I tend to use more traditional names for my characters: Kelly and James are the heroine and hero in DEADLY CONTACT (out in November!) and Thomas and Claire are the couple at the heart of Book 2 (titled FATAL FALLOUT, for now). In DEADLY DECEPTIONS, you'll meet Alex and Jillian.
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| Does it still smell sweet? |
I generally don't consider the meaning of a name when I use it, as I'm more interested in how the sound of the name fits the character. I do have a few quirks when it comes to naming characters though--I love comics and I love the books of Diana Gabaldon, so in every book I've written so far, one character has a name inspired by comic books, and one character has a name from the Outlander saga. I'll leave it to you guys to find the references. :-)
What about you? How do you name your characters? And readers, do you prefer traditional or more creative character names?
Names! Mine characters come with theirs intact almost the minute they show up. I've been laughing at my own very normal names in my Women's Fiction wips, but the SF has strange names...even though my hubby *hates* them. And this from a man who loves SF. LOL! BTW, I really *love* strange names, but what would you expect from a person named Zan? ;-)
ReplyDeleteThat's so nice of your characters to let you know their names right away--mine always make me work for it :)
DeleteAnd P.S.--I'm off to preorder your book(s)! ;-)
ReplyDeleteThanks so much! :)
DeleteHistorical fiction with historical characters is one thing. You are rather stuck - but I compose nicknames that aren't so bad (the Egyptian stories, I mean).
ReplyDeleteWith the HistFic that takes place in the (American) Civil War or 1830's Paris (under another name), I use names common to that time period. That involves going through cemeteries from that time and looking at names (The Civil War had a lot of Lavinias and Lovinas, as well as the Biblical names like Rachel and Elizabeth. Men's names had a lot of Georges and Byrons).
The French names were a bit of a challenge. I had a character that I wanted to make singular, since he's a definitely singular character. What to use? Had to be French (naturally), had to be strong and brief. Hm... Paul Malet. OK, not bad...
So... Yours is available for preorder? I'm off to look!
(Does this long-winded response count toward my targeted 3.5K words per day this week???)
I love historical names--I've spent many hours poring through census records to find what names were popular during different time periods.
DeleteThanks for checking out the pre-order links!
And yes, comments totally count toward your word count goal :)
Interesting technique! I typically write non-fiction so I don't struggle with names very much although I recently had to change the names of people for the sake of their anonymity and found that extremely difficult especially since the names had to be for people in Botswana and so culturally relevant. Google came to the rescue on that one!
ReplyDeleteB.
Glad you were able to find the names you needed! Google is a wonderful tool. Have you tried Scrivener? The program has a name generator, and you can input the origin of the name you'd like to use--came in handy for my Russian character in FATAL FALLOUT. :)
DeleteOh, fun! I put in a reference to Diana in one of my stories too :-) Mostly I try to make sure there's at least one Tolkien reference in each one [g]
ReplyDeleteNaming is lots of fun! I like yours - sometimes people go overboard with weird names. I saw a "Garrus Fyvie" the other day. Say what?!
I figured you'd have Gaiman references in your stories, but Tolkien makes sense too :)
DeleteI'm with you on names I know how to pronounce. It's distracting if there are multiple ways to say it.
ReplyDeleteAs for picking names--hero's names are chosen by how they might sound coming from the heroine during quieter loving moments. :)
A good consideration--gotta make sure his name is appropriately sexy :)
DeleteNames can be so hard. Often my characters come with names but if not I have a very hard time naming them. I'm with you on the crazy names. I like something I can at least sort of relate to. I worry a bit about my current WIP. The inspiration came from Russian fairy tales and while it's not set in medieval Russia or even a real place I did try to keep some of the Russian influence including their names. I kept them fairly simple but I don't want to alienate readers.
ReplyDeleteI think Russian influenced names can be very pretty. I'm sure your readers won't have any trouble with them! :)
DeleteI don't mind creative character names, if they're easy to pick up and keep track of. It can add something to the character if they are unusual and they have a meaning behind them within the story.
ReplyDeleteI tend to just gaze around for a name until it comes to me. I'll go through a few in my mind and I just know when the right one fits.
I do that, too--I'll test out a name, move on to another and ruminate until I find one that sticks.
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