The Official Character Naming Thread

[Crazy Linoone]

Having trouble naming your characters? Have some super awesome names you'd like to share with everyone? Just want to discuss the merits of symbolic names verses random cool names? This is the thread you're looking for!

Resources:
Behind the Name
Fantasy Name Generator
Last Names

Some discussion topics to start us off: How do you people come up with names for your characters? For fantasy/abnormal/non-human ones, I usually just bang at the keyboard until something cool comes up, adding some vowels as necessary. As for normal human names... Well, it's the reason I made this thread, actually. My head exploded with OCs recently, and it's getting annoying having them run around without names. I still couldn't come up with anything even after browsing Behind the Name.

Mostly, I need a gender neutral name that has a higher probability of being a girl name than a boy name, but the probability should not be extreme (as in the case of, say, Tiffany). The name also has to be a relatively common English name. So, um. Help?

 

[Ledabot]

My Charactors are ALL called Ledabot. Wonder were that came from??

 

[ultraviolet]

Mostly, I need a gender neutral name that has a higher probability of being a girl name than a boy name, but the probability should not be extreme (as in the case of, say, Tiffany). The name also has to be a relatively common English name. So, um. Help?

Ashley, Courtney, Lyn or Jess? There's lots of names here, too, but many of them are names like 'Justice' or 'Lyric', so.

 

[Phoenixsong]

General resource while on the subject of coming up with fantasy names: these two tumblr posts (among other things I'm sure are out there on the interwebs, these were just what came to mind) are relevant to to the interests of anyone who does a lot of fantasy stuff. (Also maybe looking a little deeper into creating a simple conlang, but not everyone's going to want to do even that much, so.)

 

[Harlequin]

For names in my fantasy worlds I'll use my conlangs. For my current project I just flick to the vocab sheet in the worldbuilding folder and read from the sheet. I've got a bunch of base names that I can stick with name suffixes to create names. Sometimes I'll use root words, too, and form names out of those. It's how I got Kafadyn, my current protag's name. (Except that's also the name of one of the days of the week, but that was a total accident I swear).

For normal names I just pick one I like. Which is harder than it sounds because I'm really picky. :B

ALSO pick Meredith. It's a man's name, but everyone outside of Wales thinks it's for girls. :(

 

[Black Yoshi]

I like to use census-based generators for my characters that are more normal humans. Once in a while I use a friend's name, then just tack on some random classmate's last name. One time I actually found a thing that converts whatever name you type in to either Elvish or Hobbit... -Ish. The Tolkien kind. My favorite character ever, Xhan, was literally me going, "I want an X at the start. Now I close my eyes and *Taptap*" I got AN, and threw an 'H' in there for good measure.

I don't know how common the name Taylor is in Europe, but that one seems to very often be mistaken for a girl's name. Even though it's an awesome guy's name, people associate it with Taylor Swift. Anyway, just throwing that one into the little melting pot.

 

[Ever]

For fantasy names I generally just smash together some cool-sounding letter clumps. [Jacati (Zha-ca-tee), Werynsaw (Ware-in-saw), Lyrus (Leer-us), and my favorite- Laucaturz (Lao-cat-oorz)]
For non-fantasy names (which I am horrible at) I usually alter a first name I know and toss in a random last name