I hate selecting a character name. It is so final and like painting yourself into a corner. Before you select a name the writing process seems a lot more free.
I have been looking at a baby name website to find a "meaningful" name. Selecting a name in this way seem like such a hack way of imparting context and character definition. I am unhappy about having to do this.
Right now I am thinking about either Willa or Magdalene for my little story.
My favorite movie character name was Clare from the movie Until the End of the World.
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This is a good part of the reason I dont write as many stories as I would like.
I can't ever come up with original names that dont sound stupid, and all other names are really "played out". Stuff like "Jason", "Kyle", "Luke". Its all been done to death. John, Jake, Joe.
There aren't too many hero's named "Bob" really...
Just take the Stephenson approach and name your characters what they are: Hiro Protagonist is a worthy example of a name that doesnt even try to hide its meaning.
Sorry I can't help much. Sometimes what I try and do is find a word, translate it into another language (Try italian or french), and then make up a variation of that. The base word usually has something to do with the character. It doesnt always work, but it gets the job done every once in a while.
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I feel your pain. It does seem that many names are played out. Sometimes I see flashing signs in my head with a characters name on it, but that's probably only 1% of the time.
Posts: 27 | Registered: Jul 2003
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The reject pile from our latest baby: Raniyah, Rani, Athena, Roxie, Rachel. Shao-li. Diana. Anna and Anne (pronounced Annie)
It helps that I've taken Latin, German, Russian, Chinese, and finally Arabic. My husband and I have much hilarity when we watch Star Trek, what the names often mean. Jadzia (Dax) sounds very close to the Arabic word for "sexy". At least before I saw it in print. The episode where Data gets amnesia and the locals name him Jadan, means "good".
Tell me what you want it to mean I'll shoot you some options.
[This message has been edited by pooka (edited September 10, 2003).]
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What is the character's ethnic, cultural, and personal history? Where did he get his (or her) name?
Is it just a birth name that you're looking for, or is it a family name as well? Does the character use a nickname? All these questions need to be answered before you can figure out what are some possible (and likely) names for your character.
PS. Rabidsam, otherwise known on this board as Masdibar, had assigned himself a new--and very evil and cool sounding--nickname which I cannot remember...BoneHammer or MarrowSucker or something.
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I found this nice little program called EBoN (Everchanging Book of Names) it is probably the best $10 I have ever spent on software. Unfortunately the web site for it was down last time I checked, so I am not sure of its future. But if anyone is interested in the non-registered version I can pass that along if you can't find it on the internet.
[This message has been edited by Lord Darkstorm (edited September 11, 2003).]
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There are LOADS of naming sites on the web. I tend to frequent those and then just change a few letters around here and there for the feel that I want. A few that I've got bookmarked (can't vouch for all, since some are clunkers):
Another easy thing I do is actually watch movie credits. Amazingly enough, last names-- with a syllable dropped here or there, or a letter changed-- sometimes make wonderful fantasy names.
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I've always thought that the real actors' names in the various Star Trek shows were often better than the character names - and would make fine sf/f names.
This thread is very helpful - I have been using some uninspired names, and am hopefully not tied to them and can experiment with some of the suggestions.
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Thank you everybody... I am going with Magdalene. Here is the text from current effort where I introduce the character's name. I wish books were sold like those greeting cards that play music or something when you open them. If I could, I would have audible drum rolls when certain pages are turned. This would be one of them...
Try not to be too critical, this is the first story I have written in 20 years.
"....Around the corner, a husband and wife team ran a dry-cleaning establishment. Once in a while, I saw the husband walking his dog in front of the temple’s high stone and stucco walls. He would flash me a toothless smile, bow a tiny bit and continue on. He always seemed a little embarrassed to see me. When I dropped off my suits the wife would greet me “Welcome Lena-san!” Lena was my childhood nickname and fortunate for me, my Japanese friends could easily pronounce this. Plus it sounded vaguely reminiscent of the Japanese phrase “love story”. The translation could have been much worse. I knew a fellow whose name, when pronounced by Japanese, sounded a bit like their word for “impotent”. He never got any dates."
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This snip of your story - I can visualize it very well! One thing to think about - would the Japanese actually have difficulty saying the "L" in your character's childhood name? Would it end up sounding like "Rena" perhaps? I don't base this on stereotype (jokes of "rice for "lice", etc.), but on living in a place where I got to know people from Japan, and took japanese - my name "Lee" was not easy for some... I don't know the japanese phrase for "love story" so maybe I am way off base. The impotent bit got a chuckle!
[This message has been edited by punahougirl84 (edited September 12, 2003).]
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There was a name game I heard of once where you use the name of your first pet and the name of the first street you lived on in some kind of combination.
Posts: 110 | Registered: Jul 2003
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There was actually a bishop of Cedar City named Klingonsmith. Back in the days when Cedar City only had one bishop. It may have been before bishops were equivalent to pastors.
Speaking of movie credits, computer animated films have tons of people. And there is a Veggietales video, I think it's the silly song countdown, that had a bunch of names as the result of some contest. Kind of like how Papa Moose ended up in Crystal City, except not nearly as exclusive. One of the families is actually named Buttram. tee he he.
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I have heard of that name - game before, the name is your porn name.
My porn name: Honey Boyer Misty Springhill
On the subject of the "L" in Japanese, definitely a problem BUT when you live here you adapt to name corruption and slight deviations. My boyfriend's name is "Virgilio", he suffers with a name that has a V, an R and a L! His nickname is Gil, pronounced Gi-Ru by Japanese.
The bit about the guy with an a name that sounded like the word "impotent", I lifted that detail from The Japan Times, a newspaper here. Some poor, real human being is wandering around Tokyo with this moniker. Poor fellow....
[This message has been edited by revmachine21 (edited September 12, 2003).]
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So far my best source for names is my spam folder. Some samples: Charlotte Rivera, Edwin Rosenberg, Ingrid Hendricks, Maritza Bolden, Edward Ventura, Dean Hightower, Natasha Haines, Marcelo Houston, Orlando K. Hollingsworth....
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Spam folder names - what a great idea!!! You are so right - there are some doozies (sp?).
Rev - my dad traveled alot to Japan when he was in charge of (designed, something like that - I forget exactly) the Hawaii pavillion for Expo 70 in Osaka (I sure hope I am remembering the details correctly). My dad's name is Gil (short for Gilman!) Same problems... I totally understand. It would probably add great flavor to your story, having a character whose name was awkwardly pronounced by the locals - Maybe Rena? The lovely lilt produced by trying to pronounce "Lena" - maybe your character would like the exotic flavor her name would have in their mouths? Or maybe it is important to the plot that they can say her name easily? Whatever happens - I like the name you chose - Magdalene.
Lee
[This message has been edited by punahougirl84 (edited September 14, 2003).]
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My favorite baby name resource was the social security administration website. If you google "baby names" I think it's on the first page. Anyway, you can browse the top 1000 current, or go back like 100 years. My daughter's name fell off the top 1000
Posts: 334 | Registered: Sep 2003
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I like to use variants on names of people I have met -- likewise for nicknames. I once knew a guy who assigned nick names to people just cause he liked to. One memorable one that he assigned, and which stuck was T-bone. The guy's last name started with a T and made a nicely alliterative combination.
Incidentally, I have recently met a Magdaline, and she goes by Magda. I like that.
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How do you make sure your readers pronounce the names the way you intend? By coincidence, before reading this thread today, I was thinking about names for a story I am working on. I decided at one point to call my main character Timerian Gota which I am saying tim-MARE-ee-yun GO-tuh. But who knows how the reader will say it. Of course real names are not spelled phonetically, so they shouldn't be spelled that way in a story, generally. I guess the first name is ok, but I would not want the reader to think my character's last name is gotta (as in, excuse me, I gotta ...). Maybe I should spell it Ghota?
Posts: 550 | Registered: Sep 2003
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If you're worried about people pronouncing names incorrectly, and if it's a big issue (if it isn't, I wouldn't do anything about it because hey, how people pronounce things in their own heads is none of my business), you could opt to bring up that mispronounciation in the text. I've seen it in a couple of very good books: in [U]Nemesis[/U], by Issac Aasimov, the main character's name is Marlene but in the very first chapter, Marlene points out that it isn't pronounced "marleen", but rather "mar-LAY-nuh". And so that sets the tone in your head through the rest of the book.
As for choosing names, I go with one of three approaches, depending on what fits best. The first approach is to make up a name by combining syllables into an interesting group that seems to fit the character I'm naming. This can be hazardous if done without caution; names so created can mean something in another language that was totally unintentional. However, if the name you create follows the conventional "rules" of whatever ethnic group your character is from, you shouldn't have that problem. For example, when naming a Romanian character recently, I looked at alot of Romanian girls' names. I discovered that most ended in "a", and tended to rotate vowel sounds with consonants pretty evenly, starting with either one or the other; with the combination of "ia" being somewhat prevalent as well. So the name I came up with, which I didn't find anywhere, was "Inalia"-- probably not a conventional Romanian name, but it sticks by the rules so well that it's obviously meant to be one. And I get the added bonus that it is, in all probability, unique.
I use my second approach when I want a historic name (read: popular throughout the ages) that has a particular meaning. This is when I hit the baby name books. I usually use this method for archetypical characters that fill a very important, if not very large role in my stories. I think my favorite example of an archetypical name in a book is Thomas Covenant, from the series by the same name.
My third approach deals with names from other languages that mean something. When I make a japanese character, for example, I go into a english-japanese online dictionary and type in a smattering of words, looking for just the right name to represent the character. I made one recently whose given name is Himeko-- in Japanese, this means "little princess". It's really quite fitting... honestly (though I wouldn't reccommend it unless you want your character to sound presumptuous, or unless she really is royalty, or both). I sometimes also use the first approach for japanese characters as well, one of my favorites of the past was "Kiyane", which doesn't have any meaning at all, but sounds good and follows japanese phonetic rules. In fact, the only rule it breaks that I'm aware of is that it's a female name, and japanese female names almost always end in "ko"... but not always.
By the way, to those who still remember me, hello again. ...it's been a few months.
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Speaking of names and hello agains, didn't you used to be...oh, I guess not.
Emphasis is relatively easy to control if the spelling is flexible, all you have to do is put a diphthong in the syllable you need stressed. "Timairian Goata" forces the reader to stretch out the pronounciation of those syllables. Of course, using "Goat" in his name like that may cause people to think that his name is associated with goats somehow....
If you are creating a language and all, then putting some pronounciation notes in an appendix is an accepted convention (just as it is when translating a work from another language). And don't be afraid to write the name phonetically if it isn't a name from a roman alphabet language, how else should it be spelled?
Putting a correction in the text like Asimov works fine if the character in question hasn't already been the POV character and there is a plausible reason for the correction (I always wince when someone introduces themselves verbally, then points out the "correct" pronounciation of the name they just gave). Either a character that has only read the name should say it in the expected fashion, prompting a correction, or the character should do what people with oddly pronounced names often do and simply pronounce the name correctly, then say how it is spelled:
"Hi, I'm Deville. It's spelled just like 'Devil' but I don't pronounce it that way."
As for actually thinking up the name, I just try to come up with a name that's plausible for a person from that character's particular ethnic, cultural, and personal background. If I can think of a particular reason in the context of the story I'm telling for it to be a particular name (I want it to be commonly mistaken for an Italian name--which is isn't--by the other characters, for instance), then I'm particular. But usually, if the name aptly encapsulates a bit of the character's history, I'm satisfied. I find that "cool" exotic names often don't tell the reader anything about the character, the fact that he is named "Destitain" has no effect on the rest of the story.
Just as an aside, I pronounced Timerian Gota correctly in my head before reading the preferred pronunciation. It strikes me as the perfect spelling for that name, and I wouldn't change a thing. Spelling "Gota" as "Goata" actually changed the pronunciation for me (to "go-wa-tah"), as I tend to pronounce all the vowels in a name except under certain distinctly anglo circumstances.
About the Asimov snippet, Marlene had already been the POV character. She was grumping internally over other peoples' tendancy to mispronounce her name, in response to her elation that a boy she had a crush on pronounced it perfectly.
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The best way of getting your name pronounced correctly if it is from a made up language, I think, is to take the Tolkien approach - be utterly consistent with how you handle the transliteration so that there's a fairly concise set of rules that you can specify about how names should be pronounced. Stick it in a preface. You can also do this with natural languages your readers may not be familiar with (as OSC did for the Portuguese names used in Xenocide, IIRC) as long as all the relevant rules can be summed up neatly (I wouldn't try doing it for English names in a book for a non-English market, for example!).
[Aside: the pronunciation key in my copy of Lord of the Rings was in an appendix. This is annoying. I was mispronouncing names all the way through the first time I read it, and then had to revise my idea about the entire thing when I got to the end!]
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List the appendices in the table of contents (feel free to put Appendices in bold) and give them clear titles, such as "Pronounciation of Names" and "Hyerin Language Glossary" and "Maps".
Alert readers that actually care about such things will know to look there when they need the information. Those interested in reading that information first can do so. And those not interested in reading the disorganized contents of the entire preface only to discover it does not contain the information they want do not have to do so.
DragynGide, I just thought that your name used to be DragonGyde, is all. I looked in the archives of the site and saw I was mistaken.
My point about the Asimov method is that it only works when used differently from how he used it in that case. If you want to introduce the correct pronounciation of a character's name within the text, then you have to do it when the reader first encounter's that character's name(particularly when it is spelled so that most people will mispronounce it). Because a good POV segment uses the name of the POV character as soon as possible, and the person is supposed to be pronouncing it correctly internally, it is very jarring to find out that the character has been mispronouncing the name up to that point (this is just the gut level reaction the reader has). Hey, my own opinion...but I'm smarter than all of you, so there.
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