I think Rowling did this perfectly because she's always been huge book nerd who never didn't believe in wasting knowledge, thus causing her to use writing books as an opportunity to reference historical, literary, Biblical, mythological, psycholoigical, and symbolic figures that most people to this very day have no idea about. They might seem on the nose but usually only after you find out the origins through external means or if you just so happen to be a word nerd after her own heart. It's as if she looked at the other students in her class saying none of the stuff they were learning in class would be useful in real life and took it as a challenge. Even the name Voldemort does a bunch of different things for the story as it's 1. An Animagram. 2. A name that the in universe teenager Tom Riddle gave himself after calling his crew The Death Eaters. 3. A made up name that most don't say. 4. A name that invokes death even if you go throughout the whole series without picking up on any of the etymology. .5, A name that almost says more about the person who's willing to say it than it's namesake. 6. Bonus: even Death Eaters though having word death in it doesn't really tell you what his crew is about because the concept of eating death evokes a feeling even without it actually being a concept that even the nerdiest readers would be familiar with.) Another bonus of having your characters's names mean something (without it being too obvious to the reader at the time of initial reading is that once they do learn the meanings of the names it adds to to the rereading experience) You shouldn't expect your readers to break down the etymology of your character's names but it's cool to reward those that care enough to.
I (usually) attach names to characters more as place holders at the start. I find the more I interact with the characters as the story progresses, the more the names start presenting themselves. Great point about paying attention to what the name provokes for you vs potential readers 🙂
I particularly pick intentional names for my main characters because of how it sets the character apart from the other characters or helps establish his or her character. For a mystery set in modern day cattle country, my main character shows up from the east coast, knowing nothing about cattle ranching. A fish out of water. I named him Nick DeNunzio because it set him apart from the names of the ranchers who'd grown up in the West and who tended to have "western-sounding" names. I named my woman bail bonds agent Ruby Dark. Ruby fits her hair color and suggests a certain type of character. Dark is not only short and punchy for a mystery, it also fits her somewhat mysterious past. David Dartman is the name of my MC in a mystery featuring an amateur sleuth with a harried family and professional life solving the death of a close friend. I'm also careful to avoid similar last or first names that can confuse readers. I use a spreadsheet to make sure I don't have six characters whose last name starts with S or four characters whose first names start with M!
I like using anagrams of place and person names I know, e.g. Hemet becomes the town of "Theme," James becomes the Eastern European hero, "Samej," and Jeri becomes "Reji." Samej also means "lonely" in Polish.
Thank you. I have seen some advice to make the initials of each character distinctive to avoid names being similar. I think actually speaking a list of your character names is useful to check for a distinct sound. Love and light.
In my second novel, the boyfriend's name started out as Matt, but when I realized that that could be interpreted as him being a "doormat" to the main female character, I changed it to Greg, and developed his part in the story more fully.
I love this topic. It was one I was pondering about a lot. First and foremost, how to name them is subjective indeed. I think that as with everything else in the story, the question that should be asked first is: is it important that the name should move the plot along? I remember that I once thought that from a realistic point of view it's the character's parents who name the characters, but that this then is based on their tastes, time-period, culture, background of the name, and what not. Now I doubt in how far this is true for a story. Does the character likes its own name may be important as the answer to this question can also move the plot along. One could be bullied for it, or even praised. A character's name could as much move a plot along as a character's length can, such as in Tall Girl. Most of all, I think it is of the utmost importance to think of the character's name when the character's name is also the title of the book, because then that very name becomes a hook in itself.
Always a pleasure listening to (or reading) your posts. Reading baby name lists is good advice; allow me to add a possible extra benefit. If you know the ancestry of the character, you can find a baby list for that culture and get names the parents might have selected. Of course, they might also have chosen a name that had nothing to do with the parent's background. Another source of names is the character's own ancestors. I have certainly known people named "Lucinda" because their great-great-grandmother was. As for my current novel-in-progress, it is fantasy and takes two different paths, one per non-human race. One race has rather random names other than male names often end with hard (i.e. unvoiced) stops and female names end with softer sounds (sibilants, voiced stops). The other race -- furred -- has more interesting naming: the parents wait 1-2 years and use either the infant's actions or appearance to name their offspring. The naming is usually announced at a celebration with relatives and other tribal members invited. One protagonist's name is "Looks-Again" because he often reconsiders things and tends towards well-thought-out responses (and started doing so early). His young sisters gained names resulting from the patterns and colors of their fur: Umbral-Flame and Raven-Ears. Naming can be fun!
I say naming character is always fun! It’s just every author has a different understanding of “fun”. :) it’s also important if you want your characters to be “google-able” or “hashtag-able” so your works are easier to find on social media.
One thing that I am good at is creating names for my characters. I write Middle Grade and I like names to be believable. In my MG Time travel novel "Hide and seek." The main character is called Emily Dustan, The spellcheck wanted me to change it to Dunstone but I resisted. Her best friend is called Darcy Sawley. The two travel to the middle ages so then I found medieval names Isabel DeStaen who was Emily's ancestor. One of the names that I thought I had invented was Guillaume, A rather wolfish Lord. I thought it sounded French. To my utter amazement it turned out to be a real name and it's French for William. What was even more amazing was that I had Spelled it correctly, Then in my current book "Ice" my main character is called Camilla Bridge and the boy is called Tyler Brazeby. They go into the woods and find themselves in the Ice Age, Then it calls for more imaginative names. They meet a tribe of Ice Age people and for an 11 year old girl that befriends them I used google translate and used Welsh words and smudged them i.e. Aderyn Bach in Welsh means "Little Bird" and so that the children don't find it too hard to read, I called her Adrinbak. Her father is called "Arth", which is Welsh for "Bear" The antagonist is called Blath but Camilla calls him "Wolf" which is a translation but modified, There's a little boy in the story called Mokdear which is smudged Welsh for Hedgehog. You can use any language to invent names and sound convincing by using the same technique, Then at the end of the story when they return to the 21st century they meet their friends Vanessa martingale, There is mention of Evie Tyne, Their teacher is called Mrs Ledbourne, She is mentioned in all three books. If I can think up names that are believable, That's how I like them.
Great answer, as always... I would add how this helps you as a writer though. By that, I mean if I'm writing a story about a woman who "almost " became Cleopatra, I would have a strong tendency to write how "Kahlea" did this or that, always drawing my sense and style toward the similarity. This is a strong position to reinforce my story telling. In the end, I've developed all of my "almosts" points and could then replace ALL with "Sarah. " The flipside trap is, of course, telling a new version of the same story using similar characters to ground your readers - Oh, I've read this already...
As long as you're talking about character names: One of my peeves as a reader is for the writer to name quite a few characters with the same first letter. Example: Mike, Mary, Matt, Marissa, Martin, Margaret. Some readers are auditorily inclined, and others like me are visually inclined. How things look on the page influence me. I don't understand how it happens intentionally to name so many characters with the same first letter. My thinking is the author just got a *crush* on that particular letter. Most of the time I can muddle through the story and have things figured out, but I have been know to put a book down if it got too tedious to keep track of who is who and what they do!
Fun video, Katie. You’re right that how a name sounds is very subjective. I just read a novel set in 2021 with two female characters in their late 20s/ early 30s named Florence and Helen. Those names sound like great-grandmothers to me, very, very old, born in 1929 old, but maybe the author thought they sounded timeless, or knows active people named Florence and Helen. I like names that I ignore quickly because of how well they seem to fit the character. My question: How many drafts do you typically write? Do you have a process, or does it vary from book to book? [I consider a draft starting with a blank page].
I think everybody’s name is a story. Few people name their children by looking up names in a phone book. Sometimes, the story of their name affects the story of their life. That’s a thing in real life. In fiction, names often will affect perception. Imagine if you switched Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker’s names? Oh, yes, I know; Darth Vader earned his name by being a villain. In comic books, the characters often have names associated with their powers, which may be acquired when they get their powers. In my Elektra Voltare series, Elektra’s parents named her because weird electrical things were happening while her mother was pregnant and she already had volt in her last name. The worst name for something I ever heard was in James Cameron’s Avatar, “unobtainium.” That always struck me as a placeholder name they forgot to change. But, it did not interfere with ticket sales. One day, I will write a story with a MacGuffin named MacGuffin. Of course, it will be a comedy…
Darth Vader is another good example of evoking a feeling. No one knew what Darth meant but it sure sounded a hell of like Dark, Durth and Death none of which bodes well and the character’s actions and appearance fall in line with that feeling that the name evoked
*Pores through baby name/meaning websites only to find every mainstream series in my genre have already used everything from the same lists* Great vid, thank you!
Excellent points KM! At a couple turns I thought, “She should say this…or that…” and then you did. Sometimes I don’t know why I think I know something you don’t already. :-) So on character names I often look to give them meaning, and sometimes a sound. I also like to think about what relationships they might have had with their parents. Did they give them a fitting name? Did they give them too big of a name and they’re disappointed? Did they name them after themselves or a family member or friend? Maybe they were simple folks and just liked the sound of a name. Parents have a lot of hope in their hearts when they are naming a child. If nothing else the name they choose will likely have meaning to them.
Sometimes I just pull a name out of the back of my head, but the most often thing I do is to find a list of names from the culture I'm somewhat riffing off of, so I've looked up lists of ancient Slavic names, Mayan names, Aztec names, Greek names, &c. Often what I'll do is get a feel for the sound patterns present in that culture and build off of that rather than pulling a name from the list. Most of all, I try to make the name unique enough that I can easily do a global search and replace should I get a better idea while I'm writing!
Some names have special meanings. Sometimes, if you develop your character fully while you are still fleshing out the storyline, the character will reveal their name to you. Hope that helps.
I had an idea for a movie where a knight has to rescue a princess from an evil warlord. The hero is named "Dorbunk", the princess would be named "Phmamantha" and the evil warlord was named "Wwwwwwww". The idea is to keep any and all bloopers in the movie. I would want my actors to try not to laugh and fail on screen.
My goodness! How can one not use names (or the title of your book) to express personal or storyline information? That's part of the fun of writing. "Lifty" says it all. Better check your pockets.
I had picked one name to represent a virtue, Ruth, she's intent on saving our young hero from his own foolish ways. When he has a son, he'll name that boy after the two best friends he lost, but because of legal troubles, the boy doesn't get a last name. Almost like a magic system, but taken from real life.
Oh, and the names of places in this 'world', it's just up the road a piece, are the names a child might invent: the pine tree forest, the world outside, Middle Street, Hidden Valley.
I don't think picking a name out of the phone book is very creative. A name does mean something and is another opportunity to be creative in your writing. That said, my present novel has a significant historical component. Therefore I have real named characters that did exist in their actual role. The names of my nineteenth century protagonists' will eventually become important for their twentieth century descendants, and readers will also progressively become aware of the importance as I switch back and forth between the two centuries.
Let's think about today's actual world, where humans are often anchored to their past in ways that we outside it will never notice. Names are often inherited, but no one today really cares about what they really meant in the past. This only changed very recently, when researchers really, really wanted to dig into just that. So I'd choose to operate along the same lines. Names often did mean something in the past, but no one today really knows or cares about that. The names are now just syllables used to identify a certain person.
Bruce is a better name for a gym bro than Jeremy. I think what matters is how it fits the character in your mind. I do think making your references overt might be a little annoying to some readers
And here we see an example of an issue that comes up with naming any characters anything, readers will for whatever reason try to ascribe or discern authorial intent to fit in with what they know, believe or have just heard someone else say.
Hypocrite much? I have not assigned any intention, like you did to my comment. Her lack of care in that regard doesn't mean she intended to be racist, but it still is racist nevertheless.
@@Drudenfusz “lack of care” here we have another example of a reader not even realizing when they’re ascribing authorial intent, disingenuous aside, authors should be aware that no matter what names they choose some readers will interpret names through a lense that fits not the story’s narrative, but their own.
@@extraHERO Yet again, this is not about of the intent, that lack of care is even visible using a lens of death of the author. But maybe you will understand that one day when you learn about proper literature analyses and can let go of your ego to frame people in negative light just for not agreeing with you.
