Dude, there's a secret trick to coming up with names in just a few steps: 1) Use a crappy placeholder name until inspiration strikes. 2) Become attached to the placeholder. 3) You are now attached to the crappy placeholder, congrats, that's literally how 90% of places are historically named.
@@hayond656 "Hey, see that lake over there, what do the local Africans call it?" "Chad" "Cool, then we'll call it Lake Chad, in the country of Chad." "Chad" meant Lake in the local tongue, so now the Lake Lake is in the country of Lake. "Hey, there's a town over at the end of the hills. What do you call it?" "I dunno, we've always just called it Hills End". "Hey, what should we name our town?" "I dunno, just name it after the King." Charleston. "Hey, are you sure that secret shipping route led to the Western side of India?" "Yes, don't question me, shut up and name it the West Indies."
@@boota2474 There's a hill in the UK that's called Hill Hill Hill Hill in 4 different languages. The only problem: now you have to come up with 4 different languages.
I remember hearing that is how JK Rowling came up with a lot of her characters names, then everyone went to the headstones she took inspiration from, and wore out their graves. If you ever come up with names this way and become famous, don’t let other people know where you got your names from.
As a former scriptreader, almost every sci-fi or fantasy story I read included a name that boiled down to "Varik Darkul", so that's what apparently everyone thinks is the "coolest name".
It won't work for every story, but if you simply must use an unpronouncable or tonguetwister name for your alien race or its members, have a human or human-influenced character provide a nickname, or if they are familiar enough with human speech let the aliens provide a human nickname themselves. Larry Niven is very good at this.
This reminds me of this scene in Dragon Heart 2, I forget the full title, where Geoff meets the dragon Hisyoxylannochoganothos, or however it's spelled, and he just ends up calling him Drago because he's a dragon. Like what kind of name is that for a dragon? Drago sound way better.
This happens in real life too, anyways. Corruptions of foreign words/names are EXTREMELY common. In Mexican Spanish, many plants, foods, and animals have names that end in _-te_ (like _aguacate_ , which means "avocado"). These are borrowings from words in Nahuatl, the most common indigenous language in Mexico. Why do they end in _-te_ ? In Nahuatl, almost every noun ends in _-tl_ , which is a sort of weird clicky sound which is very rare and very difficult to pronounce (/tɬ/ in IPA). When Spanish speakers tried to pronounce the native words, they just ended up saying "te" instead, since it was more comfortable. So you go from _aguacatl_ -> _aguacate_ . Characters will naturally do the same thing, trying their best to pronounce hard words, then giving up and just saying what's easy for them.
There are two ways I come up with names in my sci-fi writing: 1 - Mishearing lyrics in songs sung in foreign languages. For example, "Som ger sommartider" (Swedish) became "Sonya Summer", cuz _boy_ does it sound like that! "Tullaan viisaammiksi näin" (Finnish) helped me name a musical band "Mixy 9". 2 - "Random Word Generator" program. That app doesn't just generate random words; it has an editor which allows you to enter a ton of phonemes and how frequently--and in which order--they should be employed in the words it generates. The language of a major alien race is backward from most languages, where vowel sounds tend to come _before_ consonants, so I entered all of the possible letters (cuz not every sound in English is represented), told the generator in which order they should appear in a word, and set it loose. The aliens are known as the Ikakurog-- 'ik', 'ah', ur', and 'og'--and sentences like "Anyumal yunyeg adyae" (which I decided means "Knowledge is powerful") came out as well, one word at a time. Random Word Generator is a very useful tool.
Rather than relying on generated names, one potential filter you could use is to do a quick study on naming conventions. Apply these in any combination of your choosing or let them inspire you to create your own. Then when you look up some names you like, apply your chosen naming convention(s) to it and see if you like the results. Scandinavian "surnames" are the father's name with "son" or "dottr" tacked on to the end (for sons and daughters respectively). Ancient Egyptian names tended to end in "et" for women and "es" or "ep" for men. Many Eastern Asian names have the family name (surname) come first followed by the name of the individual. Many English surnames are based on location or profession. (Fisher, Chandler, and others basically told you what they did for a living). Many ancient societies had no surname and a description was added. This trend continued and is still used in some places you might not expect. Geralt of Rivia, John the Baptist, or Kang the Conqueror for instance. (Bet you never expected to see those three names together on a list) This practice evolved to having surnames based on a location. Point being that a rudimentary knowledge of naming conventions can greatly enrich your character names. Just... don't go so far down the rabbit hole that you never get to work on your story.. but if names are a perpetual issue, it can certainly help.
This could be excellent advice but the fact that it's so long and detailed made me immediately understand why some may just prefer to go for generated names when it's really not that important.
Eastern Asians are not the only ones who put surname at the first place! We Hungarians in Central-Europe do it too, this why my name is Tóth Nimród Benedek instead of Nimród Benedek Tóth (please don't laugh at my name, Nimród used to mean hunter in my language and not what you think of).
@@hungariangiraffe6361 "Nimród used to mean "Hunter" in my language and not what you think of" I'm Italian and I think Nimròd sounds cool as a name(I should hear it pronounced to be sure,but,reading it,it seems cool 😎),but I don't know what should I _think_ it means...😅
You can even take this further by creating some of your own naming conventions and then following that when it applies (like nobles following a naming scheme while the general public is just words)
I think using names with hidden meanings are fun in that they can add meaning to the story, or making those connections later on makes the story interesting enough to come back to. But for sure, it’s good to use names readers can appreciate even if they don’t make those connections.
just generally putting words to the naming scheme youre using. In Brandon Sanderson's "the stormlight archives" one character is named renarin, and the book breaks down the naming scheme just to explain that hes named "he who is born unto himself"
I agree, I don't make it so that it is impossible to understand what is going on if you don't know the meaning. The way I see it is more as a secret easter egg to reward the reader that wants to dig deeper
I like for my names to have real-world meanings that are Easter eggs for readers who know what they mean. Maybe it’s not that the story “hinges on” knowing Susan means lily flower, but I would probably give her lily motifs if I wanted that to be significant. For example, I have a character in my book named Phoebe. Phoebe was an Ancient Greek moon goddess. Phoebe in my book is a werewolf. They go together.
I am so glad that you said "don't choose names that are hard to pronounce" I always hate that when reading a book. I read this book once that i could not figure out how to say the main characters name so i just called her abby through the whole book because the first two letters were ab. So i make a point have easy names for the readers to figure out in my stories.
I usually don't, but if a character I have does happen to have a longer name, like my one character Alessia, I just give them a nickname, like her nickname is Ally.
I immediately thought of the first time I read The Silmarillion, aka "The Adventures of Feanor, Fingolfin, Finwe, and Finrod." Tolkien obviously had an excuse, starting with a language and building names from there, but it was still very difficult to follow along with. Tuor and Huor and Turin and Hurin were hard to keep straight as well.
Sometimes I just use punny names. I named some of my characters after flowers: for example, Daniel D. Léon for Dandelion, it makes it catchy and funny, but i guess this is also a Pixar kind of way of doing it, especially if you're an animator or artist.
One thing I don't think came up in this lesson: while you *should* use placeholders if you haven't figured out a character's name, finding that right name may well be beneficial to writing the character and inspire you when you discover it. While worldbuilding for a story with few details and no name for the mc and antagonist, I stumbled upon the perfect name while reading another story. It clicked immediately, and spurred me to sit down and write a ragged but very helpful story treatment that I sent to a writer friend because I was now so excited I had to tell somebody about my story idea. He'd already seen an opening snippet for it and wanted me to hurry up and write it, but the longer treatment fired up his enthusiasm for the project as well as mine. If you are actually writing the story and discover the mc's "right and proper" name, it can do wonders to inspire your efforts further, and a lot of things may suddenly fall into place that were up in the air before, because now that you know who the character is, you'll find it easier to discover what he is, what he does, and other things as well. Just as a good idea can jumpstart a story, a good name can jumpstart a character.
Not a writer, but i am a GM in TTRPGs so i come up with character names often. This video gives excellent advice, and i would like to offer one of my own as well: if you want a character to have a long and complex name, go for it, but make sure there is a very easy and intuitive way to nickname them, and then use those most of the time. People respond very well to nicknames and it helps endear a character to your players/readers, plus, it can add to a dramatic moment when others use their full name all of a sudden. Edit: ok, upon reading comments i see my advice was already given. Good to see i wasn’t the only one who thought it was a good idea. Consider my comment as further evidence their advice was good :P
a friend of mine used to have a gnome character named Isokeh. the story behind it was that the character got asked for his name, which was really long, and suddenly someone who had asked was annoyed and bored, and waved it off, saying "it's okay!". so the character realized "Isokeh" is a great abbreviation of his overly long, albeit traditional and meaningful, name.
I usually create character names by rearranging a word or two related to them and then adding few letters if needed which are usually vowels to make it easier to pronounce(at least easier for me to pronounce lol). Example: The word "Forest" - I rearrange the letters of this word. I chose and stopped at 'sterof' and then just added an 'e' on the beginning making it "Esterof". The name somewhat fits the character and it sounded nice to me as well so I kept it instead of rolling the dice again. Anyways, nice video!
I do something similar. I try to add or cut down on letters and alter the ending of words. Example: The word "Wandering" - Wandering -> Wanderinth -> Wandrinth -> Wanrith.
I always end up looking for alternate mythological names. For example, I have a goddess of love and war inspired vaguely by Aphrodite, so I named her Areia, an epithet that the Spartans ocasionally applied to her in ancient Rome.
Hey, I am curious to know how you got the number 36. What restrictions did you put in the rearrangement to get that? Since if it's freely rearranged you get 720 possibilities, which is 20 times of 36. But of course most of them would be hard to pronounce. But you putting only pronunciation as restrictions wouldn't also give 36 since those are kind of subjective and depends one's mother tongue and accents. So I want to know what you did.
I don't actually write or do much world building, but as someone who has always wondered how it's done, thanks for explaining all that. 14 minutes well spent.
When you came up with a story when you were five and gave your main characters stupid names that don't have any meaning but now youre so attached to those names that you cant change them:
I came up with two characters, Kay and Shawd, when I was around 14? So nowhere near as young as you. But now even though the names are very strange (particularly Shawd), I feel like I can't change them. They've changed way too much over the years, and if I were to change the names too, then what's stopping them from being completely different characters? That's literally the only thing that's been consistent over the years. So yes. I feel your pain.
Just a small thing, but CTRL+F isn't the most efficient solution to replace placeholders. There's also CTRL+H: Search and Replace. Do it once and you've got everything for the whole document (well, so long as you were consistent with the placeholder)
@@thememelord6510 The thing is: the way I figured out what the keyboard shortcut for S&R was by guessing. I knew it was a thing; I just didn’t know what the shortcut was (and I suppose I didn’t think to just look it up)
You should be a bit careful before using this though, and back up/commit to version control your story before doing this, since it is very easy to screw up a find and replace. I think maybe some find and replace tools do it word-by-word instead of all automatically which should work.
@@osbourn5772 yeah, like if a character's placeholder is Ing (yeah no don't ask) find and replace will give you ALL INSTANCES OF THE LETTERS I-N-G, so eating, sleeping, etc will be replaced with (if the character's name is Bob) eatBob, sleepBob
What I really like to do when creating names is to think of a word that has something to do with the idea of the character, then put it into a website that shows that word in a bunch of different languages. Then I scroll through them and pick one that looks like it would make for a good name. Sometimes I add or remove a couple letters, or combine two words, or make little alterations like that. I try not to use languages commonly spoken in America, for obvious reasons. Of course I usually only need to come up with names for single characters at a time, as the only context I usually name characters is as a D&D player. But I have gotten good results with it so far. My favorite is probably the goblin wizard “Kragsnaga the Powerful” which roughly translates to “power power the powerful”.
"power power the powerful" You sound like a colonizer naming a river by asking what the locals call that and pointing at a river. Being told "river" in the native tounge, and then writing it down. So many rivers are actually just "The River river" when fully translated into one language. (The UK has about 9 River Avons, avon means river. The Connecticut River in the US is another one.) Apparently its called being "tautological" and wikipedia has a list of place names like this.
Baby name websites are my first point of call normaly, and as a rule I tend to use consistent naming conventions for people who are part of the same group.
I don't know if this is a common strategy, but what I usually do for my characters is to get words that fit the character names, then try approximate it into a legit-sounding name. Like for example, a character that is more plant-based can use "patch of grass" and "tree" to get "Patri", then approximated to "Patrick". So far, it works very well for my use case.
13:00 that Susan/lily flower connection certainly shouldn't be the key to a story, but if it were just an Easter egg it would be pretty cool. Maybe Susan is tied symbolically to lilies (perhaps she leaves town, and a drought dries up the pond where the characters met), and people who know the origin of the name would get a little bonus thing to appreciate.
For my demonic villains, they're named Bael, Mammon, Belphagor, and Paimon all names from demons that are talked about in folklore like the lesser key of Solomon
I was going to post the same thing. In a society that I am working on, I have used ancient Greek culture as a base and built names from Greek words. For example, one character is called Korenyx, a combination of kore (a word meaning girl or maiden and a euphemism for Persephone, the Queen of the Underworld) and nyx, the Greek word for both the night and the goddess of Night. So Korenyx essentially means Night Maiden. Whether this is linguistically accurate or if the reader gets it is irrelevant, but if they do there is that Easter egg that tells them about the character. She is perky, sweet and innocent but darkly comical in an Addams sort of way. "A boy once gave me his heart...I still have it."
i genuinely don’t understand why he says its bad. like, people can still like star wars even if they don’t realize the main character is named after the creator
I think my favorite naming convention is currently the ASOIAF naming convention that George RR Martin uses. Just taking real names and tweaking them a bit. I like his quote from one interview "I think a lot of fantasy names are just too much, they're too long, goofy and hard to pronounce. I wanted realism."
@@freddiepage6162 I appreciate that Targaryan name being peculiar was part of the characterization, but I must confess I often found myself mixing them up.
In my WIP, the names of people born in the nation the novel is centred in are determined by the saint tied to the day/month they are born in, which leads to some really cool meanings (One of the MCs is named after a saint associated with death in his area of the society, but in his love interest's society it is associated with being a leader and talented warrior)
I’m so glad this will never be an issue to me. I’m unreasonably good at naming characters, whether I have a description or not. And these names are original and unique, for example, just one name of a MC from my book is Colt Levine I’ve also claimed this name so you can’t steal it
It's really important to not stress too much about finding the perfect name for your character, especially because I already found the objectively perfect fantasy name: Nationale Cnidarioheart Jacob Avalanchester.
I love Cnidarioheart so much! Because, you know, Cnidaria don't have hearts. But they are also probably the first predators to arise, so why name somebody Lionheart if you can name them after a much cooler, more ancient predator's (non-existing) heart!
I've always just put some brief description as the place holder. It can either be as simple and broad as "MC" for main character or something more descriptive, like "Vampire Kid" abbreviated to VK or for my character who lives in the clouds, "Cloud Guy" lol. It's fun to name, but I've killed enough hours in D&D and RPG video games JUST coming up with a name, so I've learned to avoid it if it's taking too long, and come back.
a recent work i’ve been writing is about a man who gets possessed by a devil so i just used the words “Protag” & “Devil” for the main characters until i settled on their actual names; Mox Morningstar & Kazanaarhae but Mox is just a nickname and his real name is Kane Morningstar, and he’s called that bc of the obvious biblical references (spelled Kane instead of Cain, and Morningstar being one of Lucifer’s names), and Kazanaarhae i just completely made up based on some loose guidelines for the fictional language spoken by the devils
I know this is a slightly different media being a light novel from the east. But Goblin Slayer is a great example of what he mentions here. The author of Goblin Slayer used very basic placeholder names so he could focus on everything else, and in the end he just kept those placeholder names as he found that the names of the characters didn't matter as much compared to the rest. We have, obviously, Goblin Slayer and his friends, Priestess, High Elf Archer, etc. It's incredible that he wrote this series of novels never deciding on names and it still blew up because of just how wonderful his world was! Names are important, but it is very important not to get hung up on them when working on your Fantasy worlds, games, novels, etc. This was incredibly helpful, and I love your work! It's inspired me to pick up the pen, as I have wanted to write forever but never felt an inspiration or motivation to start until now! Thank you!
It's strange how names just come to me right away when I'm writing novels. Then just for fun I look up what the name means (if it's not a super fantasy name that I made up), and it ends up being right on when it comes to the qualities of that character.
Wanted to name my protagonist Charlotte. And I wanted her to be very smart, independent, strong, and above all, creative. Who can think on her feet and find ways to overcomes struggles that seems outlandish at first, but is very smart. Ended up having her name mean exactly what her personality is.
I believe all creative people are channelers :) we just take this information from somewhere. This point raises many questions, such as: Wait, Middle Earth is real? Well --very, very possible. Tolkien was writing down historical facts of another world.. could it be so? We might find out one day.
I tend to use generators for location names sometimes, but with characters I look up baby names and the meanings. I pick names that you don't see much of or not at all in stories, the names usually fit their personality or back story.
14:10 North of the Border is a clay sculptor (who makes some incredibly entertaining videos, check him out), and one of the best life lessons I ever learned came from him. He says "It's not just good, it's good enough." Having something that's "good enough" that you actually put on the page is better than searching endlessly for something "good" and never writing your story.
Behind The Name is a gem! I've been using it so much and I don't know what I'd do without it. It's a perfect tool to come up with a name for a character with a different ethnicity or nationality than your own for example, as you can sort names by country or culture. My favourite tool is their meaning search function. I can for example put in the word "power", "old", "strong" or something else that defines my character and it will show names which have the meaning of those words. It's amazing if you want a name defining your character without making it a super obvious thing.
I have this fantasy world where one of the cultures generally has long names with repeating sounds. For example, my main character is called Ruru'aakinu. To avoid making readers want to cry over having to read a long ass name four thousand times over the span of 300 pages, I have come up with a super complex solution: Nicknames. Yeah she's literally just going to go by Ruru the entire book. If you have things will long names, give them nicknames. (For example, in Ender's Game the alien race is called the Formics, but everyone just calls them buggers as slang since it's easier to remember). You won't have to make new names, and you won't have to put your readers through extreme pain and suffering because your one setting happens to utilize all 26 letters of the alphabet.
Pardon nitpick but, Formics isn't a hard name to remember to be honest since it in itself is a short name. I was under the impression that them being called Buggers is just a nickname out of prejudice. Nonetheless, Valid points regarding long names should maybe have a nickname. It's like how Thrawns real name is much more.. Wordier. There could be interesting choices if the names are nicknames for other species or if there's like, a Birth name for close ones but for non-associates you refer to yourself by alias. You can get some interesting worldbuilding options.
Reminds me of an Alien from a 90’s Book series. Theirs an alien Race called Andalites and they have very long and complicated 3 part names. Considering that most of the main characters of Human and can’t comfortably pronounce that they shorten it. For example a friend of the group is named Aximili Esgarouth Isthil but they call him Ax for short because no one is going to try and pronounce all that,
4:47 important to note that you can ignore this rule, like GRRM does in ASOIAF with many, many characters sharing the same name (I think there's at least 10 different Walder Freys for example)
It was a name which sparked an entire world I am creating. I have many names with their meanings: - Calixos (Firm, Stable) - Romanael (Victorious Woman) - Eurimactos (Golden Warrior) - Rōvimundos (Horse Guardian) Very Greco-Roman inspired. Tho the main character is named after kingdom, and is her name which gives rise to the mythology I am crafting.
I can spend hours looking into name symbolism and the meanings behind names from different cultures... I do this knowing that my Readers don't have to be told the definition, but if they happen to look it up or discover it, then it's a sweet moment of connection. For example, Luke means light-giving, which I'm are is not a coincidence.
When I name my characters, locations and magic. I usually layout the language first try to give each their own phrases and terms that have origins and as years go by people would start using them in names with some alterations to make them be a name than a thing.
I'm new to this channel and I'm currently writing my first novel. I'm currently struggling with some of the points you made. You got my subscription , this has really opened my mind up to the possibilities that I hadn't seen before. I'll definitely check out more of your videos. It's great to be excited about writing again.
I often use baby naming websites to look up names by gender, region, and meaning. It's not vital to my stories that the reader knows the literal meaning of the name, but it helps me shape the character if their name meaning harmonizes with their characterization. Unless I'm going for deliberate irony like giving a fem fatal vampire a name that means "kitten".
I only think you need to be careful if you are choosing foreign names and have a setting that's kind of real-world-ish. For example, if you had an urban fantasy that features a 20 year old handsome and badass German character and you name him Rainer or Walter, I would expect an explanation as somebody who comes from that culture. Those are old man names that sound pretty unsexy and unfashionable. Why would his parents named the poor boy like that?
@@johannageisel5390that's why I think finding name usage by year data is important to, since to me Rainer is a really cool name but I don't have the context
Since my land is made up place but with elements of different places, like it could be a place on earth and it's set around now. I can get away with quite a few names, but I still need to be a bit mindful. It is a good point that names have reason like did a certain country conquer or were a group push out there e.g lots of Indian or Germanic names and did they marry the locals and take that surname. Is it a multicultural place etc. Also class , not so much in first names if set today, but still a factor in certain circles. Also do you want the name to have a meaning as to why the parents (or whoever named them) chose it or is it more random
I enjoy using the method that C. S. Lewis used when he made the name for Narnia! As a kid he was looking at an atlas, and found a town in Italy called Narni, changed it up a little, and called it Narnia! I’ve actually been to Narni before too. You can also take this further by finding countries that speak a language you like the sound of, that can help you come up with names that have a specific sound too!
Weird spellings are shorthand for, "Humans can't pronounce this properly." "Silly" names are shorthand for, "Their culture is different from humans, and has different ideas of how things sound."
I am researching about world building to create a world where I can do and create whatever I want, where all of it connects. I'm doing this for myself. Not for a novel. Just for my own enjoyment and satisfaction. I just want to create and design characters who are unique with deep backgrounds. I'm not much of an author so this is really helpful, thank you.
I am much the same way. I make up stories at night to help me go to sleep. I enjoy creating characters for RPGs or for my stories. I have found over the years that I don't have many actually good ideas that would work for writing a novel, and I don't even have the commitment to write a story for Wattpad. But coming up with random things is just fun, even if it's never good enough to share with anyone.
I've always had a hard time actually writing anything, but creating characters and world building is what I find easy to do, and I love doing it. World building and character creation are what I would say is my passion, not so much the actual writing part. I would love to see my world and characters in an actual completed story project, but I'm not good at actually doing that part, or committing to it. I definitely have that world building "disease". I just love creating the lore and the characters.
Yes! If I wrote an actual story than people would have to die, there would need to be conflict, maybe even a war, why can't I just spend my time working out how the leaves of this one fantasy tree look like? I swear it's important!
Yes! I worldbuild so I can have stories of thousands of individuals, happy and tragic and anything in between. I think about writing but at the end of the day it’s not why I worldbuild literally worldbuilding for worldbuilding’s sake because it’s a hobby
„We use names to tell characters appart” Or you can turn that on its head to make a bigger point. Gabriel García Márquez did that with „One hundred years of solitude”.
What I find generators are useful for is expanding your repertoire of names. Say you have a not-German character and you don't want to name him Hans, Franz, or Gunther, you can generate 50 random German names and find a bunch you probably didn't know. Then when you go back to make another character from that culture, you can think up way more names than before. On the subject of places, don't be afraid to use geographical or architectural features, if it's English fantasy they'll sound more grounded, and if it isn't you can translate them into another language that sounds like the culture and then vowel shift it a bit so your readers in that language don't get confused by the town called Suckhole.
On the subject of place names, don't be afraid for them to actually be stupid because the real world has long since surpassed your abilities for that. Istanbul = the city Rio Grande = big river Connecticut River = River river (this happens anywhere a colonizer did all the naming: "what do you call that?" *Points at the river*, "Native word for river", "thank you" *writes down 'The native word for river river') The Rocky Mountains....... And so many towns are named after the closest geologic feature. (Lake, River, Waterfall, bay, cape, hill, mountain, ext) Not to mention the number of towns named after people following the format of: Morristown, Jamestown, Hewittville, Raymondville, Grantville, Louisville, ect. Or all the places named after military bases, in the US its Fort X. And the classics of Direction other City/town. And the related New old city name. Basically humans have always been uncreative with naming places. (And England needs its naming rights revoked, without moving on google maps i can see cuckfield, lower bleeding, warninglid, balcombe, wivelsfield, hickstead, copsale, nuthurst, and itchingfield. And considering the pronunciation of Worcester I'm assuming none of these are pronounced how they are spelled)
This so much. I'm Polish and I live close to a town whose name is basically a nicer word for cow... uhh, fertilizer. There's also stuff like "the end of the world", TWO villages named "the middle of nowhere", a metric fuckton of places named "the far one", and one large city that has a legend claiming that its name literally means "well, crumble then". Place names are often very, VERY silly.
Thank you for reinforcing to everyone that tools are TOOLS! Use whatever can inspire you or give you answers. I used to get stuck on names, but I do exactly what Jed does now and use placeholders! For me, it makes it so much easier to imagine who a character is without having to fight my own preconceived notions of "that name." The one over the top thing I do, though, is I really love meaningful names, that the name implies SOMETHING true about the character- not quite to the point that, "this is the name this character would have given themself if they could" but close.
I love how he just hit every tactic I've been using for the past 20 years. 1. Take the top 3-5 traits, pull letters or syllables from each word and make a name. 2. Use a name generator. Find something that sounds good. Add or subtract prefixes or suffixes. 3. Repitition is bad. Stop it. I have a worn out thesaurus beside me at all times. I refuse to have the same descriptive word used in the same chapter twice. You better believe I'll exhaust every synonym of hero before I use it again. That includes words that aren't on the list of synonyms but we all know have that meaning or are contextually accurate for the character in the story. Same goes for names. With some exceptions like cliché twin names or rivals or sequential planets. 4. Spelling is phonetic. ie. There is no Sean, there's Shawn. I have an ore I wanted to call Zenium because it's the zenith of ore. Now it's spelled Zeenium. I don't like it, but it's happening. Thems the rules. 5. Parentheses are nice. Any word I cannot properly thesaurize, any scene or character I cannot describe, any name I cannot think up. You get parentheses with whatever descriptive words I have at the moment and I move on. Don't worry. It'll be on my mind until it's filled in. Even if it takes years.
4:55 I will say that sometimes there are exceptions to that. For e.g. the main trio in Harry Potter have two character whose names both begin with "H", have an "R" sound in them, and end with an "ee" sound; Harry and Hermione. Generally, avoid characters with similar names and initials unless the occasion arises where it's just too perfect to pass up.
Another exception would be if you're establishing a cultural naming convention, such as with Vulcans. The characters' names often begin and even end with the same letters, but it also makes their cultural background clear.
12:06 Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes had this problem. "Coriolanus" was rarely used in The Hunger Games-- he was always just "President Snow." But in the prequel book, when he doesn't have that honor, seeing that name used so frequently got old fast.
There is one caveat to the whole 'new first letter for each character name'. You don't want the *ending* of the name to be the same. Harry, Hubert, Hilton, and Himmelsdorf aren't that hard to distinguish but Harry, Larry, and Barry can be. I don't remember the name of the book, but I know there's a book out there where all the main characters started with C, (It might have even been 'every female character starts with C' but I read about it like, five years ago and forget lol) and what distinguished them was the fact the endings of their names were different. Heck, one of my very awful, unfinished, first drafts of a novel attempt I had one character named Lucy and one character named...Cassy I think and the people who read the few chapters I've had written had problems keeping them straight.
Your information seems really good-I'll be sure to keep your words in mind when writing my fantasy book. Something I also found is You CAN'T go wrong with old uncommon Hebrew names of people as well as places.
12:03 Also very important to watch out for names that might be misinterpreted by readers. You might read George and Jorge as "George" and "Hor-hay," but to someone unfamiliar with Spanish pronunciations, or common Mexican names might read them both as "George." I had turned 40 before I learned the proper pronunciation of Jorge.
One of my favorite ways to come up with names, mainly for places in my fantasy world, is to sit and run through random syllables and sounds in my head and slowly mold something that sounds like it could be a name. I'm doing more along the lines of low fantasy so I'm not super concerned about the linguistics of the world. But once I come up with something that I like, I initially spell it the way it sounds and then try to see how I could spell it in a typical unconventional fantasy way, like instead of a K use a Q without a U after it, or instead of a Y use two i's I also just called my villain "villain" for a whole year of writing until I finally figured out what to call him.
A note on basing names on external meanings such as cultural or literary affiliations: in most cases, these are going to be easter eggs that a varying number of readers might uncover or already be familiar with. As you say, don't *expect* the reader to just intuit them - at least not without a lot of clues on your part.
I once named a carechter Judas, worried it was going to be on the nose, and then my party decides that "nah we can trust this guy" only to be shocked that he betrayed them
When it comes to specific linguistics if you're creating names from scratch, typically names are single syllables, trochees (Two syllables, stress on first syllable) or three syllables with the stress on the first syllable.
Normally, I inmediately zone out whenever I look for tips and someone just starts talking about their own work. This time I decided to stick around and was pleasantly surprised with really good tips, thanks!.
When you have 2 characters names start with the same latter, you can just make sure one got long name and second got a really short one. Like Theodoric and Tom.
I like to “theme” my character names based on my characters’ environment. Examples from my story are: Elves often think very highly of themselves and make names invoking grandeur or divinity (Garde, Idole, Deus, etc.) Humans are sort of the same but take more after royalty and earthly things (most of the important characters take names from the knights of the round table) Neofauna and Neofungi (basically anthro animals and mushrooms) are even more in-touch with the earth and take names from elements (Ignisa, Luft, Hierbo, etc.) Orcs and Grendels/“Demons” both are otherworldly and take names from magical creatures and concepts (Pathos, Iblis, Ism, etc.) Having a name that conveys the environment they’re from can give an idea to the audience on what a character could be and what sort of upbringing they could have, bonus points for if the character in question completely subverts those expectations.
I've struggled with names since elementary school, but the nail in the coffin to me coming up with my own names was when I witnessed the holy grail of all names that I will never come close to matching: "Hiro Protagonist" It brings a tear to my eye to this day
For every project I keep two A to z lists. One for given names (one entry for male and one entry for female) and one for surnames (limits 2 per letter if I can). Plus I have a master list of character names that I keep so I don’t use them in other stories. And yes it’s very helpful to google names you’ve already picked. I had a name to one character because I thought it had a nice ring to it and I could shorten it too for other characters who knew him more intimately. Turns out it had a ring to it because, when I googled it, it turned out to be the name of a famous murder victim. So my name search continued
For one of my godesses I wanted to have a name similar to Makaria (Greek goddess of blessed death). But then I found the name Pele (Hawaiian goddess of volcanos) and I really liked the way it sounded. So I mushed the two names together a few times and sounded the names I had out. I also took a break and came back later to decide with a fresh mind. Now my goddess is named Melera 😊
I like that you came up with a new name lol Pele literally means "skin" in portuguese and "Pelé" is a famous soccer player so for example if I were to read your book and you happen to choose Pele for the name I would associate these things every time I read it
I didn't think about the different letters changing the outlook on a character, but I realize I was already doing a lot of these things in my own writing already!
If the symbolism of a character's name _is_ going to be important, you can always, y'know... mention it in the story. Terry Pratchett certainly doesn't shy away from reminding us of the significance of Tiffany Aching's name, to the point that "Land Under Wave" becomes a really satisfying arc phrase.
This is great and I learned a bit from this video. One thing, the example that your character's name is Valanor, that name is really similar to Valinor (the land of the Valar) in LOTR, probably for the same reason. Maybe that's not a bad thing, however, later you mention that you look for names that are popular. Maybe one thing we can do is check for different yet similar spellings?
Not a writer myself, but I was happy I stumbled upon this video! Coming up with names for player characters in MMOs or D&D is something I always struggle with. When you are going to spend hundreds of hours playing with a character you really want to get it just right.
for the annoying name part Grand admiral Thrawn is such a great example and i just realised it. His name is originally Mith'raw'nuruodo, but his ppl use only Thrawn as it has the first parts last couple letters so they know which family he is from and use the middle part which is basicly your individual name and the last part is a name given as a great honour for doing a great thing. All that thing with an exotic name and still you can make it sort and simple with an explonation for the simple name in universe
In Warhammer theirs an Alien Race that’s used as Comedic relief but are the type of humor that comes from Hyper Violence. They’re called the Orks because they’re literally Orks, take everything you know about Orks, combined them with Mad Max and Soccer Hooligans and you have the Orks in a Nutshell. Their whole thing is that names are only for Orks that are important. You have to do something worthy of a name and even then the names are humorously on the nose. Examples are Mekboss da Meklord, Da Red Gobbo, Tuska da Demon-Killa, Mad Doc, Biter-that-bites-the face-of-the-face-biter, Zog Ironteef. Right away the names establishes that they’re weird, kinda stupid, and you get a good idea what they’re about and what their gimmick is, you also know from the context of their culture that they’re kind of a big deal if they have a name at all.
fun anecdote about names. At starbucks there was a guy who ordered a coffee and said his name was "Mark, with K". The barista spelled his name as "Marc Wittakay"
Awesome video Jed! This is something that I've always struggled with when coming up for different character names in RPGs, and these tips genuinely help me out. I also like how you mentioned using random name generators as a tool to pick and choose what names stick out, rather than admonishing the practice for being "lazy" or "unoriginal".
I am doing the exact opposite actually, I have most of the worldbuilding, the raw concepts at least, and I am currently focusing on writing the entire story down, with all the characters, subplots and grand adventures, and then I will set the draft side, finally flesh out the worldbuilding and then rewrite the story with all the new details and feedback received and so on. What do you guys think?
Seems fairly close to the Zero Draft concept...A technique more popular among discovery writers or hybrid outliner/discovery writers. It works well for lots of people. You should be alright if it's working for you, too.
1:20 That placeholder idea is so damn helpful, I just figured that out, out of frustration 😂 I was afflicted with the naming disease that I got so angry i cured myself accidentally, this makes me feel reassured and smarter.
When I don’t have a name on hand I write (name here M / F - depends on character’s gender - simple description) EDIT : I have an original character originally introduced being addressed by a code number (3 - U 1)… in my books she’s is a genetic clone of the Skylander Hex, who was created by Kaos to be an evil duplicate of Hex to paint her in a horrible light; after 3 - U 1 was captured and taken as a POW, she was encouraged by her guards to explore herself, and see how she liked being her own person instead of trying to be Hex 2 . 0… once she felt comfortable letting herself be her own person she asked to be given a proper name so Hex named her Jinx (this was BEFORE arcane came out) to show that while they are similar to each other, they are each their own person
00:31 📝 Use placeholders for names in early drafts to avoid getting stuck in the naming process and focus on finishing the story. 02:36 🧠 Character names should establish or suggest defining traits, creating a strong first impression for readers. 04:42 🔄 Differentiate characters by avoiding repeating the same starting letter or sound in their names. 05:54 🌍 Establish linguistic rules or themes for naming in your story to enhance coherence and realism. 07:18 🔄 Utilize random name generators and AI to generate lists of potential names, especially for secondary characters. 12:38 ❌ Avoid rookie mistakes like overly exotic, similar, or difficult-to-pronounce names that might distract or irritate readers. 14:17 ⏰ Don't obsess over names; focus on crafting a great story as names serve the narrative rather than being the most crucial element.
4:45 when I was in middle school I read a Chinese children's book, that in the first three chapters introduces the characters Hu, Wu, Fu, and Xu. It wasn't until I was very confused about why the protagonist didn't recognize his teacher that I realized there were 4 separate people.
@@sweaterweatherlady no, it was called something like, "the _____ journey of prince ___” I think that first adjective was "extraordinary" or similar, but I forget the name of the prince. (I might have messed up one of the other names too.) None of the characters were related to each other so it's not like the rhyming was a joke. Also, I don't think the story was a traditional Chinese story. I think it was just written in a Chinese setting.
@@sweaterweatherlady "The Remarkable Journey of Prince Jen." By Lloyd Alexander. (So not traditional itself.) And to prove my point on how confusing the names were, there was 5 instead of 4 and no one was "Xu." They were Master Hu, Master Wu, Master Fu, Master Shu, and Master Chu.
@@josephschubert6561 at first I thought "oh it's just an unfortunate part of translation, those were probably easily recognizable in Chinese since they're written as single distinct characters" but if the book wasn't originally in Chinese then idk what the author was thinking.
I know the don't repeat letters rule of thumb, but I actually consciously made three immediate family members all start with the same letter, because it serves as a reminder of their ties and family bond while they serve extremely desperate roles in the story.
@@Brick_One_A_Lego_Story Well Tolkien had a few more than 26 characters. It's not a hard and fast rule, no, but it's still a good idea when you can do it.
I love it. I’m one of six kids, and our parents gave us all names that start with ‘J’ so I absolutely support this! I think it’s easier to get away with doing this when you’re writing with family members because they will all essentially orbit each others lives (even estranged siblings), thus they aren’t as easily lost in the shuffle of storytelling.
my personal favorite material for character naming are baby name websites (can easily be found with searches like "(nationality) names that start with (letter)" or "(nationality) (gender) names" even stuff like "japanese girl names that mean death" can lead you to a baby name website
Bad names are such a peeve of mine. Fantasy names rarely ever work for me, honestly. Like if you take Tolkien and Martin, the name sound just right. They sound realistic for the setting the story takes place in. Most importantly, they sound like REAL names proper to that world. But in most fantasy and scifi it’s literally just sounds or quirky names from OUR reality. Also I’d rather they have a complicated name than a too simple one. I’m reading The Jade City rn and there’s a Kehn, a Tar, a Shon… I cannot tell who’s who.
Another thing to reflect upon is how most names have multiple variations (even invented ones) which can go a long ways towards reflecting upon the relationships with the characters using them. As an example, one of my principal characters is Draxtherion Carthas Hawkwind III: ~ Even among his closest relationships, only a select few are allowed the privilege of calling him "Drax" (though some of these will call him "Draxtherion" as a way to express their displeasure with something he's done) ~ In most casual circumstances, those whom he considers trusted friends call him "Draxtherion" ~ In more formal situations, or to anyone he doesn't consider a friend, he is addressed as "Lord Hawkwind" or simply "Hawkwind" ~ Anyone unfortunate enough to incur his ire calls him "Lord Draxtherion Hawkwind" if they value their lives One of his wives (long story in and of itself) is Bontania Celestia Moonshadow: ~ Only her partners (her husband and fellow wife) address her as "Tani"; even then, only in reasonably private circumstances ~ Only in casual circumstances do even her friends address her as "Bontania" ~ In all other circumstances, she is "Lady Moonshadow" - even to one of her closest friends who, despite their friendship (and calling her husband "Drax"), would never consider themselves to be in the same social class As a real-world example, consider John F and Jacqueline Kennedy: ~ Among themselves and close friends, they were "Jack" and "Jackie" (fans also referred to them as such, but never in their presence) ~ In formal circumstances, they were "Mr President"/"President Kennedy" and "Mrs Kennedy" ~ In most other circumstances, they were addressed as "John and Jacqueline Kennedy" or "Mr and Mrs Kennedy" This should hopefully illuminate how variations on a character's name can do a great deal to convey indirect information about that person and their relationship(s) with others.
Man, let me tell you. I have never clicked on a video faster. I’ve been worldbuilding since I was 15 years old and the one thing that has always been my greatest weakness is coming up with names.
2:36 "Obviously, you can take that way too far and create names that are much too on the nose or too obvious. You do need a degree of suptlety here." Meanwhile in Britain: "Torpenhow Hill", literally "Hill-hill-hill Hill"
1:15 I love this. I do it all the time when I'm having trouble thinking of a new character, city, inn, poison, food, artifact, etc. name. My writing is still slow as syrup, but names aren't what's slowing me down!
I write mostly Urban Fantasy. I don't dwell on the names too much. Most of my characters have common names or something I just make up on the spot. I've only struggled with naming my superhero group for my comic book. I still haven't came up with it after years.
Behind the Name is fantastic. I use it to help name not just most of the key characters in my RPG worlds and games, but both of my sons. The ability to trace names back through languages and check for name relationships is really fun and educational.
I have taken inspiration for names from astronomical star names (JK Rowling beat me to Bellatrix, though), scientific names of plants and generic names of drugs - sometimes used straight and sometimes mashed around. Anagrams also work. I wanted a name for a minor character who was a codebreaker, so I took the name Vigenere, then mashed it around, changed some letters and came up with Gerevain.
Hah! I love using BehindTheName myself, a buddy told me about it back in college and I go into it whenever I'm stuck on a name and want something that sounds like it could work rather than just creating a name out of random syllables.
Late to the party, but who cares. It's a great advice video. I'm very much pro random generators. I will let one generate me a couple dozen names, find one that I like, and alter it. I will replace a letter with a different one, shift letters around, until I get something I like. It's not generated anymore, it's my original name, but the basis helps me get something to work it. Also, I do use AI generated images to help me visualise things - I won't put the images in my novel, obviously, but it's easier to describe something when I've got it right in front of me. It also helps with consistency.
![Felix "Unfair" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Oswujxm2Ag0/mqdefault.jpg)
My next fantasy novel, Kingdom of Dragons, is out now!
Check it out here: bit.ly/kingdom-of-dragons
Thats honestly such a basic name
@@fidaniiiiii0 It doesn’t matter what it’s called, what matters is if a good book or not
Dude, there's a secret trick to coming up with names in just a few steps:
1) Use a crappy placeholder name until inspiration strikes.
2) Become attached to the placeholder.
3) You are now attached to the crappy placeholder, congrats, that's literally how 90% of places are historically named.
Ha, love it
Ooh that's funny, what places?
@@hayond656 "Hey, see that lake over there, what do the local Africans call it?"
"Chad"
"Cool, then we'll call it Lake Chad, in the country of Chad."
"Chad" meant Lake in the local tongue, so now the Lake Lake is in the country of Lake.
"Hey, there's a town over at the end of the hills. What do you call it?"
"I dunno, we've always just called it Hills End".
"Hey, what should we name our town?"
"I dunno, just name it after the King."
Charleston.
"Hey, are you sure that secret shipping route led to the Western side of India?"
"Yes, don't question me, shut up and name it the West Indies."
@@boota2474 lmfao
@@boota2474 There's a hill in the UK that's called Hill Hill Hill Hill in 4 different languages. The only problem: now you have to come up with 4 different languages.
Go to the cemetery and collect all the cool old names on the headstones
Dude why this cracks me up so hard 😂
This is a genius and yet very uncomfortable idea😂
Instructions unclear: robbed the cemetery of their headstones
Way easier to just become a Hockey fan.
Those northern european countries are a goldmine of cool names.
I remember hearing that is how JK Rowling came up with a lot of her characters names, then everyone went to the headstones she took inspiration from, and wore out their graves. If you ever come up with names this way and become famous, don’t let other people know where you got your names from.
I wish the pharma industry would quit using up all the really cool alien names.
Drug name or lord of the rings character is a really difficult test.
This is too real 🤣
A travel ad in a sci-fi story: "Ask your travel agent if Valipotrol 7 is right for you."
😂😂😂
Dunno, my drugs don't sound better than names i make.
Though i rarely make names
As a former scriptreader, almost every sci-fi or fantasy story I read included a name that boiled down to "Varik Darkul", so that's what apparently everyone thinks is the "coolest name".
I'mma use it.
Certified coolest name
It's almost Darth Vader but switched around
Im gonna name my first born child that
Lukraad of Kyr-Rav
It won't work for every story, but if you simply must use an unpronouncable or tonguetwister name for your alien race or its members, have a human or human-influenced character provide a nickname, or if they are familiar enough with human speech let the aliens provide a human nickname themselves. Larry Niven is very good at this.
Often I try to simplify the first few syllables of the name. That way it's still recognizable, yet it can still be easily pronounced
@@Just_Another_Gravemind Yep, there are lots of ways to make it easier on your readers.
This reminds me of this scene in Dragon Heart 2, I forget the full title, where Geoff meets the dragon Hisyoxylannochoganothos, or however it's spelled, and he just ends up calling him Drago because he's a dragon. Like what kind of name is that for a dragon? Drago sound way better.
@@mikevoss4894 Aximili Esgarrouth Isthill likes this element.👍💙
This happens in real life too, anyways. Corruptions of foreign words/names are EXTREMELY common.
In Mexican Spanish, many plants, foods, and animals have names that end in _-te_ (like _aguacate_ , which means "avocado"). These are borrowings from words in Nahuatl, the most common indigenous language in Mexico.
Why do they end in _-te_ ? In Nahuatl, almost every noun ends in _-tl_ , which is a sort of weird clicky sound which is very rare and very difficult to pronounce (/tɬ/ in IPA). When Spanish speakers tried to pronounce the native words, they just ended up saying "te" instead, since it was more comfortable.
So you go from _aguacatl_ -> _aguacate_ .
Characters will naturally do the same thing, trying their best to pronounce hard words, then giving up and just saying what's easy for them.
There are two ways I come up with names in my sci-fi writing:
1 - Mishearing lyrics in songs sung in foreign languages.
For example, "Som ger sommartider" (Swedish) became "Sonya Summer", cuz _boy_ does it sound like that!
"Tullaan viisaammiksi näin" (Finnish) helped me name a musical band "Mixy 9".
2 - "Random Word Generator" program.
That app doesn't just generate random words; it has an editor which allows you to enter a ton of phonemes and how frequently--and in which order--they should be employed in the words it generates.
The language of a major alien race is backward from most languages, where vowel sounds tend to come _before_ consonants, so I entered all of the possible letters (cuz not every sound in English is represented), told the generator in which order they should appear in a word, and set it loose.
The aliens are known as the Ikakurog-- 'ik', 'ah', ur', and 'og'--and sentences like "Anyumal yunyeg adyae" (which I decided means "Knowledge is powerful") came out as well, one word at a time. Random Word Generator is a very useful tool.
The alien language reads a little bit like Japanese.
@@Aaa-vp6ug It's actually reverse Japanese.
Where most Japanese phonemes are consonant-vowel, Ikakurog goes vowel-consonant.
@@BionicDance Fair
Plus its not just random word generator its fake word generator on that website
also has random nouns and verbs and phrases and weird words
Rather than relying on generated names, one potential filter you could use is to do a quick study on naming conventions. Apply these in any combination of your choosing or let them inspire you to create your own. Then when you look up some names you like, apply your chosen naming convention(s) to it and see if you like the results.
Scandinavian "surnames" are the father's name with "son" or "dottr" tacked on to the end (for sons and daughters respectively).
Ancient Egyptian names tended to end in "et" for women and "es" or "ep" for men.
Many Eastern Asian names have the family name (surname) come first followed by the name of the individual.
Many English surnames are based on location or profession. (Fisher, Chandler, and others basically told you what they did for a living).
Many ancient societies had no surname and a description was added. This trend continued and is still used in some places you might not expect. Geralt of Rivia, John the Baptist, or Kang the Conqueror for instance. (Bet you never expected to see those three names together on a list) This practice evolved to having surnames based on a location. Point being that a rudimentary knowledge of naming conventions can greatly enrich your character names. Just... don't go so far down the rabbit hole that you never get to work on your story.. but if names are a perpetual issue, it can certainly help.
This is a great tip
This could be excellent advice but the fact that it's so long and detailed made me immediately understand why some may just prefer to go for generated names when it's really not that important.
Eastern Asians are not the only ones who put surname at the first place! We Hungarians in Central-Europe do it too, this why my name is Tóth Nimród Benedek instead of Nimród Benedek Tóth (please don't laugh at my name, Nimród used to mean hunter in my language and not what you think of).
@@hungariangiraffe6361 "Nimród used to mean "Hunter" in my language and not what you think of" I'm Italian and I think Nimròd sounds cool as a name(I should hear it pronounced to be sure,but,reading it,it seems cool 😎),but I don't know what should I _think_ it means...😅
You can even take this further by creating some of your own naming conventions and then following that when it applies (like nobles following a naming scheme while the general public is just words)
I quite literally named my protagonist "Parasol", simply because she wields an umbrella 😭
Well, Marisol is a perfect valid name in Spanish, so it make sense.
I love it
A Mary Poppins type?
Parsol can work
Wait a minute...
PARASOUL FROM SKULLGIRLS
I think using names with hidden meanings are fun in that they can add meaning to the story, or making those connections later on makes the story interesting enough to come back to. But for sure, it’s good to use names readers can appreciate even if they don’t make those connections.
I'm not 100% against it - I sometimes like to do it for my own amusement for sure
The fart gun, has the properties of both fart and gun
just generally putting words to the naming scheme youre using. In Brandon Sanderson's "the stormlight archives" one character is named renarin, and the book breaks down the naming scheme just to explain that hes named "he who is born unto himself"
I agree, I don't make it so that it is impossible to understand what is going on if you don't know the meaning. The way I see it is more as a secret easter egg to reward the reader that wants to dig deeper
I like for my names to have real-world meanings that are Easter eggs for readers who know what they mean. Maybe it’s not that the story “hinges on” knowing Susan means lily flower, but I would probably give her lily motifs if I wanted that to be significant. For example, I have a character in my book named Phoebe. Phoebe was an Ancient Greek moon goddess. Phoebe in my book is a werewolf. They go together.
I am so glad that you said "don't choose names that are hard to pronounce" I always hate that when reading a book. I read this book once that i could not figure out how to say the main characters name so i just called her abby through the whole book because the first two letters were ab. So i make a point have easy names for the readers to figure out in my stories.
I guess Irish Gaelic names are out lol.
If it makes you feel better, the author can't say the name any better than you
I usually don't, but if a character I have does happen to have a longer name, like my one character Alessia, I just give them a nickname, like her nickname is Ally.
Well, guess it's time to scrap my manuscript: "Harry, Henry, Hubert, Humphrey: The Happenings of the Four H's"
I immediately thought of the first time I read The Silmarillion, aka "The Adventures of Feanor, Fingolfin, Finwe, and Finrod."
Tolkien obviously had an excuse, starting with a language and building names from there, but it was still very difficult to follow along with. Tuor and Huor and Turin and Hurin were hard to keep straight as well.
Ha!
And I had just finished off "Adolf's war" as well...
Wait until you hear about the characters in the game Don’t Starve…
This comment made my day, love it
Sometimes I just use punny names. I named some of my characters after flowers: for example, Daniel D. Léon for Dandelion, it makes it catchy and funny, but i guess this is also a Pixar kind of way of doing it, especially if you're an animator or artist.
Ah yes, Ace Attorney character names.
Nice
@ArbitraryOutcome lol wild
Akira Toriyama!?
I've heard that Dragon Alley (HP) is Diagonally…
One thing I don't think came up in this lesson: while you *should* use placeholders if you haven't figured out a character's name, finding that right name may well be beneficial to writing the character and inspire you when you discover it. While worldbuilding for a story with few details and no name for the mc and antagonist, I stumbled upon the perfect name while reading another story. It clicked immediately, and spurred me to sit down and write a ragged but very helpful story treatment that I sent to a writer friend because I was now so excited I had to tell somebody about my story idea. He'd already seen an opening snippet for it and wanted me to hurry up and write it, but the longer treatment fired up his enthusiasm for the project as well as mine. If you are actually writing the story and discover the mc's "right and proper" name, it can do wonders to inspire your efforts further, and a lot of things may suddenly fall into place that were up in the air before, because now that you know who the character is, you'll find it easier to discover what he is, what he does, and other things as well. Just as a good idea can jumpstart a story, a good name can jumpstart a character.
Absolutely
Not a writer, but i am a GM in TTRPGs so i come up with character names often. This video gives excellent advice, and i would like to offer one of my own as well: if you want a character to have a long and complex name, go for it, but make sure there is a very easy and intuitive way to nickname them, and then use those most of the time. People respond very well to nicknames and it helps endear a character to your players/readers, plus, it can add to a dramatic moment when others use their full name all of a sudden.
Edit: ok, upon reading comments i see my advice was already given. Good to see i wasn’t the only one who thought it was a good idea. Consider my comment as further evidence their advice was good :P
a friend of mine used to have a gnome character named Isokeh. the story behind it was that the character got asked for his name, which was really long, and suddenly someone who had asked was annoyed and bored, and waved it off, saying "it's okay!". so the character realized "Isokeh" is a great abbreviation of his overly long, albeit traditional and meaningful, name.
I usually create character names by rearranging a word or two related to them and then adding few letters if needed which are usually vowels to make it easier to pronounce(at least easier for me to pronounce lol).
Example:
The word "Forest"
- I rearrange the letters of this word. I chose and stopped at 'sterof' and then just added an 'e' on the beginning making it "Esterof". The name somewhat fits the character and it sounded nice to me as well so I kept it instead of rolling the dice again.
Anyways, nice video!
Aww man, this was the kind of advice I was looking for .... Thank-you for sharing this!!!!
I do something similar. I try to add or cut down on letters and alter the ending of words.
Example:
The word "Wandering"
- Wandering -> Wanderinth -> Wandrinth -> Wanrith.
I always end up looking for alternate mythological names. For example, I have a goddess of love and war inspired vaguely by Aphrodite, so I named her Areia, an epithet that the Spartans ocasionally applied to her in ancient Rome.
Hey, I am curious to know how you got the number 36. What restrictions did you put in the rearrangement to get that? Since if it's freely rearranged you get 720 possibilities, which is 20 times of 36. But of course most of them would be hard to pronounce. But you putting only pronunciation as restrictions wouldn't also give 36 since those are kind of subjective and depends one's mother tongue and accents. So I want to know what you did.
@@CaptainvonDore Oh, my bad. It is 720. I don't recall how I got 36, but it seems I have forgotten how combinations and permutations work .
I don't actually write or do much world building, but as someone who has always wondered how it's done, thanks for explaining all that. 14 minutes well spent.
When you came up with a story when you were five and gave your main characters stupid names that don't have any meaning but now youre so attached to those names that you cant change them:
Relatable
I came up with two characters, Kay and Shawd, when I was around 14? So nowhere near as young as you. But now even though the names are very strange (particularly Shawd), I feel like I can't change them. They've changed way too much over the years, and if I were to change the names too, then what's stopping them from being completely different characters? That's literally the only thing that's been consistent over the years.
So yes. I feel your pain.
Are you sure they don't have any meaning, though? They must have come from somewhere, right?
I hate that this is true...
So relatable
After carefully watching this video, i have decided that one of my characters will now be called "Yogurt Frostwood"
That name sounds epic. It will be the new Jack Frost.
@@Asiagirl644 mayhaps, but like, come on, it's literally a dude named "yogurt"
How about Poop McDingle?
@@Scatterblades You got that from viva lad dirt league?
@@XMoon758 someone who know the references lol. 😅 but it's actually Poop McDinglefart
Just a small thing, but CTRL+F isn't the most efficient solution to replace placeholders. There's also CTRL+H: Search and Replace. Do it once and you've got everything for the whole document (well, so long as you were consistent with the placeholder)
dude i bet he didn't know how to do that and added that part so someone could comment how to search and replace because I didn't know that either
@@thememelord6510 The thing is: the way I figured out what the keyboard shortcut for S&R was by guessing. I knew it was a thing; I just didn’t know what the shortcut was (and I suppose I didn’t think to just look it up)
You should be a bit careful before using this though, and back up/commit to version control your story before doing this, since it is very easy to screw up a find and replace. I think maybe some find and replace tools do it word-by-word instead of all automatically which should work.
What if you are using an iPad or a tablet to write with 7:16
@@osbourn5772 yeah, like if a character's placeholder is Ing (yeah no don't ask) find and replace will give you ALL INSTANCES OF THE LETTERS I-N-G, so eating, sleeping, etc will be replaced with (if the character's name is Bob) eatBob, sleepBob
What I really like to do when creating names is to think of a word that has something to do with the idea of the character, then put it into a website that shows that word in a bunch of different languages. Then I scroll through them and pick one that looks like it would make for a good name. Sometimes I add or remove a couple letters, or combine two words, or make little alterations like that. I try not to use languages commonly spoken in America, for obvious reasons. Of course I usually only need to come up with names for single characters at a time, as the only context I usually name characters is as a D&D player. But I have gotten good results with it so far. My favorite is probably the goblin wizard “Kragsnaga the Powerful” which roughly translates to “power power the powerful”.
"power power the powerful"
You sound like a colonizer naming a river by asking what the locals call that and pointing at a river. Being told "river" in the native tounge, and then writing it down.
So many rivers are actually just "The River river" when fully translated into one language. (The UK has about 9 River Avons, avon means river. The Connecticut River in the US is another one.) Apparently its called being "tautological" and wikipedia has a list of place names like this.
Power power the powerful lmfao that's great 😂
The Latin method is my favorite
Baby name websites are my first point of call normaly, and as a rule I tend to use consistent naming conventions for people who are part of the same group.
Same here, also for an eastern European inspired setting I did, I went to Czech names and drew inspiration from there.
Baby name websites have come in clutch many times for me
I don't know if this is a common strategy, but what I usually do for my characters is to get words that fit the character names, then try approximate it into a legit-sounding name. Like for example, a character that is more plant-based can use "patch of grass" and "tree" to get "Patri", then approximated to "Patrick". So far, it works very well for my use case.
i do that a lot too! sometimes i get too attached to the nouns tho
Not to mention St. Patrick being associated with green!
13:00 that Susan/lily flower connection certainly shouldn't be the key to a story, but if it were just an Easter egg it would be pretty cool. Maybe Susan is tied symbolically to lilies (perhaps she leaves town, and a drought dries up the pond where the characters met), and people who know the origin of the name would get a little bonus thing to appreciate.
Agreed
For my demonic villains, they're named Bael, Mammon, Belphagor, and Paimon all names from demons that are talked about in folklore like the lesser key of Solomon
Susan grows up to become The Flower Druid.
I was going to post the same thing. In a society that I am working on, I have used ancient Greek culture as a base and built names from Greek words. For example, one character is called Korenyx, a combination of kore (a word meaning girl or maiden and a euphemism for Persephone, the Queen of the Underworld) and nyx, the Greek word for both the night and the goddess of Night. So Korenyx essentially means Night Maiden. Whether this is linguistically accurate or if the reader gets it is irrelevant, but if they do there is that Easter egg that tells them about the character. She is perky, sweet and innocent but darkly comical in an Addams sort of way. "A boy once gave me his heart...I still have it."
i genuinely don’t understand why he says its bad. like, people can still like star wars even if they don’t realize the main character is named after the creator
I think my favorite naming convention is currently the ASOIAF naming convention that George RR Martin uses. Just taking real names and tweaking them a bit. I like his quote from one interview "I think a lot of fantasy names are just too much, they're too long, goofy and hard to pronounce. I wanted realism."
Then go full Targaryan with Daemon, Daeron, Aemon, and Aegon,
Eddard, Rickard, Rickon, Dickon
Eddard, jon, Sansa, robb, rickon, bran,
@@FauxReal. Yes, those are some of the character names. Thanks.
@@freddiepage6162 None of them are hard to pronounce.
@@freddiepage6162 I appreciate that Targaryan name being peculiar was part of the characterization, but I must confess I often found myself mixing them up.
In my WIP, the names of people born in the nation the novel is centred in are determined by the saint tied to the day/month they are born in, which leads to some really cool meanings (One of the MCs is named after a saint associated with death in his area of the society, but in his love interest's society it is associated with being a leader and talented warrior)
That's cool
You created new zodiac signs
@@dulcecitarisitas3504 Hah, I actually hadn't thought of it that way! But yeah!
Where can I read it, sounds interesting
This is a really creative idea omg
I’m so glad this will never be an issue to me. I’m unreasonably good at naming characters, whether I have a description or not. And these names are original and unique, for example, just one name of a MC from my book is Colt Levine
I’ve also claimed this name so you can’t steal it
It's really important to not stress too much about finding the perfect name for your character, especially because I already found the objectively perfect fantasy name: Nationale Cnidarioheart Jacob Avalanchester.
I love Cnidarioheart so much! Because, you know, Cnidaria don't have hearts. But they are also probably the first predators to arise, so why name somebody Lionheart if you can name them after a much cooler, more ancient predator's (non-existing) heart!
Now that reminds me with a certain Kiss-Shot Acerola-Orion Heart-Under-Blade fella haha
@@Closerlineah yes, the iron-blooded, hot-blooded, cold-blooded vampire
@Closerline Shinobu
Its funny but I can’t take it seriously. A bit too tryhard for my taste.
Me: **Stares at JK Rowling with names like Greengrass, Clearwater, Longbottom**
Paul Greengrass is an actual person's name. He's a movie director.
And Shakespeare naming flute, bottom,snout,cobweb and mustardseed.
I've always just put some brief description as the place holder. It can either be as simple and broad as "MC" for main character or something more descriptive, like "Vampire Kid" abbreviated to VK or for my character who lives in the clouds, "Cloud Guy" lol.
It's fun to name, but I've killed enough hours in D&D and RPG video games JUST coming up with a name, so I've learned to avoid it if it's taking too long, and come back.
I should've mentioned that I do the same as well
I pick random objects or throw darts at an imaginary board of names in my head.
I use Bubba a lot
Dude, same!
a recent work i’ve been writing is about a man who gets possessed by a devil so i just used the words “Protag” & “Devil” for the main characters until i settled on their actual names; Mox Morningstar & Kazanaarhae
but Mox is just a nickname and his real name is Kane Morningstar, and he’s called that bc of the obvious biblical references (spelled Kane instead of Cain, and Morningstar being one of Lucifer’s names), and Kazanaarhae i just completely made up based on some loose guidelines for the fictional language spoken by the devils
I know this is a slightly different media being a light novel from the east. But Goblin Slayer is a great example of what he mentions here. The author of Goblin Slayer used very basic placeholder names so he could focus on everything else, and in the end he just kept those placeholder names as he found that the names of the characters didn't matter as much compared to the rest. We have, obviously, Goblin Slayer and his friends, Priestess, High Elf Archer, etc.
It's incredible that he wrote this series of novels never deciding on names and it still blew up because of just how wonderful his world was! Names are important, but it is very important not to get hung up on them when working on your Fantasy worlds, games, novels, etc.
This was incredibly helpful, and I love your work! It's inspired me to pick up the pen, as I have wanted to write forever but never felt an inspiration or motivation to start until now! Thank you!
It's strange how names just come to me right away when I'm writing novels. Then just for fun I look up what the name means (if it's not a super fantasy name that I made up), and it ends up being right on when it comes to the qualities of that character.
Wanted to name my protagonist Charlotte. And I wanted her to be very smart, independent, strong, and above all, creative. Who can think on her feet and find ways to overcomes struggles that seems outlandish at first, but is very smart. Ended up having her name mean exactly what her personality is.
I believe all creative people are channelers :) we just take this information from somewhere. This point raises many questions, such as: Wait, Middle Earth is real? Well --very, very possible. Tolkien was writing down historical facts of another world.. could it be so? We might find out one day.
Never has a truer thing been said
Omg, this is so true
Love that
I tend to use generators for location names sometimes, but with characters I look up baby names and the meanings. I pick names that you don't see much of or not at all in stories, the names usually fit their personality or back story.
14:10 North of the Border is a clay sculptor (who makes some incredibly entertaining videos, check him out), and one of the best life lessons I ever learned came from him. He says "It's not just good, it's good enough." Having something that's "good enough" that you actually put on the page is better than searching endlessly for something "good" and never writing your story.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
That’s a phrase city planner plays uses a lot.
Just had an audible gasp, I fucking love Adam, glad to see fellow fans anywhere I can C:
Behind The Name is a gem! I've been using it so much and I don't know what I'd do without it. It's a perfect tool to come up with a name for a character with a different ethnicity or nationality than your own for example, as you can sort names by country or culture. My favourite tool is their meaning search function. I can for example put in the word "power", "old", "strong" or something else that defines my character and it will show names which have the meaning of those words. It's amazing if you want a name defining your character without making it a super obvious thing.
I have this fantasy world where one of the cultures generally has long names with repeating sounds. For example, my main character is called Ruru'aakinu. To avoid making readers want to cry over having to read a long ass name four thousand times over the span of 300 pages, I have come up with a super complex solution: Nicknames.
Yeah she's literally just going to go by Ruru the entire book.
If you have things will long names, give them nicknames. (For example, in Ender's Game the alien race is called the Formics, but everyone just calls them buggers as slang since it's easier to remember). You won't have to make new names, and you won't have to put your readers through extreme pain and suffering because your one setting happens to utilize all 26 letters of the alphabet.
I hate bad slang in fiction. No one would call your (thing), (slang word). The slang word would be much worse. Or retardeder.
Pardon nitpick but, Formics isn't a hard name to remember to be honest since it in itself is a short name. I was under the impression that them being called Buggers is just a nickname out of prejudice.
Nonetheless, Valid points regarding long names should maybe have a nickname. It's like how Thrawns real name is much more.. Wordier. There could be interesting choices if the names are nicknames for other species or if there's like, a Birth name for close ones but for non-associates you refer to yourself by alias. You can get some interesting worldbuilding options.
Reminds me of an Alien from a 90’s Book series. Theirs an alien Race called Andalites and they have very long and complicated 3 part names. Considering that most of the main characters of Human and can’t comfortably pronounce that they shorten it. For example a friend of the group is named Aximili Esgarouth Isthil but they call him Ax for short because no one is going to try and pronounce all that,
@@zubbworksretardeder isn’t a word😂😂😂
meanwhile brandon sanderson shortening Numuhukumakiaki'aialunamor to Rock
4:47 important to note that you can ignore this rule, like GRRM does in ASOIAF with many, many characters sharing the same name (I think there's at least 10 different Walder Freys for example)
Or all the Targaryens who have the same name or sound similiar: aegon, aemond, aerion ...
It was a name which sparked an entire world I am creating. I have many names with their meanings:
- Calixos (Firm, Stable)
- Romanael (Victorious Woman)
- Eurimactos (Golden Warrior)
- Rōvimundos (Horse Guardian)
Very Greco-Roman inspired. Tho the main character is named after kingdom, and is her name which gives rise to the mythology I am crafting.
I can spend hours looking into name symbolism and the meanings behind names from different cultures... I do this knowing that my Readers don't have to be told the definition, but if they happen to look it up or discover it, then it's a sweet moment of connection. For example, Luke means light-giving, which I'm are is not a coincidence.
When I name my characters, locations and magic. I usually layout the language first try to give each their own phrases and terms that have origins and as years go by people would start using them in names with some alterations to make them be a name than a thing.
I'm new to this channel and I'm currently writing my first novel. I'm currently struggling with some of the points you made.
You got my subscription , this has really opened my mind up to the possibilities that I hadn't seen before. I'll definitely check out more of your videos.
It's great to be excited about writing again.
I often use baby naming websites to look up names by gender, region, and meaning. It's not vital to my stories that the reader knows the literal meaning of the name, but it helps me shape the character if their name meaning harmonizes with their characterization. Unless I'm going for deliberate irony like giving a fem fatal vampire a name that means "kitten".
Baby name websites are great for this
I only think you need to be careful if you are choosing foreign names and have a setting that's kind of real-world-ish.
For example, if you had an urban fantasy that features a 20 year old handsome and badass German character and you name him Rainer or Walter, I would expect an explanation as somebody who comes from that culture. Those are old man names that sound pretty unsexy and unfashionable. Why would his parents named the poor boy like that?
@@johannageisel5390that's why I think finding name usage by year data is important to, since to me Rainer is a really cool name but I don't have the context
Lol
Since my land is made up place but with elements of different places, like it could be a place on earth and it's set around now. I can get away with quite a few names, but I still need to be a bit mindful.
It is a good point that names have reason like did a certain country conquer or were a group push out there e.g lots of Indian or Germanic names and did they marry the locals and take that surname. Is it a multicultural place etc.
Also class , not so much in first names if set today, but still a factor in certain circles.
Also do you want the name to have a meaning as to why the parents (or whoever named them) chose it or is it more random
I enjoy using the method that C. S. Lewis used when he made the name for Narnia!
As a kid he was looking at an atlas, and found a town in Italy called Narni, changed it up a little, and called it Narnia! I’ve actually been to Narni before too.
You can also take this further by finding countries that speak a language you like the sound of, that can help you come up with names that have a specific sound too!
Something else I hate about alien names is when they make them sound silly or use too many x y or zs like a "Zork" kind of name
Weird spellings are shorthand for, "Humans can't pronounce this properly."
"Silly" names are shorthand for, "Their culture is different from humans, and has different ideas of how things sound."
Also, Commander Zord would Like a word with you!
What up my glip-glops!!
Be careful or you will be eaten by a grue
That's close to quasar, though, and that's pretty cool by itself!
One of the things I love about the Malazan Book of the Fallen is the names, particularly the names given to the Malazan soldiers.
I am researching about world building to create a world where I can do and create whatever I want, where all of it connects.
I'm doing this for myself.
Not for a novel.
Just for my own enjoyment and satisfaction.
I just want to create and design characters who are unique with deep backgrounds. I'm not much of an author so this is really helpful, thank you.
I am much the same way. I make up stories at night to help me go to sleep. I enjoy creating characters for RPGs or for my stories. I have found over the years that I don't have many actually good ideas that would work for writing a novel, and I don't even have the commitment to write a story for Wattpad. But coming up with random things is just fun, even if it's never good enough to share with anyone.
I've always had a hard time actually writing anything, but creating characters and world building is what I find easy to do, and I love doing it. World building and character creation are what I would say is my passion, not so much the actual writing part. I would love to see my world and characters in an actual completed story project, but I'm not good at actually doing that part, or committing to it. I definitely have that world building "disease". I just love creating the lore and the characters.
Yes! If I wrote an actual story than people would have to die, there would need to be conflict, maybe even a war, why can't I just spend my time working out how the leaves of this one fantasy tree look like? I swear it's important!
Yes! I worldbuild so I can have stories of thousands of individuals, happy and tragic and anything in between. I think about writing but at the end of the day it’s not why I worldbuild
literally worldbuilding for worldbuilding’s sake because it’s a hobby
This was excellent video. I liked how you used your own books as examples.
„We use names to tell characters appart”
Or you can turn that on its head to make a bigger point. Gabriel García Márquez did that with „One hundred years of solitude”.
What I find generators are useful for is expanding your repertoire of names. Say you have a not-German character and you don't want to name him Hans, Franz, or Gunther, you can generate 50 random German names and find a bunch you probably didn't know. Then when you go back to make another character from that culture, you can think up way more names than before.
On the subject of places, don't be afraid to use geographical or architectural features, if it's English fantasy they'll sound more grounded, and if it isn't you can translate them into another language that sounds like the culture and then vowel shift it a bit so your readers in that language don't get confused by the town called Suckhole.
On the subject of place names, don't be afraid for them to actually be stupid because the real world has long since surpassed your abilities for that.
Istanbul = the city
Rio Grande = big river
Connecticut River = River river (this happens anywhere a colonizer did all the naming: "what do you call that?" *Points at the river*, "Native word for river", "thank you" *writes down 'The native word for river river')
The Rocky Mountains.......
And so many towns are named after the closest geologic feature. (Lake, River, Waterfall, bay, cape, hill, mountain, ext)
Not to mention the number of towns named after people following the format of: Morristown, Jamestown, Hewittville, Raymondville, Grantville, Louisville, ect.
Or all the places named after military bases, in the US its Fort X.
And the classics of Direction other City/town. And the related New old city name.
Basically humans have always been uncreative with naming places. (And England needs its naming rights revoked, without moving on google maps i can see cuckfield, lower bleeding, warninglid, balcombe, wivelsfield, hickstead, copsale, nuthurst, and itchingfield. And considering the pronunciation of Worcester I'm assuming none of these are pronounced how they are spelled)
This so much. I'm Polish and I live close to a town whose name is basically a nicer word for cow... uhh, fertilizer. There's also stuff like "the end of the world", TWO villages named "the middle of nowhere", a metric fuckton of places named "the far one", and one large city that has a legend claiming that its name literally means "well, crumble then".
Place names are often very, VERY silly.
Thank you for reinforcing to everyone that tools are TOOLS! Use whatever can inspire you or give you answers. I used to get stuck on names, but I do exactly what Jed does now and use placeholders! For me, it makes it so much easier to imagine who a character is without having to fight my own preconceived notions of "that name." The one over the top thing I do, though, is I really love meaningful names, that the name implies SOMETHING true about the character- not quite to the point that, "this is the name this character would have given themself if they could" but close.
Well said
I love how he just hit every tactic I've been using for the past 20 years.
1. Take the top 3-5 traits, pull letters or syllables from each word and make a name.
2. Use a name generator. Find something that sounds good. Add or subtract prefixes or suffixes.
3. Repitition is bad. Stop it. I have a worn out thesaurus beside me at all times. I refuse to have the same descriptive word used in the same chapter twice. You better believe I'll exhaust every synonym of hero before I use it again. That includes words that aren't on the list of synonyms but we all know have that meaning or are contextually accurate for the character in the story. Same goes for names. With some exceptions like cliché twin names or rivals or sequential planets.
4. Spelling is phonetic. ie. There is no Sean, there's Shawn. I have an ore I wanted to call Zenium because it's the zenith of ore. Now it's spelled Zeenium. I don't like it, but it's happening. Thems the rules.
5. Parentheses are nice. Any word I cannot properly thesaurize, any scene or character I cannot describe, any name I cannot think up. You get parentheses with whatever descriptive words I have at the moment and I move on. Don't worry. It'll be on my mind until it's filled in. Even if it takes years.
4:55 I will say that sometimes there are exceptions to that. For e.g. the main trio in Harry Potter have two character whose names both begin with "H", have an "R" sound in them, and end with an "ee" sound; Harry and Hermione. Generally, avoid characters with similar names and initials unless the occasion arises where it's just too perfect to pass up.
IMHO the number of syllables makes a big difference.
@@johannageisel5390also Harry is very common name but Hermione sounds really unique.
Another exception would be if you're establishing a cultural naming convention, such as with Vulcans. The characters' names often begin and even end with the same letters, but it also makes their cultural background clear.
ive got characters named Andreas, Astrid, and Adam but they're all siblings based on my own actual siblings.
I think the characters being a different sex helps too
12:06 Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes had this problem. "Coriolanus" was rarely used in The Hunger Games-- he was always just "President Snow." But in the prequel book, when he doesn't have that honor, seeing that name used so frequently got old fast.
There is one caveat to the whole 'new first letter for each character name'. You don't want the *ending* of the name to be the same. Harry, Hubert, Hilton, and Himmelsdorf aren't that hard to distinguish but Harry, Larry, and Barry can be. I don't remember the name of the book, but I know there's a book out there where all the main characters started with C, (It might have even been 'every female character starts with C' but I read about it like, five years ago and forget lol) and what distinguished them was the fact the endings of their names were different. Heck, one of my very awful, unfinished, first drafts of a novel attempt I had one character named Lucy and one character named...Cassy I think and the people who read the few chapters I've had written had problems keeping them straight.
That's really cool. There's almost definitely a name for this in linguistics
great advice! thanks!
i had two guys' names ending in -ius and noticed that. Changed one to -ian and boom. problem solved.
@@JhadeSagrav you're welcome! Always fun to see random advice given in some random comment section is still being read lol
Your information seems really good-I'll be sure to keep your words in mind when writing my fantasy book. Something I also found is You CAN'T go wrong with old uncommon Hebrew names of people as well as places.
12:03 Also very important to watch out for names that might be misinterpreted by readers. You might read George and Jorge as "George" and "Hor-hay," but to someone unfamiliar with Spanish pronunciations, or common Mexican names might read them both as "George." I had turned 40 before I learned the proper pronunciation of Jorge.
@juliab3326 Just write your book using the IPA like a normal person.
Wait, I'm the odd one out? Drats.
Heck, even if I thought the author was being fancy I would probably still read "Jorge" as "Yorj" or even "Yorghe"
One of my favorite ways to come up with names, mainly for places in my fantasy world, is to sit and run through random syllables and sounds in my head and slowly mold something that sounds like it could be a name. I'm doing more along the lines of low fantasy so I'm not super concerned about the linguistics of the world. But once I come up with something that I like, I initially spell it the way it sounds and then try to see how I could spell it in a typical unconventional fantasy way, like instead of a K use a Q without a U after it, or instead of a Y use two i's
I also just called my villain "villain" for a whole year of writing until I finally figured out what to call him.
A note on basing names on external meanings such as cultural or literary affiliations: in most cases, these are going to be easter eggs that a varying number of readers might uncover or already be familiar with. As you say, don't *expect* the reader to just intuit them - at least not without a lot of clues on your part.
I once named a carechter Judas, worried it was going to be on the nose, and then my party decides that "nah we can trust this guy" only to be shocked that he betrayed them
My most favourite is the asoiaf names. From charecters to dragons, kingdoms to swords every name feels so epic.
When it comes to specific linguistics if you're creating names from scratch, typically names are single syllables, trochees (Two syllables, stress on first syllable) or three syllables with the stress on the first syllable.
Normally, I inmediately zone out whenever I look for tips and someone just starts talking about their own work. This time I decided to stick around and was pleasantly surprised with really good tips, thanks!.
When you have 2 characters names start with the same latter, you can just make sure one got long name and second got a really short one. Like Theodoric and Tom.
I like to “theme” my character names based on my characters’ environment. Examples from my story are:
Elves often think very highly of themselves and make names invoking grandeur or divinity (Garde, Idole, Deus, etc.)
Humans are sort of the same but take more after royalty and earthly things (most of the important characters take names from the knights of the round table)
Neofauna and Neofungi (basically anthro animals and mushrooms) are even more in-touch with the earth and take names from elements (Ignisa, Luft, Hierbo, etc.)
Orcs and Grendels/“Demons” both are otherworldly and take names from magical creatures and concepts (Pathos, Iblis, Ism, etc.)
Having a name that conveys the environment they’re from can give an idea to the audience on what a character could be and what sort of upbringing they could have, bonus points for if the character in question completely subverts those expectations.
I've struggled with names since elementary school, but the nail in the coffin to me coming up with my own names was when I witnessed the holy grail of all names that I will never come close to matching: "Hiro Protagonist"
It brings a tear to my eye to this day
i was inspired by dot warner to come up with a longer name than hers
2:06 you can also press CTRL + H, which lets you find every instance of a word and change them simultaneously.
For every project I keep two A to z lists. One for given names (one entry for male and one entry for female) and one for surnames (limits 2 per letter if I can). Plus I have a master list of character names that I keep so I don’t use them in other stories.
And yes it’s very helpful to google names you’ve already picked. I had a name to one character because I thought it had a nice ring to it and I could shorten it too for other characters who knew him more intimately. Turns out it had a ring to it because, when I googled it, it turned out to be the name of a famous murder victim. So my name search continued
As an avid viewer of true crime, the urge to try and guess the name is strong right now.
12:05 I loved the Kingkiller Cronicle as much as I hated the Name Kvothe. Never had that Problem before 😅
For one of my godesses I wanted to have a name similar to Makaria (Greek goddess of blessed death). But then I found the name Pele (Hawaiian goddess of volcanos) and I really liked the way it sounded. So I mushed the two names together a few times and sounded the names I had out. I also took a break and came back later to decide with a fresh mind. Now my goddess is named Melera 😊
What is she goddess of?
I like that you came up with a new name lol Pele literally means "skin" in portuguese and "Pelé" is a famous soccer player
so for example if I were to read your book and you happen to choose Pele for the name I would associate these things every time I read it
@@erisofliria Pensei a mesma coisa XD acho que a pronuncia havaiana deve ser pêlê, não lembro da lingua havaiana ter e aberto
LOL reminds me of Marika from Elden ring
I didn't think about the different letters changing the outlook on a character, but I realize I was already doing a lot of these things in my own writing already!
If the symbolism of a character's name _is_ going to be important, you can always, y'know... mention it in the story. Terry Pratchett certainly doesn't shy away from reminding us of the significance of Tiffany Aching's name, to the point that "Land Under Wave" becomes a really satisfying arc phrase.
I needed this bro. I was playing a game with my sister and was trying to think of a name for something and I need this so much l thanks my man 🙏
This is great and I learned a bit from this video. One thing, the example that your character's name is Valanor, that name is really similar to Valinor (the land of the Valar) in LOTR, probably for the same reason. Maybe that's not a bad thing, however, later you mention that you look for names that are popular. Maybe one thing we can do is check for different yet similar spellings?
Not a writer myself, but I was happy I stumbled upon this video! Coming up with names for player characters in MMOs or D&D is something I always struggle with. When you are going to spend hundreds of hours playing with a character you really want to get it just right.
for the annoying name part Grand admiral Thrawn is such a great example and i just realised it. His name is originally Mith'raw'nuruodo, but his ppl use only Thrawn as it has the first parts last couple letters so they know which family he is from and use the middle part which is basicly your individual name and the last part is a name given as a great honour for doing a great thing. All that thing with an exotic name and still you can make it sort and simple with an explonation for the simple name in universe
In Warhammer theirs an Alien Race that’s used as Comedic relief but are the type of humor that comes from Hyper Violence. They’re called the Orks because they’re literally Orks, take everything you know about Orks, combined them with Mad Max and Soccer Hooligans and you have the Orks in a Nutshell. Their whole thing is that names are only for Orks that are important. You have to do something worthy of a name and even then the names are humorously on the nose. Examples are Mekboss da Meklord, Da Red Gobbo, Tuska da Demon-Killa, Mad Doc, Biter-that-bites-the face-of-the-face-biter, Zog Ironteef. Right away the names establishes that they’re weird, kinda stupid, and you get a good idea what they’re about and what their gimmick is, you also know from the context of their culture that they’re kind of a big deal if they have a name at all.
fun anecdote about names. At starbucks there was a guy who ordered a coffee and said his name was "Mark, with K". The barista spelled his name as "Marc Wittakay"
Awesome video Jed! This is something that I've always struggled with when coming up for different character names in RPGs, and these tips genuinely help me out. I also like how you mentioned using random name generators as a tool to pick and choose what names stick out, rather than admonishing the practice for being "lazy" or "unoriginal".
Glad to help!
I am doing the exact opposite actually, I have most of the worldbuilding, the raw concepts at least, and I am currently focusing on writing the entire story down, with all the characters, subplots and grand adventures, and then I will set the draft side, finally flesh out the worldbuilding and then rewrite the story with all the new details and feedback received and so on. What do you guys think?
Everybody has their own methods that work, and this one seems reasonable to me.
Seems fairly close to the Zero Draft concept...A technique more popular among discovery writers or hybrid outliner/discovery writers. It works well for lots of people. You should be alright if it's working for you, too.
1:20 That placeholder idea is so damn helpful, I just figured that out, out of frustration 😂 I was afflicted with the naming disease that I got so angry i cured myself accidentally, this makes me feel reassured and smarter.
I guess I need to rename my main character, his name was going to be Adolf but google had some unflatering things to say.
Thank you for some great tips!
Im having huge difficulties getting my writing started due to things like this, plotting the story and so on.
When I don’t have a name on hand I write (name here M / F - depends on character’s gender - simple description)
EDIT : I have an original character originally introduced being addressed by a code number (3 - U 1)… in my books she’s is a genetic clone of the Skylander Hex, who was created by Kaos to be an evil duplicate of Hex to paint her in a horrible light; after 3 - U 1 was captured and taken as a POW, she was encouraged by her guards to explore herself, and see how she liked being her own person instead of trying to be Hex 2 . 0… once she felt comfortable letting herself be her own person she asked to be given a proper name so Hex named her Jinx (this was BEFORE arcane came out) to show that while they are similar to each other, they are each their own person
00:31 📝 Use placeholders for names in early drafts to avoid getting stuck in the naming process and focus on finishing the story.
02:36 🧠 Character names should establish or suggest defining traits, creating a strong first impression for readers.
04:42 🔄 Differentiate characters by avoiding repeating the same starting letter or sound in their names.
05:54 🌍 Establish linguistic rules or themes for naming in your story to enhance coherence and realism.
07:18 🔄 Utilize random name generators and AI to generate lists of potential names, especially for secondary characters.
12:38 ❌ Avoid rookie mistakes like overly exotic, similar, or difficult-to-pronounce names that might distract or irritate readers.
14:17 ⏰ Don't obsess over names; focus on crafting a great story as names serve the narrative rather than being the most crucial element.
4:45 when I was in middle school I read a Chinese children's book, that in the first three chapters introduces the characters Hu, Wu, Fu, and Xu. It wasn't until I was very confused about why the protagonist didn't recognize his teacher that I realized there were 4 separate people.
Is it "The Five Chinese Brothers?" That was the first to came to mind.
@@sweaterweatherlady no, it was called something like, "the _____ journey of prince ___” I think that first adjective was "extraordinary" or similar, but I forget the name of the prince. (I might have messed up one of the other names too.)
None of the characters were related to each other so it's not like the rhyming was a joke.
Also, I don't think the story was a traditional Chinese story. I think it was just written in a Chinese setting.
@@sweaterweatherlady "The Remarkable Journey of Prince Jen." By Lloyd Alexander. (So not traditional itself.) And to prove my point on how confusing the names were, there was 5 instead of 4 and no one was "Xu." They were Master Hu, Master Wu, Master Fu, Master Shu, and Master Chu.
@@josephschubert6561 at first I thought "oh it's just an unfortunate part of translation, those were probably easily recognizable in Chinese since they're written as single distinct characters" but if the book wasn't originally in Chinese then idk what the author was thinking.
Iv been working on my story for year and years and your videos have helped me immensely. Sad I only found then today
I know the don't repeat letters rule of thumb, but I actually consciously made three immediate family members all start with the same letter, because it serves as a reminder of their ties and family bond while they serve extremely desperate roles in the story.
Writing advisors: Don't repeat letters
Tolkien: Why not? Feanor, Finrod, Fingon and Fingolfin disagree
@@Brick_One_A_Lego_Story Well Tolkien had a few more than 26 characters. It's not a hard and fast rule, no, but it's still a good idea when you can do it.
I love it. I’m one of six kids, and our parents gave us all names that start with ‘J’ so I absolutely support this! I think it’s easier to get away with doing this when you’re writing with family members because they will all essentially orbit each others lives (even estranged siblings), thus they aren’t as easily lost in the shuffle of storytelling.
my personal favorite material for character naming are baby name websites (can easily be found with searches like "(nationality) names that start with (letter)" or "(nationality) (gender) names" even stuff like "japanese girl names that mean death" can lead you to a baby name website
Bad names are such a peeve of mine. Fantasy names rarely ever work for me, honestly. Like if you take Tolkien and Martin, the name sound just right. They sound realistic for the setting the story takes place in. Most importantly, they sound like REAL names proper to that world. But in most fantasy and scifi it’s literally just sounds or quirky names from OUR reality. Also I’d rather they have a complicated name than a too simple one. I’m reading The Jade City rn and there’s a Kehn, a Tar, a Shon… I cannot tell who’s who.
Thanks for the advice, I have been struggling with this issue for a bit and this has truly helped!
Another thing to reflect upon is how most names have multiple variations (even invented ones) which can go a long ways towards reflecting upon the relationships with the characters using them. As an example, one of my principal characters is Draxtherion Carthas Hawkwind III:
~ Even among his closest relationships, only a select few are allowed the privilege of calling him "Drax" (though some of these will call him "Draxtherion" as a way to express their displeasure with something he's done)
~ In most casual circumstances, those whom he considers trusted friends call him "Draxtherion"
~ In more formal situations, or to anyone he doesn't consider a friend, he is addressed as "Lord Hawkwind" or simply "Hawkwind"
~ Anyone unfortunate enough to incur his ire calls him "Lord Draxtherion Hawkwind" if they value their lives
One of his wives (long story in and of itself) is Bontania Celestia Moonshadow:
~ Only her partners (her husband and fellow wife) address her as "Tani"; even then, only in reasonably private circumstances
~ Only in casual circumstances do even her friends address her as "Bontania"
~ In all other circumstances, she is "Lady Moonshadow" - even to one of her closest friends who, despite their friendship (and calling her husband "Drax"), would never consider themselves to be in the same social class
As a real-world example, consider John F and Jacqueline Kennedy:
~ Among themselves and close friends, they were "Jack" and "Jackie" (fans also referred to them as such, but never in their presence)
~ In formal circumstances, they were "Mr President"/"President Kennedy" and "Mrs Kennedy"
~ In most other circumstances, they were addressed as "John and Jacqueline Kennedy" or "Mr and Mrs Kennedy"
This should hopefully illuminate how variations on a character's name can do a great deal to convey indirect information about that person and their relationship(s) with others.
Man, let me tell you. I have never clicked on a video faster. I’ve been worldbuilding since I was 15 years old and the one thing that has always been my greatest weakness is coming up with names.
2:36 "Obviously, you can take that way too far and create names that are much too on the nose or too obvious. You do need a degree of suptlety here."
Meanwhile in Britain: "Torpenhow Hill", literally "Hill-hill-hill Hill"
1:15 I love this. I do it all the time when I'm having trouble thinking of a new character, city, inn, poison, food, artifact, etc. name. My writing is still slow as syrup, but names aren't what's slowing me down!
I write mostly Urban Fantasy. I don't dwell on the names too much. Most of my characters have common names or something I just make up on the spot.
I've only struggled with naming my superhero group for my comic book. I still haven't came up with it after years.
What would you say are the defining traits of the group? And what superheroes are members?
Reframe it as a band name, and think of things that would sound dope if you saw it on an album cover.
Behind the Name is fantastic. I use it to help name not just most of the key characters in my RPG worlds and games, but both of my sons. The ability to trace names back through languages and check for name relationships is really fun and educational.
I have taken inspiration for names from astronomical star names (JK Rowling beat me to Bellatrix, though), scientific names of plants and generic names of drugs - sometimes used straight and sometimes mashed around. Anagrams also work. I wanted a name for a minor character who was a codebreaker, so I took the name Vigenere, then mashed it around, changed some letters and came up with Gerevain.
not to mention tim burton
Hah! I love using BehindTheName myself, a buddy told me about it back in college and I go into it whenever I'm stuck on a name and want something that sounds like it could work rather than just creating a name out of random syllables.
Late to the party, but who cares. It's a great advice video.
I'm very much pro random generators. I will let one generate me a couple dozen names, find one that I like, and alter it. I will replace a letter with a different one, shift letters around, until I get something I like. It's not generated anymore, it's my original name, but the basis helps me get something to work it. Also, I do use AI generated images to help me visualise things - I won't put the images in my novel, obviously, but it's easier to describe something when I've got it right in front of me. It also helps with consistency.
I do the same with random stuff - using it as a basis point and then tweaking small details is a great idea
Thank you for these helpful tipps. I'll go and take a long, hard look at my character names now^^
People aren’t just saying chat gpt steals jobs, it steels the writing people have already done
Placeholders are, in fact, extremely useful lifehack. Especially when you have lots of motivation and all but get stumped by, well... That.