter name is April Victorian:Romnatic,a smoker and known for having 25 exes. 2nd main character name is Jeremy Grace:Smart,loyal and the twin brother of Melody Grace. 3rd main charcter name is Sasha Goode:Writer,competetive(only non-white character) and known for writing "The secrets Of 2". It's about YA mystery,the characters are 16 years old,it's a story that takes place in mid 2000's (are those good names for my 3 main characters?)

I like when fantasy authors take common names and make them weird. My favorite is Waxillium and his friend Wayne from Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson

I just either think of a bunch of names and pick the one which I think fist my character most, or just make up a name 😂

Hi Alexa, what advice could you give on character development?

George Lucas' first draft of Star Wars, Ob-Wan Kenobi was named Bill. But "Help me Bill, you're my only hope" didn't have a nice ring to it.

Haha! It's funny because I actually know a young lady with the unfortunate name of Esther. She really REALLY dislikes it.

Thank you!

I have a book series that I'm writing about a group of foxes it's supost to give off kind of ancient vibes so they must have really cool names i'm trying to take a little bit of everything

When I read Dune I thought the name of the main character Paul was a bit out of place. However, it turned out to be a great sci-fi novel series and I can't think of Paul with another name. It is rather strange, every time I read about Paul Artreides, the name is a tad distracting.

When naming my characters for fantasy stories I usually have a meaning in mind and then choose the name I like the best with that meaning, Did the whole made up name thing when I started writing but they just look stupid to me when I look back.

Great video! But, in real life, there are always one or two people with old-fashioned names or "weird" names. When I was in high school in the mid 2000s, I knew a Mary and a Brigit. Now, if *all* the high schoolers have 1930s names in a story set in 2005, then that's weird.

Hi: Why did you capitalize Father, then lower case "father" so close to it in "The Stars We Steal" p. 3-4 ? Thanks, Charles Cox (facebook).

I WRITING SAILOR MOON AND XENA SAGAS AND TALES

god i wish my parents picked one of the most popular names instead of sticking my with meighan and it’s not pronounced how you would think.

I love how you say Müller in german. I had to laugh so hard, I don't mean that in a bad way.it's just always so funny when english natives try to say hard words in german. by the way is someone except me from austria?

An enchanter named...Tim

I have a name for a character, that I just made up at random when I looked up the name I found it to be common in the year they were born and in the country the character is from, so happy accident. 😂

I'm writing a story that is somewhere on the edge between high and low fantasy, and I base most of my names on names of bacteria or viruses. I know it sounds really stupid, but it's actually not THAT stupid - after some modifications, I've got quite a lot of names that have similar style and sound pretty fantasy-like, while not being complete bullshit. I have one problem with naming my characters - I just happen to love names that begin with an 'A'. It's like, half of my characters have names that begin with an 'A', and even if to me their names are all unique and easy to tell apart, I am aware that someone who would be reading my story for the first time, would never be able to remember all those names properly, so every once in a while I just go back and make sure I'm not using too much of A-beginning names again.

I think that for the most part, this is spot on. However, my name is Martha Williams Pennington. And I'm 30. So old fashion names are used still. Just barely. Of course, I'm also African American so our naming is a bit more complicated.

Way behind on viewing this, but I think a fabulous example of this is from the TV show Recess. There is a whole episode about how "Spinelli" is actually named Ashley and how they attempt to force her into the Mean Girls-esque clique of "the Ashley's" despite being a WWE loving late 90s/early 00s tomboy. She has completely denied and hidden her first name to avoid the stereotype.

looking at what you said about naming and being self conscious, there was a reason that lady gaga decided not to put ‘stefani joanne angelina germanotta’ on an album

I have a character who is still in the stage where he doesn't have much personality or history because he's new but I just knew as soon as I thought of him his name would be Alex, short for Alexander. Problem is, it doesn't match the time my story is set in and I don't particularly like that name either, but it's **his** name and he's too stubborn to let me change it.

I have a twin (girl and boy) that are villain (I call them the royal twins) I can’t decide whether to call them “Clara and Caleb” or “Lila and Luka”

I definitely google every name I make up from scratch- not just to ensure I'm not using someone's real name in a potentially harmful way, but also to (hopefully) verify that it's not some sort of slur or otherwise offensive term in another culture.

After watching this video it reminded me that I should google the name of my main character and... oops so it turns out I've accidentally named them Rachel Green from friends... better change that.

I just realized I've never met a person with the same name I have lmao Like I keep hearing from various people that they know a person named like me but I myself have never met one xD

Gendered last names *a little side eye at Gaelic*

As someone with a Gaelic name that no-one outside of Ireland can pronounce (it's pronounced differently in Scots Gaelic, and I unfortunately live in Scotland now) please don't give your characters names from languages that are not pronounced as they are written in English if your main market is not that country (that would cover Welsh, Irish Gaelic, Scots Gaelic and so many other places where English is not the first language) Also if you set your book in a real country that you don't live in or have much knowledge of, especially if they speak another language, please do your research into how names would be pronounced there and how they would be turned into nicknames. One of the many gripes I had about Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale, set in WW2 France, was that her main character was called Vianne (which would be pronounced vee-anne), and was nicknamed 'V'. Except that in the French alphabet the letter 'V' is pronounced 'Vay', which would make no sense at all.

12:55 Try having the name Marla. I've only met one other person in my life with it and I'm in my 40s. :-\

While watching this all is as thinking about was how in JoJo Vento Vento Aureo everyone was named after a random food and everyone just...rolled with it.

I don’t care how good a plot is but nothing will make me put down a book faster than incredibly outlandish and hard to read names that sound like keyboard smashing.

Ok,so question,I have this idea were the main character's name is not fit to his gender because he were mistaken for a female at birth when he was actually male,is that a good idea or not?

Dune: Ghanima, Leto, Farad'n and PAUL, JESSICA, MARGOT

nice

I'm 16 and my name is Suzanne. Kudos to me😆

It's quite funny because for me, the name of the main character is most of the time the hardest thing...I first develop their personality and then in an eternity I will finally find a name

I used to hate my name when I was young simply because it doesn't rhyme with anything. When I was a kid, everybody would do fun little rhymes with each other's names but I was excluded. About the actual topic... that's why I write in highly multicultural societies. Any name I throw there is fine because the town is multicultural. done =D Also... good for conflicts. Something respectful in a culture can be insulting in another.

I'm first everyone! :)

So considering my book is loosely based in 17th century Romania, (more specifically in the region of Moldavia) i'm having a hard time finding Romanian names from that time period. I have found many good Romanian names for my characters, but I am having trouble finding out whether those names would have been used in that era, or if they have just rose to popularity recently. does anyone have any advice?

I have not found someone with the same first or middle name as me in face to face. I straight up hate my name and i cant even spell my middle name. I once searched my first and last name together and an author from Florida came up spelled the same way as my name. its kinda wired cause I wanted to write all these stories in my head before i googled up my name.

I have a character named Alexander (Alex for short) and I have been debating changing the spelling to Alecksander. Is this a bad idea?

I am sooo bad at character names. Any ideas??

Who here should be writing but is instead binge watching Alexa Donne videos? I see you, and same.

Heeellllpppp!!!!!!….every name that I come up with belongs to another character in another book/movie/game! I wanted to name my characters Mimzy and Pip…they happen to be timetravelers….well there is another cartoon dog called Pip! And there is a script for a bad play titled….Pip and Mimsy (different spelling) I’ve been racking my brain for 12 hours today….every name I can think of belongs to an already existing character! What should I do!

I watched a documentary (probably about 7-10 years ago) on BBC here in the UK. They were talking to a historian who was also a barrister. His name was actually Harry Potter. I genuinely felt sorry for him.

Really good resource is Behind the Name, which also has a generator good for character history items.

There is nothing that annoys me more than that fantasy/sci-fi setting with all of these different and unique names, and then there's Tyler XD. It's especially bad when its siblings, and the MC is named something like Ravena, and she lives with her parents Bob and Sue, her older brother John, and her younger sister Mary.

I have a Norwegian character and for a few days I had his last name as Hansdatter. Then I realized "-datter" means daughter. DUH. I knew Han-son or Ole-son meant "son of _____" but I didin't realize there was a daugter form too. Glad I wasn't too set on it.

I created a character who was very sweet, kind and a hopeless romantic. I named her Pamela. Flash forward to the day after, I looked up the meaning of the name Pamela and found out that it means "all sweetness" or "all honey"

i`ve been using baby name sites for so long now, i thought it wasn't`t a common thing to do. and i search the names up too!

If you're contemporary character has a really old-fashioned name, and you don't want to change it, show us, or if it isn't the MC have them talk about, how their family works. Maybe their parents are older than the parents of the other characters. Maybe they were named after a grandfather or a great-grandfather. Just explain yourself somehow otherwise it will be just kind of awkward.

Maybe it's a different Heracles You remember how all the girls were all named Brittany? And all the boys were Jason?

Everyone spells my first name wrong. It's a common one. KATHARINE. There are about 5 different ways to spell it. Also it's funny you brought up the name Emily. That's my middle name. Talk about plain names. Haha

Picking out names is one of my favorite parts of writing, though I get so unnecessarily stressed out about it 😂

I remember this one time I named a character with what I assumed was an Irish name. It wasn't. I misremembered and gave him a nonexistent name, which unfortunately had already grown on me by the time I discovered that. So I added a passage of him resenting his name, saying that his parents misheard the name of the saint and so changed it drastically. Besides that, my world based on a bland of two cultures, so I usually try to reconstruct the phonetic changes a name could experience going from one phonetic system to another. The downside is that sometimes you are just going from Eoin back to Ivan and there's nothing you can do.

I had a teacher a few years ago and her exact name was a character in the book I just bought. I told her and she got excited.

If you get confused at names from multiple societies, then i guess the Avatar the Last Airbender universe will confuse you because they go all over, even make references to actual people and there own fandom. They one time named a nerdy character Otaku because most of the fans are otakus Lol I personally like using names that hint at something. Like my main character who has the power of fire, her name is Roxanne, which means "sunset" or "sunrise", can't remember. Another character who is able to take powers from other characters like Rogue from Xmen but not exactly the same way, i named her Teresa which means "to harvest". Or maybe an ironic name, like a guy with mind reading powers who uses them to cheat on tests at school and is emotionally immature the name Hubert, that name being ironic to the meaning which is "bright heart" or "bright mind". I also did this once by complete mistake but i am loving it, Roxanne, or Roxy, has another name people know her by, which is Rhea. Anyways, she has a boyfriend who is named Marc. Marc comes from the Roman God of Mars, who had a lover name Rhea-Silvia. Laughed really hard when i found that out accidentally. I just named Marc after an annoying kid from school originally Lol I like doing the extra research sometimes personally because its funny to find out where names come from. But i also study history and language at school, and it just seems to jell to learn the history of language for funsies.