How to Name Characters: Names with Meaning
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- Опубликовано: 2 авг 2022
- When naming your characters, a naming system may not cover everything you need. So let's look at some other ways to name our characters: through onomastics (what names mean), your own worldbuilding, or even just the way a name sounds.
Script and VO by Adam Bassett
Animation by Cole Field
#names #characterdevelopment #writingcommunity #authortube #writingadvice
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-References-
"'We're Going to Talk About Bruno,' Yes, Yes, Yes" NYT Article on Lin Manuel Miranda's hit song from Encanto: www.nytimes.com/2022/01/13/mo...
More about madrigals: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrigal
"Why Do Star Wars Names Sound...Familiar?" Ancestry Article: blogs.ancestry.com/cm/star-wa...
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Want to explore another way of naming your characters? We have another video all about creating consistent naming *systems*. You can check that out right here: ruclips.net/video/ok4Lzu21X1M/видео.html 😄
@@caitlyncarvalho7637 It seems a bit on-the-nose, but sure, why not! 😄
I really liked the last part about the rhyming names.
I rarely impart "meaning" into names I give, but having names that SOUND right is always really important to me. I'll usually just say random names out loud to myself (and in the case of names that are supposed to not sounds like a real language, just random sounds) until something just sounds right. Often times that "sounding right" will also involve sounding similar to related names that already exist.
I have a character, his name is Richter, which in his specific case means "one who makes right," which he does. He's a fantasy sword-and-sorcery "hero" who genuinely tries to make right, and expunge the cruel and evil. So on the surface it makes sense. But it is also meant to evoke his father's name, Dietrich, who specifically is an obstacle in his story and is the source of his primary struggle, which is openly admitting that cruelty and seeing people live as downtrodden as he is/was really hurts him, as he was conditioned since childhood not to let that stuff slip and "bend the knee," in a way. I feel like I did a pretty good job, if i didn't go a lil too hard, giving him a name with meaning.
A novel? Webtoon?
@@muhamadhelmi7949 nonono much less intriguing. A D&D character. Though I do plan to use him on an Actual-play show eventually.
@@Loafusbreadmyre cool!
"Richter" means Judge in German, "Dietrich" is a pretty oldschool first name but also means lockpick lol
@@JayEichendorff I am aware lol. Richter as a name originally means judge but has since spread to other cultures and had more specific connotations, and the one that fits him best is "one who makes right", but that also just comes from judges being expected to, y'know, make things right. Dietrich I picked really just because it kinda echoes Richter, and it's meant to feel oldschool, it's medieval-fantasy!
Naming is a crucial part of my writing process. A name has power and can tell a lot about a character beforehand. A bad name can be distracting for me as a reader so I try to do my characters' justice by giving them names worthy of who they are.
For instance, a rich character in a contemporary setting most likely will have an older name passed down through the family tree, similar to the royal family who have naming legacies like George or Louis; nothing trendy or modern. As ruler their name must be strong and evoke confidence in their followers.
I like to find the names' meaning, e.g. Zoe means "life" but my character Zoe is the oracle of death, injecting a bit of humour due to the irony of her name and her supernatural profession. Furthermore, I like to find the names' popularity level when they were born, e.g. Marisol is so competitive she laments that her rival, Piper's name is more popular than hers the year they were born.
While I wouldn't necessarily lose sleep over a character name, I don't take it lightly either. Great video, Adam (great name btw)!
I love all these examples. Naming characters is definitely a wild rabbit-hole, but these details can really add a lot to the story. :)
I used to work really really hard giving my names meaning, but after my 17th book it became essentially untenable. which is latin for... takes more than ten minutes of work.
So I enlisted the help of a few active chats/live streams and go ask them to pump out names until one fits. It relieved a huge chunk of creativity-pressure. And I end up with a lot of cool, more realistic sounding traveled names. And it means something to people who'll end up reading my books as well.
Trick with conlang names:
Most names (At least in English) tend to be either single syllables, trochees (Two syllables, stress on the first) or sometimes three syllables with the stress on the first syllable. It's interesting how just having the correct syllable structure makes gibberish names sound normal.
There's a meme about how learning Japanese also involves realizing every other anime character name is wordplay.
And then we have JoJo, where almost every character or ability is named after a band/album/song. There's literally a character named Foo Fighters, I am not joking (and they're actually one of my favorite characters)
@@anonymousalien7417 Guilty Gear also does the whole "music reference" thing.
@@ArbitraryOutcome Just looked it up, s pretty cool, they even both have references to Guns N' Roses (GG has Axl Low, JoJo has Axl Ro)
I used etymonline to came up with names, I first search up the old forms of words and used it as a template to name a character.
For whatever reason I named a character Wulf, but felt it was an alias and his real name started with a k sound. He also came from a place ruled by a queen.
Eventually I found his real name by looking through a book of names, picked two I liked the sound of for his first and last name. And when I saw those names meant Little Wolf and From the Queen's Town, it was just too good to be true. The names aren't obvious that that's what they mean either, which I consider a plus😁
In a rom-com script of mine, the lead character - a singing-dancing Las Vegas casino waitress - has a full name of Colleen Carole Cossitt (the first two are tributes to movie stars Colleen Moore and Carole Lombard, while Cossitt is the name of a "stump" street in the Syracuse neighborhood where I grew up). Her love interest is Berkeley-educated scientist/inventor and regular customer Keswick Fletcher, which sounds rather professorial. And while "Keswick" sounds like it could be a first name a la "Chadwick," a Google search revealed no instances of it used that way whatsoever. (Keswick was the maiden name of his mother.) A mutual adversary is gentlemen's club owner Vito Cortez, secretly a blackmailer for the Boston mob. ("Vito" recalls Vito Corleone of "Godfather" fame, while "Cortez" evokes pre-Code film star Ricardo Cortez, who specialized in playing oily bad guys who invariably got theirs in the end. (He was actually born Jacob Krantz and took the stage name as an ersatz- Valentino Latin heartthrob.)
I like to use names depending on the meaning. there are a few name meaning websites out there.
One thing I use is the roster of my favorite sports teams of all time. For instance; the 2014 Patriots. I won’t use obvious names like “Brady” and “Edelman” that everyone knows; but I may go with lesser names like “Arrington” or “Gray”. I also will go off the board for names from the past that I like, such as “Majkowski”. Either way I don’t spend a lot of time on it, and for the most part once I choose a name I stick with it.
I was working on a project a while ago and I'm pretty sure half the location names were references to places from Firefly. 😂
My favorite channel rn
Im not usualy the kind of person that has a lot of problems naming characters but ive seen a lot of persons that do i usualy name my characters about puns that sound funny for example cream sun howl (pun: crimson how based on the how does king crimson works meme) or do the toriyama trick and open the fridge and modify the name a bit strangely works
Thanks!
Good Video
I sometimes use google translate for names by translating things about their personality into different languages.
I wanted to give a nurse a symbolic name. So I thought of Florence Nightingale, but that was too long and obvious. So I did Florence = flower = rose, though I could have done lily or daisy. Also Nightingale = bird. Thus, Rose Bird.
I'm writing a shitty one shot about a siren and I called a rockstar character Gabriel Brimstone because it sounds dope and gives vaguely biblical overtones - but mostly because of Gabe "Hottie" Lamottie with the Swimmer's Body from Hannah Montana
😂
I like to use loose translations from various languages to give their name a bit of personality. For example, In my current work I have a character named Ashajt, which loosley transkate to weak in a language i cant remember.
I have a character named Rau, which means rough in German. (Yes, I did use Google Translate. Correct me if necessary). He is bitter, dislikable, and unpleasant. His species is technically a fox, but a fictional sub-species called “Elf Foxes”. (Elf Foxes have pointer ears, shorter snout, and a longer tail. Although, it depends on the health conditions of the Elf Fox. Their pelt colors range from pastel green to crimson red). Rau is basically Bakugou (I probably spelt that wrong) but an animal lol. He’s fairly alright when you get close to him.
The word "rau" does indeed mean rough, but it´s not a word you´d use to describe a living being. In most cases, "rau" refers to a rough, uneven surface, harsh weather, or the wild sea.
Unpleasant, rough PEOPLE are described with other adjectives such as schroff, barsch, ruppig, grob... You can probably find over 20 synonyms, but "rau" would be unnatural in this context.
Naming or describing an ANIMAL would be different as well, as the words "schroff" and "barsch" would only be suitable for humans. Additionally, if someone decides to use "barsch" as a name - written capitalised - they should be aware of the fact that "Barsch" means perch or bass in German.
Second note: *Bakugo
Lol never realised that George Lucas actually used Dutch names, like sure Mace and Leia sound like Mees and Lea, and Darth vader is literally Darth Father. But I thought those were coincidences... I'm dutch BTW