Ask An Author: “How do you come up with good character names that aren’t boring, but aren’t ridiculous at the same time?”

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Each week, a new author will serve as your Camp Counselor, answering your writing questions. Patricia C. Wrede, our third counselor, is the much-loved author of the Enchanted Forest Chronicles, and has just published a book for aspiring authors called Wrede on Writing:

How do you come up with good character names that aren’t boring, but aren’t ridiculous at the same time? — infinitycharacters

There are tons of name-your-baby web sites that provide first names (often sortable by country-of-origin), and an equal number of genealogy sites that will provide last names. Google “[name] [first/last name] origin.”  If you are writing a present-day, real-world story, this is often all you need.

Historical or alternate-history settings require a little more research, as “favorite” names tend to vary a lot from century to century; for these, check character lists for fiction written in that century, or make yourself a list of actual famous people born at that time and place. This will give you a list of first and last names that you can recombine, and perhaps an indication of the sorts of names not on the list that you can use. You can also check the origins and development of modern names—Mark, as a first name, was Marcus or Markos in the Roman Empire.

If you are inventing your own world, it is a good idea to study some of the above sources to get a feel for how names change over time and cultures. (John, Giovanni, Ioannes, Hans, and Juan are all cited as variations of the same name, for instance.) Then decide if your imaginary cultures have language bases that are similar to real-life countries, whether you want to have echoes of those countries in your imaginary world, and how strong you want the echoes to be.

If you want echoes, use real but obscure names from those countries, or start with a real name and change a letter or two. Or you can break down lists of actual names into syllables and recombine them. There are also online naming programs that you can give a set of rules (like “no double letters” or “w is a vowel” or “all names are two syllables plus –ich or –ora”) that will generate a screen full of names from which you can choose the ones that look and sound right to you.

Make sure any imaginary names are pronounceable, and try not to give two characters in the same book names that are too similar (some recommend not having any first names that begin with the same letter).

Next week’s final Camp Counselor will be Michael David Lukas, author of historical novel The Oracle of Stamboul.

Ask him your questions here!