If there’s one question you can expect to pop up in every writing group—big, small, new, or old—it’s something to the effect of, “What should I name this character?” Within my critique group, we’ve collectively written over fifty published or to-be-published works, and we still find ourselves throwing names around in the group chat to see what sticks sometimes!
But all this agony—I mean, all this experience has allowed me to hone my methods of character naming. It helps that I was obsessive about it to begin with. But now I’m both obsessive and faster, and it’s all thanks to the tips I’ve listed for you below.
Fair warning: some of these tips may cause you to lose your mind. Proceed with caution.
Tip #1: Start collecting names right now!
Have you heard what they say about retirement money? “The best time to start saving was five years ago. The second best time is now.”
Well, the same holds true for character names. Start making a list or spreadsheet (especially if you intend to make note of origin and meaning) of all the names that appeal to you. I recommend organizing alphabetically for easy selection, and for ensuring you never have a book full of Jasons, Jamies, Jasmines, Jeremiahs, Jordans, Jessicas, and so on. If you are the type of writer who just needs to pick a name and doesn’t want to put any more thought into it beyond that, you can simply cross them off as you go.
Drawing a blank? Searching for names on Pinterest is a great place to start.
Tip #2: And make a note of names you can’t use.
If you already have a few works published—and you don’t intend to start a crossover—then you’ll want to start a separate list or a new sheet in your spreadsheet doc to jot down the names you’ve already used. This will be especially useful to you as your backlist grows. Sure, remembering that the couple in your first-ever romance novel is Shelby and Michael comes easy to you now, but twenty books down the line, you may realize halfway through the twenty-first book that Sheldon and Michaela sound awfully familiar to you.
Tip #3: No collection? No problem. Search smart instead!
Baby name websites to the rescue!
If you’ve been struggling with naming your characters for a while, you might have already come across the ability to organize by meaning, origin, etc. on baby name sites, and how helpful that can be. Got a character who’s secretly an alien? Pick one of these names that means “star” to hint at their otherworldly origins. Are you basing your post-apocalyptic world on ancient Rome? Browse a list of Roman names to drive the point home.
I’ve been using Nameberry for exactly these purposes since I was fourteen. What’s extra great about Nameberry is that they have a section in their forums called Writer’s Corner where—you guessed it—writers can ask for help naming anyone and anything from kingdoms to creatures to kiddos.
My other favorite site, Behind The Name, is a little more robust, and the name meanings are a little more thoroughly researched. Their random name generator is particularly cool if you don’t care what the name is, but you need it to fit certain parameters. They also have a sister site for surnames, which are sometimes more difficult to come up with for me than first names!
Tip #4: Popularity really is (sometimes) everything!
Writing more-or-less contemporary stories? You’re in luck! The Social Security Administration here in the USA keeps lists of the most popular names given to babies as far back as the 1880s. And, of course, other countries maintain similar lists. Calculate the year your character would have been born, then peruse that year’s list to find a name that fits.
Even if you aren’t writing stories set in the modern era, ship manifests and similar historical documents can give you a good idea of what names were in circulation during that time.
Tip #5: Know your inspirations and give them a nod.
We writers are constantly being inspired by real life, aren’t we? So why not use real life as the inspiration for our names, too?
If you base your characters off of real people’s behaviors or goings-on—and who doesn’t sometimes, to some extent?—then you might choose to use the same initial or what-have-you of your muse. Aunt Lisa might become Lisette in your book. Or you could use an anagram solver and call her Alis or Isla instead. If you enter her full name into the anagram solver, you might pull out names like Selina, Sable, or Sondra.
Or you can use this cool whatchamacallit from Time! It’s hard to describe succinctly, so I will give an example. I write historical romance, as you may know. If I wanted to name the lounge lizard who gets the flapper in my novel after my boyfriend, I might call him Eugene, which was the 42nd most popular boy name of the 1900s (since the character would be in his 20s during the time my book takes place, the 1920s)—much like my boyfriend’s name was the 42nd most popular name the year he was born.
How do you name your characters? If you use any of these tips, be sure to tag us, @writersatelier, on social media!
