What about names from the real life like Alex or Sam ? that are common names or names that come from your own country and culture? Hussein or Ali is a common Arabic name
@@husseinal-zubeidi8056 Those could work! In cases like that, I've seen some writers use impactful surnames/last names. But at the end of the day, if your story is set in reality, a normal name might work best. It all comes down to if you think it's recognizable enough that your reader won't forget it when they have to keep track of all of your character's names
The cool thing about naming your characters is, you can create a totally unique name from ordinary words. Take Legato from Trigun for example. His full name is Legato Bluesummers, the last name being made from ordinary words that people use on a daily basis. You could even go a step further and make a unique name that symbolizes the character itself. If your character is an evil psychopath born in winter, you could give them the last name “Redwinter”. How you name your character is totally up to you.
Legato is also just a music playing technique where you slide between two notes making them overlap (I think it's pretty common in blues). So while it isn't on the same level of everyday use as "blues" or "summer", it's still just a regular word and it ties into the music theme. [Edit] correction to typos from making the comment on my phone.
As for giving a reason for the parents choice of name what I did was put the meaning in the surname of my character and then have him go by that name in his line of work
just gonna watch the vid but personally i wanna go with puns and maybe other stuff cuz i got an oc who's main gimmick is he's fast af so i called him "Mach I. Speed"
Yeah this is pretty difficult cause i like to come up with more unique, hxh type names but its so hard trying to find a name that sounds right bc i mix and match different syllables and sounds. theyre not too complicated but I would like to provide a variety of different types of names
My favorite names from fiction are Neo, Eren Jeager, Tony Stark, Daenerys Targaryen, Walter White and Paul Atreides. They're so fitting for the characters and I can't even explain why
Actually,I'm not entirely sure if the name Walter White was "invented" for the character (by this I mean i don't think the name was purposely given to him with a meaning behind it,at least not at first),I say this because if I read correctly,Vince Gilligan based Walter off a news article he read once,which talked about a man that cooked meth in secret,and if I am not mistaken,he was named Walter White, there's actually a video about it on RUclips, although I'm not sure if it's the same case Gilligan read about it.
Videos like this always intrigue me. Characters have always been an easy job for me- almost like they straight up built a town in my head and summon themselves when bored. Since it's such a natural thing, I find it interesting to hear different tips and how other people build them up
LOL Araki is a madman. He knew what he was doing with all of those references. That tip has exceptions of course, like biographies and retelling are bound to use pop culture names For that bit I just meant if youre writing a standard isekai, you might not want your protagonist be called Beyonce LOL
My best naming experience so far has been for a character named Rayden Dagger. I liked the name 'Hayden' but wanted the intensity and harshness of an 'r' sound, so I mushed the two together. I also later learned that Raiden is the Japanese God of lightning (this has significance to the plot, but is also a massive spoiler). I kept the 'y' as it makes the spelling more feminine like Robyn compared to Robin. Her last name also helps tell you not to mess with her, albeit its a little on the nose.
Awesome! I have 2 Characters named "Bleu and Blue Stick" cause.. they have Blue Eyes (I was lazy) Edit: The Guy named "Bleu Stick" is now called "Robin Alarie" and "Robin" means "Bright/Bright Blue", it's perfect because he is the Main Character who will save the world, and he has Blue Eyes and Red (It looks Orange) Hair. And the guy named "Blue Stick" is now called "Bleu Alarie" because of his Blue Eyes and because he is half French, and their last name is now "Alarie" which means "all power" and their Family are strong trained martial artists, and also it's French.
MC: Jelani (Full of strength in Swahili) Female MC: Nuru (Filled with light in Swahili) Second MC: Amare (One who builds) I'm going for a fantasy world with African themes
Bro, an African-inspired fantasy setting? Bro, now that just sounds awesome, I'd love to see that. Not to mention the many cryptids and creatures in African mythology that can be used here.
@@deadbeatnetwork9792 Preciate the support on my idea. I can't tell you the name of my story because people be stealing out here though. And thanks for the ideas on creatures in African mythology cause I was struggling with worldbuilding. I plan to use the emotional aspects and camaraderie of Fairy Tail while also combining some of the philosophy and villain writing of Naruto.
@@deadbeatnetwork9792 We DEFINITELY need more African-Inspired settings in manga. I don't know if you follow Saturday AM, the company that I am published with, but they have two manga series with African influences The first series, Oblivion Rouge, by instagram.com/papsouleye/ on Instagram has an ALL AFRICAN CAST The other series, Orisha, by instagram.com/zayf_illustrations/ also has a fantasy setting inspired by African Culture. Hopefully you can check those artists out and give their series a quick read if you got the time!
@@alexsanimeart5706 Ah sweet. A combination of those qualities from those two anime in a different type of story sounds pretty intriguing. Also that's quite understandable for the name. And yeah there are many mythical creatures in African lore that you can pull here, like were-hyenas, the Kongamato, the Grootslang and heck you can probably pull some influences from Egypt's lore since that's also something quite interesting in it of itself. Actually now that I think about it, I think it would be interesting if your cast traveled to Egypt at some point since it is located in Northern Africa. Just a little idea there but overall your story conecpt sounds pretty cool. Hope to see it someday if it becomes official.
I give my characters symbolic names in my native language. That way english readers won't know what the name means, unless it is mentioned inside the story, making it sound unique. Also that way it doesn't sound silly like if it was in English lol
That's a great strategy! Thank you for taking the time to share your process with us! I'd be interested in hearing some of those character names and their meanings! Best of luck with your story!
My favorite name experience is 組暗雛佗 (Kumian Hinata). I know "Hinata" is a common name in anime/manga, however, the Kanji for that 'Hinata' means 'a sunny place'. Interesting about Japanese names is that the same pronunciation but different kanji means different things. In my case, 'Kumian' means group of shadows, my 'Hinata' written in different kanji means doll with sad voice. It really reflects my character as she went through the hell of things in her life. She can be beautiful as a doll but her life is engulfed in darkness that she is a broken doll.
Hi, do you know how to create and combine words/names to create a whole entire name for a character; and know how to use kanji for those names. I'm struggling to create names and name branches for my characters.
@Rainbow Rose Princess Mishti OK whats the website. I'm still tryna figure what Kanjis actually are because how can I combine them together. They can't just be random or can they? Like how can you separate the right symbols from the word to create said name?
As much as i love Fate/Zero, it took me some time to remember the names of Kiritsugu, Kirei and Kariya, and then remmember which is which. This is a shame, sine all three characters are completely different from each other and have their own, unique stories. Having names such similiar made it harder for me to relate to those characters.
Thanks for taking the time to share your experience and adding onto the discussion! I agree, those names sound similar LOL. I wouldn't blame anyone for that mix up
Funny enough, those names probabaly look and sound nothing a like to a native Japanese speaker. They don't even start with the same letter in Japanese.
Did you know in My Hero Academia, every character’s name has some connection to their quirks? That becomes a very important clue in recent big twist in the manga which blew my mind
@@fireandicegamez1025 Shoto = "Burnt-cold" Asui = "frog" Ashido = "acid" Iida Tenya = Idaten= a Buddhist god that symbolized godspeed Tokoyami = "always dark" Kirishima ="sharp" OFA successor's names: Midoriya Izuku(9) All Might's real name - Toshinori Yagi(8) All Might's Sensei - Shimura Nana(7)
@@luckymankwok it's's really cool how some shonen manga readers name their characters on a formula. An example aside from MHA is Dragon Ball, where Toriyama Akira names all it's characters based on food. Freiza: Freezer, and all of Freiza's gang's names have something to do with a freezer. The Ginyu force named are all based on milk, like cheese, yogurt, milk, butter, cream.) Everyone that's a sayian who came from planet Vegeta: vegetables -Kakarot: carrot -Raditz: radish -Bardock: burdock There's more but I forgor
"Each character should have different sounding names" Clannad: Tomoya and Tomoyo My Hero Academia: Shoto and Shota My next life as a villainess: Marie and Maria
@@EliiKlee I think with twins, it's more understandable if they have matching names. I'm a twin for example and my dad named me and my twin sister after him LOL
Most of the time it depend on the world building, a name like "Nice" could even work in the right context. But yeah using the [Actual sounding name or object] + [Odd sounding or objective] work wonder too, Ex. "Chistinia Skyline", "Lighting Mc Queen" and "Jane Catalyst".
@@sirmel11 in what? I’ve read a lot of manga and watch a lot of anime and I’ve never seen this or maybe I’m just forgetting because I’m terrible at remembering names
Thank you for making this. Coming up with names for my characters is the biggest problem I have had. I have only been able to name a couple side characters but not my main characters. I think the only time I was able to give my main characters names was my orignal character ideas for the show RWBY. Thank you.
Character names have always been a interesting process for me. I often make the character personality first, and then their names. That way I can have a easier time coming up with names. Not to mention all of my characters name are pretty simple. Names such as Barrel and Gale
This really helped me man, Im currently writing something where I have no idea what to name the supporting antagonist, and I came up with "Eric" on a whim, but now after this, I think I can come up with something better using the time period and Genre. I was about to do something wild, but then you reminded me that a parent named him.
I thought of a name for a character/OC that I came up with. His name is Amoré Vicii (アモーレ ヴィシー) (translation is in Japanese because manga, Japan you get it haha). His first name ‘Amoré’ comes from the Latin name Amor, which translates to “Love” and is also the name of the Roman God, Cupid; it also means love in Spanish and Portuguese. I modified the name slightly to make it look more Italian upon reading it because this character is born in Italy, so I used the word ‘Amore’ since it is a word associated with the country as well as its culture, landscapes and food; and I added the apostrophe on the ‘é’ just to make it stand out. His second name ‘Vicii’ comes from the word ‘Vici’ which means “I won/conquered” which actually comes from a famous phrase from Latin known as “Veni, Vidi, Vici” which means “I came, I saw, I conquered” (Julius Caesar also used this phrase)’ So I gave it to my OC just to give a sense of the power he holds. Like with the first name, I modified the name to make it look and sound more interesting. I added another ‘I’ at the end of ‘Vici’ to empathise on the character’s self importance as you normally address yourself with ‘I’ but since it’s appeared twice it sort of adds to an egotistical point of view, but not in a bad way I hope (I hope this makes sense) Also the name actually came from Avicii who is one of my favourite artists who died 5 years ago, so I wanted to commemorate him in way. Altogether the name “Amoré Vicii” translates to “I conquered love” or “I won love”. I think, personally, this name is probably one of my favourite names Ive ever come up with. If I were to make a manga I would describe him as kind, humble, talented and very resilient. I would give him a backstory of facing against failure and heartbreak, only for him to come back up and face adversity to become a better/improved version of himself; so by conquering love, it means he basically levelled up to a higher point then before or he overcame heartbreak or even relationships/desires. Also another point to mention, the ‘é’ in Amoré’s name is the noun for both masculine and feminine, so the fact it applies for both genders signifies how he can be seen by anybody as who he is or how he becomes popular to all different types of people and individuals like with Avicii)
The best character name I've ever had came by accident. While I was designing this character that took inspiration from Satan(Lucifer S1 just started so I was inspired), I looked up different names of the Devil and saw that Satan's full name is Satanael. I decided to take the "Nael" and rearrange it to "Neal", looked up to see if its a real word and I found that it means "champion", which was perfect for his personality. Still haven't come up with one that is better.
Neal is a really cool name! Thank you for taking the time to share a bit of your process! That is a great story behind the name! Best of luck with your story!
I have 2 brother characters called Grigor and Anarawd, their names respectively mean Vigilant/Watcher and Undisgraced/Champion. Due to my inability to find a name that meant/or referenced hunters in Welsh I settled on Grigor instead because it fitted with his character, in how he's always looking out his adopted sister Victoria Williams (which isn't even her real name btw but instead one given to her the Catholic Church). Sometimes tho I end up with names for characters who just end up getting those names because I wanted to use them such as for example Tristian and Simon who ended up getting the names Tristian Mohammed Ali and Simon Christopher Brown (the second one named as such to reference the author of Purgatory H.C Brown which gave me the inspiration to think up this story). One of my characters however just ended up looking like a Hattina Lotts so I just named her that for no other reason then it just felt right for her, despite the fact I wanted to give a more meaningful name I just can't change it now because she is Hattina Lotts and she can't be anything other than that. As for my villain character I'm still debating if I want him to have a Biblical name or just to call him Sin and be done with it. As you may have noticed my naming style is just a random mess of I want this and that but it makes the character names in my opinion look more natrual instead of being formulayic and I kinda like it.
I like those names too! It's interesting how your process differs from character to character. It was a very insightful read! Thanks for taking the time to share your process and a bit about your story! Best of luck!
When I named my 5 main characters I just went off whatever I felt like but the rest of the cast have names with meanings. I'm hoping that this will one day drive people crazy as they try to see the reasoning behind the main few names and yet nothing comes of it
One of my characters is Hinata Hamasaki. I chose the name Hinata as it means sunflower, a flower that matches her sunny happy personality and her strength and determination as those flowers are known to be able to grow in the toughest of places. I chose 'Hamasaki' as her last name as a tribute to one of my favorite singers, Ayumi Hamasaki. Plus I love alliteration.
madara actually isnt a hard name, the thing is, its written in another language. Another thing, you can use difficult names, and it actually matters to the story, instead of putting a flat name that you dont like, name the character what you like, example in one piece there's a character called trafalgar d water law, this name is written to be hard for the protagonist, thats why nicknames exist, instead the protagonist (luffy) calls him 'torao' translated means tra-guy. Oh actuallly i wanna share my character's names too so: Casper: chill guy with a cool bodyguard, got shot in the eye, works in the library, his nickname: firefly Sen kuro: the cool bodyguard, he resembles a black cat with golden eyes, classy person, mostly refered as senku, also, his surname kuro means black Alistar: he's a pilot, a nice smiley person but with trauma, got left alone when his friends crashed somewhere,then he rescued someone and lives with them, nickname: al Vanda: crazy woman go kill some bullies, scientist, lives with her best friend. this are the characters that actually have names lol. Others are tf, vg, and aka reason why they dont have names because they're actually my childhood characters and i named them abreviations bc i was to dumb to actually think something sorry if i wrote an essay!
Here's a conundrum: I write stories in my head while I do mundane tasks, then I outline on paper the key moments of the story and fill the gaps later. So far, I have 12 games, 3 TV series (each with average of 6 episodes) and 1 film. None of these have a single name for a character 😅 I do have for a few, but it's like 3 of them. At this point, I might as well finished the story and then name them.
Thank you for taking the time to share a bit about your projects! I think your approach is effective! There's little benefit in stopping production over something like not being able to find the correct name yet MANY professional projects take that same approach and use placeholder names or labels like "BOY A" until they figure out the name they want That's awesome to hear though that you are working on so many projects! Best of luck!
The mc of my current book is called Loch Swarzforth, loch meaning hole in Latin, and swarz coming from black in German, and forth being a word I added randomly. Most of the characters have Latin/German derivative names, because it’s set in a world of magic, around medieval times.
Thanks for the advice. It's a tad harder to see this work in a story that's more a fantasy setting, though... I mean for me, all the girls are named in some respects to Flowers - which seems rather easy, but then you look at things like Language of Flowers and such and it creates a wide variety of ideas based on what flower name you give and it can be doubled in a sense with other languages or other parts. Another case is I have a character named Rosca - that can be shorted to "Ross" but there's a sort of origin to it: Loscann is (as far as I can confirm this) Old Irish for 'Frog' and given the character himself has frog-like features, it fits well. I went with R instead of L due to interchangeable L and R sounds.
Very good points! Flower Language is super interesting, so I can see how working around that could be challenging. Fantasy names play by their own rules (or lack there of) haha. I've seen some very unique and one of a kind name in fantasy stories, so it was a bit harder to think of general tips for fantasy names. My best advice would be to do what youre doing with the flower subject. Pointing down a theme or some sort of association might help generate some ideas! Regardless, thanks for taking the time to share your experience! Best of luck!!
This is tricky with certain backstories or characters like my MC has no traditional parents, he has his employer and his little siblings. Which means he has no family name, I’ve thought a lot about how I want to to portray this because the world is kinda dystopian to a certain extent so the government doesn’t really care enough about abandoned kids or orphans to give them names or homes. The only reason they are even alive is because of the employer but trying to explain this without using a wall of text is difficult lol I’ll probably just use some environmental storytelling and show how the government doesn’t really care and I think that will probably get the hint across enough for the audience to interpret how they survived and why they don’t have a family name
I have a question, do you have any tips for incorporating racial and ethnic diversity into your manga specifically as this is the style I primarily work within and, well manga isn't particularly great at this. I know this is largely influenced by Japan's population being primarily of Japanese descent and inclusion of racial diversity being generally of a lesser concern, but I live in a country where realistically the cast are not going to be the same race and nor do I want an entirely pale cast. It also doesn't help that for the most part it seems characters are designed more so based on personality rather than to communicate their racial and ethnic background. Take Izuku Midoriya for example, he doesn't really look like any race in particular as his eyes are rounder than any actual person would have and he has green hair (although I tend to assume that if he were to have a realistically designed counterpart that they would just have black hair and that the dark green serves as highlights and fits into the general anime hair colour theory and thus reflects his personality over actual physical looks). Compare Izuku to David Shield and there one could not tell that they aren't from the same background unless you knew the characters' names and the story. And this holds true for many series. I'm not saying that a series needs to always make race explicit and, I'll confess that even in real life I often have no clue what race people actually are, but I believe it would still be beneficial for many creators to perhaps have a better understanding and idea on how to design characters that represent more than just one skin tone. Sorry for the long and poorly worded response, I wasn't exactly sure how to best phrase this. I've just been working on a series and wanted to have characters that weren't all the same skin tone and realised I didn't know how to go about doing it, nor did I have any manga on my shelf to help me out.
With Manga the characters almost always depicted in black and white with plenty of greyscale and tones to fill in the blanks, so skin colour will always be difficult to protray properly. Same with hair colour so having coloured versions of the characters may help with that and as for physically racial/ethnical features you just need to study them as you would anything else in art and make them fit in your style.
Thank you for taking the time to share all of this! You make some valid points! I too value diversity in my stories and try to focus on non-white characters for my main cast. Since I have Mexican descent, I decided to make my main character and his family darker toned with textured hair. I plan to make a video on this topic in the future. The company I work with, Saturday AM champions diversity in manga. I highly recommend you check some of their series out They have MANY cool manga titles that feature characters of different races. For designing characters of different races respectfully, I recommend you check out WhytManga's RUclips channel. He is published in the same magazine as me and has created some great manga tutorials around this subject! Best of luck!
Nah, I disagree, names are less important than you might think. The character's design and personality are much more important, you can do whatever you want with the names. Wither you want to express some hidden symbolism, or you just want to name a bunch of foods you like, or maybe you are making a joke about their personalities or look or even just your current mood, the name is the easiest part of making a story because everything else about a character makes the name memorable. The name of your story however, that is different, and that can be one of the most difficult and final decisions to make in a series (you might even find that the name of your series changes after it releases due to fan input or marketing after it blows up). Character names, they don't matter... I want to say, "Just don't go too corny or cheesy like for example 'All Might' ", and "Avoid names that are too similar and too close to each other narratively LIKE what AOT did with Erwin, Eren, Armin", or even "don't be too typical or stereotypical, like Sasuke from Naruto" but obviously, even that can be very successful. You actually can do whatever you want.
Hi! You’re so close to 35 thousand subs that’s CRAZY good luck! Also could you make a video on character design? I’m having some trouble making good outfits, hair, and faces for the characters in my comic
This isn't related to the video context but I would like to give you some advice or constructive criticism if that's okay. I noticed when you were drawing the hair you started with the hair strands. I've always found it to be easier for me if I drew the head first and then the hairline. And then you can decide where to start drawing the hair, how it parts, and so on. I hope this helps :)
And then there's the "Only known by their nickname" trope. Even if you're character has the most common pedestrian name e.g. Jack Williams, David Smith, Jane Jackson; you can count on the likes of Jack being only referred to as Sparrow.
My story have more than one main protagonist and all are important Make a video on how to handle more than one protagonist Well I m not writing a manga But will make an anime on it in future
Every single day I regret naming my characters Neon & Nine I could probably write an entire book for each of them on why their names are "symbolic" and "meaningful" but the execution kills me inside
the name I chose for my main character is "Ki" (still working on a last name) which is the the first kanji for Hope, his great predecessor has the name "Bo" the last kanji for hope. Ki also translated as spirit and energy, also the word for Air, and air symbolizes the spirit and the "vital breath of the universe" heres a lil thingie "J.C. Cooper points out that wind represents the power of spirit in sustaining life and holding it together"
Im writing a story where all the main characters have flower based names. The main two are as follows. Violet Bell - the main character. Blue violets symbolize watchfulness and faithfulness, and thats what Violet is - someone who always stands by the people she cares for, and will always look after them. Additionally, its part of the famous "roses are red, violets are blue" poem. Meanwhile I just chose Bell for her last name because I thought it sounded good. Rosa "Rose" Farina - Red roses are all about love, and pink roses are about happiness. Rose is a character who lives for love in all its forms - romantic, friendship, etc. Similarly, she's an unbridled optimist, hence the meaning behind the pink rose. Farina is an Italian name meaning "flour," referring to the fact that her family owns a restaurant - the Farina Italian Eatery. Also, part of the "roses are red, violets are blue" poem.
Personally the names have been kicking my ass for years but for my central story I ended up taking a step back and just calling my characters by nicknames since they are set in my country and folks are called by a community name not their birth one. It's kind of ridiculous actually, I've had family die and only learn their actual names from the pamphlet thing given out at their funeral! Hell, the first time I heard my own name outside of a class setting is when I ended up moving to Canada (I'm still not used to it😭) Mc is just Sunny bc folks always hear his mom shouting for him to go give out the food she made on sunny days (he'll be stuck with that for years, I was Passion bc I used to help my gran sell passion fruit at market plus I had a temper as a kid lol)
Personally i'm trying to create a lot of characters for a story that's sort of inspired by some web series that i loved (and that i continue to love) for example Gwain Saga. For the character names i don't follow a specific ruleset, if the name represents the character, than it's fine by me! For example, i called one of my characters Lucy, i called her like that because she's able to create light outside of her body, in my native language "Light" is called "Luce" so i searched for some names that could fit well and.... Ta daaa! Name found!
I usually have semi-hard to pronounce names, but it depends on if the reader knows how to speak/write a different language. Like my character Lili Dwr, she.. a self-insert (yes, I know people hate those. But it's just for fun) so her name is welsh like my name irl. Usually the people I meet can't pronounce the name, just like how a lot of people can't pronounce my irl name. There's more of a deeper meaning this name, so if my translation is correct, lili dwr means "water lily" in welsh. Water lilies are very pretty, but are on top of water, which I have a phobia of pools/oceans/swimming. I thought this was interesting, since i plan on having my ashes thrown into the ocean as a fuck you to my phobia. There's a bit more, but I forgot about it since I didn't write it down.
I also recommend from experience fantasy name generators that create names from letters. They're very useful if you want your name to sound a specific way or have a nickname but have to find a matching name for it.
Thank you. You deserve this. For a long time I found myself struggling in coming up with names for the characters in my story, and you helped me with the exact problem. I have begun writing a novel last year, and I am still stuck at episode 3. One of the characters in the novel is a man in his forties named Edmond Smith, Queen Tiana's watchdog. His previeous surname was Hersmith, but I realized it's to complicated. The name Edmond represent a king, so I wonder if it's a fitting name for the royal watchdog.
One of my characters is called Eric which sounds pretty basic. But the reason his parents chose that name is actually more interesting. Eric was derived from the irish word Éraic (meaning: a tribute paid in reparation for the murder of an irishman) when Eric's mother was pregnant with him, an Irish man threatened to slay them both. And so to protect his wife and unborn child, Eric's father killed the man. Once Eric was born however they soon realised that Karma had struck and they would be paying for this irishmans death for the rest of their lives, through raising an unpredictable and dangerous child. Hence, Eric is literally an Éraic!
Names of my Ocs: Protagonist: Baird Lymson Antagonists: Melody Demour, Hijack and Blaz Janseus Other characters: Kaizen Noame, Norman Wethart Idk if their names sounds good or cool, what do you think?
The name that I've came up with that I am most proud of is the name of the main character for the fantasy story I am working on now - Stella Stern. "Stella" means "star" in italian, while "stern" has the same meaning in german. Meanwhile Stella's nickname is "Star", as she was always the "brightest star" of the class, the "miss perfect". I really like how the name sounds, it has a nice ring to it. I also thing it matched the character's "stern" (lol) personality, having been raised to become a knight, while also conveying how much of a guiding light she would become to her friends. On the other hand, this name also reflects her power - the power of light, similar to that of a star - as it is revealed later in the story that Star is a Nephilim - a biblical being born from a human mother and an angel.
Stella is an awesome name! Thanks for taking the time to share your thought process behind naming this character that! It was really insightful! Best of luck!
Wow, is that a new intro or has it really been that long since I've had the chance to watch one of your videos? Either way, I like it. Very helpful video. These are all points that I've learned to use during my years of research and practice, so having them all in one place like this will undoubtedly be helpful for a lot of people. An extra tip/suggestion that I use when naming characters is selecting an existing name and replacing at least one letter/syllable with a totally different one in order to make new names. It's been pretty helpful.
That's a great additional tip! Thanks for taking the time to share all of that Hollow! My Intro is actually the same, but its funny you mentioned that. I've been planning on either making a new intro or commissioning an artist to make one for me for about a month now. So at some point soon there will be a new intro haha
@@MonitorComics My pleasure, Monitor. Thank YOU for the helpful video. I'm looking forward to seeing your new intro once you've got it planned and made. I'll definitely miss the current one!
i like to play around with already existing names and mixing them with other names or even words from different languages! for example i thought nezuko from ds was a cute name, but i really wanted my girl to have a name that means rain. Searched up what rain was in japanese, and i got Ameko.
I've got so many side characters that its kinda hard to name some of them. I usually just look into how the word is pronounced in a certain language. I'm needing some ideas if you want to let me know. I've got most planned out but its kinda hard to name all of them differently so i'd love to hear from others who may have ideas I could use if they wanted.
I'm planning to adapt a Sci-Fi roleplay story of mine I did with a partner and our two characters. My character is called Aegon Schmidt and I named him that way because of a character called Eygon from Dark Souls 3 and I thought it was a cool name. I looked it up and saw it was a German name. My character's culture is based on German culture, along with it being a common Valyrian regal name in the Song of Ice and Fire world, along with it being short and simple to pronounce, I thought it was perfect to use. His last name indicates his middle class status since he's not of noble birth though his family are wealthy investors. My partner's character's name is Zelenia because it's a variation of a tragic yet popular folk heroine's name, Helena, and so was named in honor of said folk hero in her culture. There's more to it but it might not make sense if I explain it here. I hope to publish it someday soon.
I find making an idea for a character easier than finding a name. I play Dungeons of Dragons sometimes and I can make a character with a story in a second but takes me more than a minute to find a name. Same goes for my story ones
I generally tend to lend towards themes. In one story, I have different races, humans, elves, dwarves, demons, and pixies. Human names are based on latin, demon names are based on historical figures, dwarves are based off of crafts and stones (Julie-Jewel, Cole), Elves are based off both magical and nature based names, and pixies are only nature based. In another story, I had to name the royal family, and for that I looked at names used in the British Royal family, and found names I thought suited the character. Zeid for the charismatic crown prince, Yue for the one and only princess with a kind heart and playful nature, and Xander for the wild and intelligent youngest prince. And part of what influenced me to choose Xander for the youngest was that I noticed the Y and Z of the other two and decided I wanted to make it XYZ. On the other hand, their parents are A and B.
One of my characters names is Levi because of how deceptive I think it is as a name. It’s not inherently good or evil just like the character and all of his arcs.
I made a some characters with names that don't have have meanings through search they just came to me when making them and stuck because no other name would fit when I did try to find one, is that ok?
Oh boy won't I have fun I get around to planning part 2 of my Manga as well as part 3, I'm thinking Middle Eastern, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Russian and American
I'm not even kidding, I have been using the among us colors as the naming scheme for the villains in my dnd campaign. I suck with names, so having something besides bob, Steve, jimmy or translating their character main trait through three different languages is nice.
I also like to give my characters middle names and even nicknames. For example, I've one character whose name is Clément Ernest Durand Corbin. He's a friar in a French-speaking fantasy world, and due to this, a lot of folks pronounce his last name as Cœurbon, effectively changing the way his name is pronounced; but there's more to it than that. The last name Corbin means someone with a hoarse voice or black hair, and Clément has black hair. But the reason the change to Cœurbon is so significant is because it's literally "good heart" in French. But then, to add juxtaposition, Clément, before becoming a friar, was a bloodthirsty warrior, contrasting with his name, Clément, which is literally "clement". Add to that, Ernest means "earnest". Basically, I go for names that both align with and juxtapose a character's personality while also giving hints about their backstory.
Thanks for this, I kept seeing your videos in my recommended every once and a while and it always makes me think about this manga I'm working on, I haven't been able to write a script but I'm going to watch more of your videos to continue progressing, and maybe I'll get better at drawing for find an artist after I complete the prologue. Thanks again
That's awesome to hear!! Thank you so much for deciding to check my stuff out! I really appreciate it and hope it can help! Best of luck with your project!!
Leaving my comment here because I loved this video and I am fleshing out my own manga/anime plot and I think so far it's great but I'd like thoughts on my Ideas Its Concept is Descendants of and Ancient All Powerful Vampire (aluding to dracula but still deciding how to mention it or if I even should) who, like in Hellsing, is able to absorb and store people's life forces, essences, and powers in hisself using blood magic. And who he choose to defeat was Oroboros the World Serpent, god of creation and existence and a dragon that has no end. This is all the anime backstory sorta like Gol D Roger from one piece. But he defeats the Dragon and steals some of its Unfathomable Power. But was Cursed To Die eventually by the dragon. Dispite his immortality. So he Passed On his legacy to 3 sons an 1 Daughter. All Children he had through magic means with humans so they'd be half human and not be cursed to die in the sunlight like he was. With one secret Child of Oroboros(The Main Character.) that was Effected by his blood magic when they fought and basically became the same And I think it's kinda a cool thing naming characters especially for anime because it usually has hidden meanings. The show is either gonna be Called "DoragonBuraddo" or "Doragon No Chi" Which literally translate the words "Dragon Blood" and "Dragon's Blood" The children the Ancient Vampire has are other MCs that help the Main one. There last names are all "Ketsueki" which is Blood. The Main Character is Ryū Ketsueki. Maybe Ryūden but either way translates to "Dragons Sons Blood" And then the other MCs are Named Shinji which means "Believe" Goto which means "Every" Mono which means "thing" And Nei which means "Flatteries" Or "Insecureties" And the way there names say Believe Every Thing, or Believe Every Insecurety, or Believe every Flattery. Idk it's kindof a cool detail I like. I also feel like the names are pretty simple and Memorable. Ryū Ketsueki Shinji Ketsueki Mono Ketsueki Nei Ketsueki Idk they just sound found on the tongue and all I thing they're Great names with cool meanings.
Well, in my country we don't have surnames and my story is based on the characters that lives in my country. And I don't feel like naming my characters in my language. I'd probably name them in english. But i'm not sure if i should make english names that doesn't have surnames. So, I don't know what to do Lol
Currently I am thinking of a story about a bunch of people creating a guild within a game, so within the story each of the main characters has two names. An online username and their actual name. It is much easier for me to think of a username since I and all my friends play video games, but their actual names are a lot more troublesome.
I’m having a hard time with one of my villains because they style of my comic is supposed to be specifically a power metal amv. I already have a couple hitmen with names like “Pulse Breaker” and “Slaughter Dog” but I have this one third world pirate whose name I can’t come up with
Me personally i just go with the the hunter x hunter approach where he plays with random syllables and they just sound cool, Example: chrollo and kurapika. Plus im trying to make a supernatural world thats like earth but not the same, think hxh
Watching this video because I'm actually pretty terrible at naming characters. Of the ones I have named, my favorite is Service-With-A-Smile "Viss" Sharp, who was raised in a future capitalist hellscape where puritan style virtue names, and Dee, a character with DID with the personalities Diane and Delilah, both D names from songs about women, symbolizing how both personalities only see themselves in other's perceptions of them
I have a lot of fun creating names for my characters. I'm on a project that is actually more of a self project since I don't consider myself an artist, that's not the job I chose, but creating characters and stories is just too much fun to me. I have this story with two factions called Rebels and Repressers, and their names work pretty much like superheroes or mha heroes, despite them being on the other side of society, kind of. Also there is a lot of hip hop culture in there which I really love and giving nicknames is something really common. First attempts were trying to be overly complicated, then I started erasing them and starting from zero again. For the protagonist, Gabriel Arnegeed, I just gave my name the English way, then anagrammed "renegade" a way it could look cool. And for the rest I noticed that going simple helps creating really cool names. Like Norbert Warston, because he is more structured and muscular and his father is in the "Rebel military" called "Rebellic". Then I have this dude called Taisuke Yorker, because even if it's not the earth, it's something really similar to it, and the equivalents to Japan and the US do exist, also Taisuke is one of my favorite dancers. Let's see nicknames. Vectorblade is a cool one I came up with, for a guy called Martin Kernan (not much of a meaning). It probably already exists but who cares. I really like Headgroove and Miss Sileride tho, one is a girl who loves listening to music with her headphones and wants to become a DJ (her surname and name respectively start with D and J on purpose) and the other one has a missile/looking object propelled with small rockets she rides, it came from a word pun I really liked.
I name my characters based on the world they're in. So what I do is create the characters and the world, give the character abilities and powers (if any) and then I go back and name them when I have a plot and base world outlined. So if they're in Japan, I'll give them Japanese names. If they're in a new world in a different dimension then our own, I'll give them unique, unorthodox names. Some of my character Names: Sayzer Calistoga Hrizellio Britain von Gangsterbond
Thank you for taking the time to share your process! That's a great way to go about it! Love the character names! If I had to pick a favorite I think I'm leaning towards Sayzer! Best of luck with your story!
Never really thought about guidelines for naming characters before all that much! This are some really cool tips to keep in mind and even if you got to break them, you can do it intentionally and with style at least. Like sometimes, you got to sacrifice easy pronounceability because the kinds of names in the setting are very unfamiliar to say an English audience. But might be worth it if the name is still really great and fitting for the character. I find coming up with character names to be very fun especially when your efforts reward you with The Name and I might get my frustrations at times, but still enjoy the process of hunting for a name nevertheless. Just the other day I found a The Name for a character I've been coming up with. As I am an aspiring game dev, I decided to take inspiration from Fire Emblem: Three Houses protag customization and would allow the player to customize the MC's name and gender. At the same time, the MC has a default name and I'm pretty proud of it. Their default name is Anu, a reference to the Egyptian Death god Anubis. This is fitting as in a fantasy setting where each of the twelve Western zodiac signs is represented as a god or goddess, Anu would be the deity representing Scorpio. I have many other names I really like for my other characters but talking about all of them would make this comment really long lol.
8:02 as well as this, Bungo Stray Dogs involve actual author names (Allan Edgar Poe, Aktugawa, Atsushi, Dazai etc) along with one of their works as their power name (akutagawa - rashumon). All these people existed (except Naomi I think) but it’s set in modern day
The First 1,000 People To Use This Link Will Get A 1 Month Free Trial Of Skillshare: skl.sh/monitorcomics01211
@zane Yes
What about names from the real life like Alex or Sam ? that are common names or names that come from your own country and culture? Hussein or Ali is a common Arabic name
@@husseinal-zubeidi8056 Those could work! In cases like that, I've seen some writers use impactful surnames/last names. But at the end of the day, if your story is set in reality, a normal name might work best. It all comes down to if you think it's recognizable enough that your reader won't forget it when they have to keep track of all of your character's names
@@MonitorComics oh okay thanks for the help
Whenever I begin one of your videos I get that excited feeling when you sit down for a movie! Great video 😁
The cool thing about naming your characters is, you can create a totally unique name from ordinary words. Take Legato from Trigun for example. His full name is Legato Bluesummers, the last name being made from ordinary words that people use on a daily basis. You could even go a step further and make a unique name that symbolizes the character itself. If your character is an evil psychopath born in winter, you could give them the last name “Redwinter”. How you name your character is totally up to you.
Very true!! You make some great points! Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts and adding onto the conversation!
Legato is also just a music playing technique where you slide between two notes making them overlap (I think it's pretty common in blues).
So while it isn't on the same level of everyday use as "blues" or "summer", it's still just a regular word and it ties into the music theme.
[Edit] correction to typos from making the comment on my phone.
@@ZeroStrife1396legato is actually an Italian word for bound/tied.
I was litterlt just struggling with this
Hopefully this video was able to help a bit! Thanks for stopping by so early!
@@MonitorComics Yeah it did Thanks! 👍
As for giving a reason for the parents choice of name what I did was put the meaning in the surname of my character and then have him go by that name in his line of work
That's a great way to go about it! Thanks for taking the time to share your process!
That's also how some surnames came to be like Smith
I love this channel I named my character De’ari aka “The Dark Crow Queen”
Thank you! De'ari is a cool name! Thanks for taking the time to watch and leaving a comment! Best of luck with your story!
just gonna watch the vid but personally i wanna go with puns and maybe other stuff cuz i got an oc who's main gimmick is he's fast af so i called him "Mach I. Speed"
Puns are always a great option!
@@MonitorComics fr, if Tails the Fox wasn't a thing i would've straight up called him "Miles Prower" lol
I've never had trouble giving my characters names...well exc6 when it comes to aliases and nicknames
Is name Leonidas, Leon, Leo for short good? I named my MC in the light novel I write and have 60 chapters rerady.
I think it sounds fine!
@@MonitorComics thanks for the feedback:)
@@MonitorComics do you mind giving me feedback on one of the powers that my MC has?
Yeah this is pretty difficult cause i like to come up with more unique, hxh type names but its so hard trying to find a name that sounds right bc i mix and match different syllables and sounds. theyre not too complicated but I would like to provide a variety of different types of names
I see! Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and adding onto the discussion! I can see how that could be challenging! Best of luck!!
@@MonitorComics bro i love your feedback to ur own community, keep up the good work
@@slimtickett Thank you!!
@@MonitorComics to be honest I think Vinland saga did good on it's naming for example Thorfin. He has a cool understandable name
@@DiegoLopez-is8kq yeah i like vinland saga names it perfectly fits the setting
My favorite names from fiction are Neo, Eren Jeager, Tony Stark, Daenerys Targaryen, Walter White and Paul Atreides. They're so fitting for the characters and I can't even explain why
Great choices! Thanks for taking the time to share your favorites!
@@MonitorComics also Sephiroth from ff7
My favorite is Sephiroth
Reason: It starts divine and gracious but ends agressive and fierce like Sephiroth's character
Actually,I'm not entirely sure if the name Walter White was "invented" for the character (by this I mean i don't think the name was purposely given to him with a meaning behind it,at least not at first),I say this because if I read correctly,Vince Gilligan based Walter off a news article he read once,which talked about a man that cooked meth in secret,and if I am not mistaken,he was named Walter White, there's actually a video about it on RUclips, although I'm not sure if it's the same case Gilligan read about it.
Idk why but i like Zhongli
Videos like this always intrigue me. Characters have always been an easy job for me- almost like they straight up built a town in my head and summon themselves when bored. Since it's such a natural thing, I find it interesting to hear different tips and how other people build them up
Same these type of videos got me interested in this channel
🤓
same
Characters come naturally for me, but their names? *laughs nervously*
"avoid choosing names that have become iconic in pop culture"
Araki: *sweats profusely*
LOL Araki is a madman. He knew what he was doing with all of those references. That tip has exceptions of course, like biographies and retelling are bound to use pop culture names
For that bit I just meant if youre writing a standard isekai, you might not want your protagonist be called Beyonce LOL
My best naming experience so far has been for a character named Rayden Dagger. I liked the name 'Hayden' but wanted the intensity and harshness of an 'r' sound, so I mushed the two together. I also later learned that Raiden is the Japanese God of lightning (this has significance to the plot, but is also a massive spoiler). I kept the 'y' as it makes the spelling more feminine like Robyn compared to Robin.
Her last name also helps tell you not to mess with her, albeit its a little on the nose.
That's actually really cool!! Thank you for taking the time to share your process and explain all of that!! I love the name and intentions behind it!
this is cool! i have a character named Inabi based on the Japanese word "inabikari" which means "flash of lightning" and he's a lightning user.
The raiden name is also mentioned the game genshin cuase there is a god called raiden shogun and she is is like the god of lightning litterly 🤡
Awesome! I have 2 Characters named "Bleu and Blue Stick" cause.. they have Blue Eyes (I was lazy)
Edit: The Guy named "Bleu Stick" is now called "Robin Alarie" and "Robin" means "Bright/Bright Blue", it's perfect because he is the Main Character who will save the world, and he has Blue Eyes and Red (It looks Orange) Hair. And the guy named "Blue Stick" is now called "Bleu Alarie" because of his Blue Eyes and because he is half French, and their last name is now "Alarie" which means "all power" and their Family are strong trained martial artists, and also it's French.
Raiden is a main character name in the manga eleceed good manga btw check it out but I have feeling you already read it sus..
MC: Jelani (Full of strength in Swahili)
Female MC: Nuru (Filled with light in Swahili)
Second MC: Amare (One who builds)
I'm going for a fantasy world with African themes
Love the concept!! The names sound really cool! Thanks for taking the time to tell us a bit about your project! Best of luck!
Bro, an African-inspired fantasy setting? Bro, now that just sounds awesome, I'd love to see that. Not to mention the many cryptids and creatures in African mythology that can be used here.
@@deadbeatnetwork9792 Preciate the support on my idea. I can't tell you the name of my story because people be stealing out here though. And thanks for the ideas on creatures in African mythology cause I was struggling with worldbuilding. I plan to use the emotional aspects and camaraderie of Fairy Tail while also combining some of the philosophy and villain writing of Naruto.
@@deadbeatnetwork9792 We DEFINITELY need more African-Inspired settings in manga.
I don't know if you follow Saturday AM, the company that I am published with, but they have two manga series with African influences
The first series, Oblivion Rouge, by instagram.com/papsouleye/
on Instagram has an ALL AFRICAN CAST
The other series, Orisha, by instagram.com/zayf_illustrations/
also has a fantasy setting inspired by African Culture.
Hopefully you can check those artists out and give their series a quick read if you got the time!
@@alexsanimeart5706 Ah sweet. A combination of those qualities from those two anime in a different type of story sounds pretty intriguing. Also that's quite understandable for the name. And yeah there are many mythical creatures in African lore that you can pull here, like were-hyenas, the Kongamato, the Grootslang and heck you can probably pull some influences from Egypt's lore since that's also something quite interesting in it of itself. Actually now that I think about it, I think it would be interesting if your cast traveled to Egypt at some point since it is located in Northern Africa. Just a little idea there but overall your story conecpt sounds pretty cool. Hope to see it someday if it becomes official.
I give my characters symbolic names in my native language. That way english readers won't know what the name means, unless it is mentioned inside the story, making it sound unique. Also that way it doesn't sound silly like if it was in English lol
That's a great strategy! Thank you for taking the time to share your process with us! I'd be interested in hearing some of those character names and their meanings! Best of luck with your story!
I tried that as well but they all ended up not sounding quite right, and they might not be very easy to pronounce ;-;
Ayy I did too except that it was just other languages
Alright I’ve decided to name my oc rei bc it means night in my native language and he has dark blue hair
Maybe I’m just bad at making oc’s ;-;
@@daychild_ What's your native language?
My favorite name experience is 組暗雛佗 (Kumian Hinata). I know "Hinata" is a common name in anime/manga, however, the Kanji for that 'Hinata' means 'a sunny place'. Interesting about Japanese names is that the same pronunciation but different kanji means different things. In my case, 'Kumian' means group of shadows, my 'Hinata' written in different kanji means doll with sad voice. It really reflects my character as she went through the hell of things in her life. She can be beautiful as a doll but her life is engulfed in darkness that she is a broken doll.
That name sounds fitting! Thank you for taking the time to share all of that and telling us about the kanji meanings! Best of luck with your story!
Hinata Shoyo, sunny place flying in the sun. He's a little sunshiny boi and I love him to bits.
@@SpringStarFangirl I love him too, little baby crow!!!
Hi, do you know how to create and combine words/names to create a whole entire name for a character; and know how to use kanji for those names. I'm struggling to create names and name branches for my characters.
@Rainbow Rose Princess Mishti OK whats the website. I'm still tryna figure what Kanjis actually are because how can I combine them together. They can't just be random or can they? Like how can you separate the right symbols from the word to create said name?
As much as i love Fate/Zero, it took me some time to remember the names of Kiritsugu, Kirei and Kariya, and then remmember which is which. This is a shame, sine all three characters are completely different from each other and have their own, unique stories. Having names such similiar made it harder for me to relate to those characters.
Thanks for taking the time to share your experience and adding onto the discussion! I agree, those names sound similar LOL. I wouldn't blame anyone for that mix up
Funny enough, those names probabaly look and sound nothing a like to a native Japanese speaker. They don't even start with the same letter in Japanese.
@@arthurmarshall6825 That is a great point!
Did you know in My Hero Academia, every character’s name has some connection to their quirks? That becomes a very important clue in recent big twist in the manga which blew my mind
Bakugo-bakudan-bomb
Kaminari = lightning
@@fireandicegamez1025 Shoto = "Burnt-cold"
Asui = "frog"
Ashido = "acid"
Iida Tenya = Idaten= a Buddhist god that symbolized godspeed
Tokoyami = "always dark"
Kirishima ="sharp"
OFA successor's names:
Midoriya Izuku(9)
All Might's real name - Toshinori Yagi(8)
All Might's Sensei - Shimura Nana(7)
@@luckymankwok it's's really cool how some shonen manga readers name their characters on a formula. An example aside from MHA is Dragon Ball, where Toriyama Akira names all it's characters based on food.
Freiza: Freezer, and all of Freiza's gang's names have something to do with a freezer. The Ginyu force named are all based on milk, like cheese, yogurt, milk, butter, cream.)
Everyone that's a sayian who came from planet Vegeta: vegetables
-Kakarot: carrot
-Raditz: radish
-Bardock: burdock
There's more but I forgor
Let me guess, tetsutetsu (I know I spelt that wrong) is named after tungsten
@@simplykoda4100 thought tetsu ment steel, so he ment steelsteel
"Each character should have different sounding names"
Clannad: Tomoya and Tomoyo
My Hero Academia: Shoto and Shota
My next life as a villainess: Marie and Maria
FACTS THO LOL
For Marie and Maria it's pretty perfect since they are supposed to be the same coin just different faces
you forgot rem and ram from re:zero xD
@@EliiKlee That's justified since they're sisters...twins.
@@EliiKlee I think with twins, it's more understandable if they have matching names. I'm a twin for example and my dad named me and my twin sister after him LOL
"Name association can lead to legal issues with copyrights"
*laughs in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure*
Most of the time it depend on the world building, a name like "Nice" could even work in the right context. But yeah using the [Actual sounding name or object] + [Odd sounding or objective] work wonder too, Ex. "Chistinia Skyline", "Lighting Mc Queen" and "Jane Catalyst".
Those are GREAT POINTS. Especially the little formula you provided! Thank you for taking the time to add onto the discussion!
There's an anime character named Nice.
@@sirmel11 in what? I’ve read a lot of manga and watch a lot of anime and I’ve never seen this or maybe I’m just forgetting because I’m terrible at remembering names
@@mson925 Hamatora or something.
Thank you for making this. Coming up with names for my characters is the biggest problem I have had. I have only been able to name a couple side characters but not my main characters. I think the only time I was able to give my main characters names was my orignal character ideas for the show RWBY. Thank you.
I'm glad this video could be useful! Thank you for taking the time to watch and leaving a comment! Best of luck with your project!!
Character names have always been a interesting process for me. I often make the character personality first, and then their names. That way I can have a easier time coming up with names. Not to mention all of my characters name are pretty simple. Names such as Barrel and Gale
This really helped me man, Im currently writing something where I have no idea what to name the supporting antagonist, and I came up with "Eric" on a whim, but now after this, I think I can come up with something better using the time period and Genre. I was about to do something wild, but then you reminded me that a parent named him.
That's awesome to hear! Thanks for taking the time to share all of that! Glad this video could help! Best of luck with your story!
I thought of a name for a character/OC that I came up with.
His name is Amoré Vicii (アモーレ ヴィシー) (translation is in Japanese because manga, Japan you get it haha).
His first name ‘Amoré’ comes from the Latin name Amor, which translates to “Love” and is also the name of the Roman God, Cupid; it also means love in Spanish and Portuguese. I modified the name slightly to make it look more Italian upon reading it because this character is born in Italy, so I used the word ‘Amore’ since it is a word associated with the country as well as its culture, landscapes and food; and I added the apostrophe on the ‘é’ just to make it stand out.
His second name ‘Vicii’ comes from the word ‘Vici’ which means “I won/conquered” which actually comes from a famous phrase from Latin known as “Veni, Vidi, Vici” which means “I came, I saw, I conquered” (Julius Caesar also used this phrase)’ So I gave it to my OC just to give a sense of the power he holds. Like with the first name, I modified the name to make it look and sound more interesting. I added another ‘I’ at the end of ‘Vici’ to empathise on the character’s self importance as you normally address yourself with ‘I’ but since it’s appeared twice it sort of adds to an egotistical point of view, but not in a bad way I hope (I hope this makes sense) Also the name actually came from Avicii who is one of my favourite artists who died 5 years ago, so I wanted to commemorate him in way.
Altogether the name “Amoré Vicii” translates to “I conquered love” or “I won love”. I think, personally, this name is probably one of my favourite names Ive ever come up with. If I were to make a manga I would describe him as kind, humble, talented and very resilient. I would give him a backstory of facing against failure and heartbreak, only for him to come back up and face adversity to become a better/improved version of himself; so by conquering love, it means he basically levelled up to a higher point then before or he overcame heartbreak or even relationships/desires.
Also another point to mention, the ‘é’ in Amoré’s name is the noun for both masculine and feminine, so the fact it applies for both genders signifies how he can be seen by anybody as who he is or how he becomes popular to all different types of people and individuals like with Avicii)
I guess I'll be bad at naming my child since I can't make one up for a fictional character. Lmao 🤣
Mood
Next up name for a city?
You‘re basically the channel I searched for / needed since such a long time.
Thanks for all the inspiration, I‘m sure it will help us all a lot! ✨
I'm really happy to hear that! Thanks for taking the time to write such a nice comment!
The best character name I've ever had came by accident. While I was designing this character that took inspiration from Satan(Lucifer S1 just started so I was inspired), I looked up different names of the Devil and saw that Satan's full name is Satanael. I decided to take the "Nael" and rearrange it to "Neal", looked up to see if its a real word and I found that it means "champion", which was perfect for his personality. Still haven't come up with one that is better.
Neal is a really cool name! Thank you for taking the time to share a bit of your process! That is a great story behind the name! Best of luck with your story!
Wow 😲
I have 2 brother characters called Grigor and Anarawd, their names respectively mean Vigilant/Watcher and Undisgraced/Champion. Due to my inability to find a name that meant/or referenced hunters in Welsh I settled on Grigor instead because it fitted with his character, in how he's always looking out his adopted sister Victoria Williams (which isn't even her real name btw but instead one given to her the Catholic Church). Sometimes tho I end up with names for characters who just end up getting those names because I wanted to use them such as for example Tristian and Simon who ended up getting the names Tristian Mohammed Ali and Simon Christopher Brown (the second one named as such to reference the author of Purgatory H.C Brown which gave me the inspiration to think up this story).
One of my characters however just ended up looking like a Hattina Lotts so I just named her that for no other reason then it just felt right for her, despite the fact I wanted to give a more meaningful name I just can't change it now because she is Hattina Lotts and she can't be anything other than that. As for my villain character I'm still debating if I want him to have a Biblical name or just to call him Sin and be done with it. As you may have noticed my naming style is just a random mess of I want this and that but it makes the character names in my opinion look more natrual instead of being formulayic and I kinda like it.
I like those names too! It's interesting how your process differs from character to character. It was a very insightful read! Thanks for taking the time to share your process and a bit about your story! Best of luck!
When I named my 5 main characters I just went off whatever I felt like but the rest of the cast have names with meanings. I'm hoping that this will one day drive people crazy as they try to see the reasoning behind the main few names and yet nothing comes of it
LOL I LOVE THAT
@@MonitorComics haha thanks XD
I’m so glad you made a video for naming characters, I’m absolutely terrible at naming anything so this helps with my writing :)
I'm super glad to hear that!! Thanks for taking the time to check this video out and leaving a comment! Best of luck with your story!
One of my characters is Hinata Hamasaki. I chose the name Hinata as it means sunflower, a flower that matches her sunny happy personality and her strength and determination as those flowers are known to be able to grow in the toughest of places. I chose 'Hamasaki' as her last name as a tribute to one of my favorite singers, Ayumi Hamasaki. Plus I love alliteration.
That's a great name! Thanks for taking the time to share your thought process behind it! I love it!
madara actually isnt a hard name, the thing is, its written in another language. Another thing, you can use difficult names, and it actually matters to the story,
instead of putting a flat name that you dont like, name the character what you like, example in one piece there's a character called trafalgar d water law,
this name is written to be hard for the protagonist, thats why nicknames exist, instead the protagonist (luffy) calls him 'torao' translated means tra-guy.
Oh actuallly i wanna share my character's names too so:
Casper: chill guy with a cool bodyguard, got shot in the eye, works in the library, his nickname: firefly
Sen kuro: the cool bodyguard, he resembles a black cat with golden eyes, classy person, mostly refered as senku, also, his surname kuro means black
Alistar: he's a pilot, a nice smiley person but with trauma, got left alone when his friends crashed somewhere,then he rescued someone and lives with them, nickname: al
Vanda: crazy woman go kill some bullies, scientist, lives with her best friend.
this are the characters that actually have names lol.
Others are tf, vg, and aka
reason why they dont have names because they're actually my childhood characters and i named them abreviations bc i was to dumb to actually think something
sorry if i wrote an essay!
Bet half of them are naming their imaginary waifus
Here's a conundrum:
I write stories in my head while I do mundane tasks, then I outline on paper the key moments of the story and fill the gaps later. So far, I have 12 games, 3 TV series (each with average of 6 episodes) and 1 film.
None of these have a single name for a character 😅 I do have for a few, but it's like 3 of them. At this point, I might as well finished the story and then name them.
Thank you for taking the time to share a bit about your projects! I think your approach is effective! There's little benefit in stopping production over something like not being able to find the correct name yet
MANY professional projects take that same approach and use placeholder names or labels like "BOY A" until they figure out the name they want
That's awesome to hear though that you are working on so many projects! Best of luck!
Tip 8: exists
Bertholtholthrloruto: no
The mc of my current book is called Loch Swarzforth, loch meaning hole in Latin, and swarz coming from black in German, and forth being a word I added randomly. Most of the characters have Latin/German derivative names, because it’s set in a world of magic, around medieval times.
Loch also means "loser" in Russian, sorry😅
Thanks for the advice. It's a tad harder to see this work in a story that's more a fantasy setting, though...
I mean for me, all the girls are named in some respects to Flowers - which seems rather easy, but then you look at things like Language of Flowers and such and it creates a wide variety of ideas based on what flower name you give and it can be doubled in a sense with other languages or other parts.
Another case is I have a character named Rosca - that can be shorted to "Ross" but there's a sort of origin to it: Loscann is (as far as I can confirm this) Old Irish for 'Frog' and given the character himself has frog-like features, it fits well. I went with R instead of L due to interchangeable L and R sounds.
Very good points! Flower Language is super interesting, so I can see how working around that could be challenging. Fantasy names play by their own rules (or lack there of) haha. I've seen some very unique and one of a kind name in fantasy stories, so it was a bit harder to think of general tips for fantasy names. My best advice would be to do what youre doing with the flower subject. Pointing down a theme or some sort of association might help generate some ideas! Regardless, thanks for taking the time to share your experience! Best of luck!!
This is tricky with certain backstories or characters like my MC has no traditional parents, he has his employer and his little siblings. Which means he has no family name, I’ve thought a lot about how I want to to portray this because the world is kinda dystopian to a certain extent so the government doesn’t really care enough about abandoned kids or orphans to give them names or homes. The only reason they are even alive is because of the employer but trying to explain this without using a wall of text is difficult lol
I’ll probably just use some environmental storytelling and show how the government doesn’t really care and I think that will probably get the hint across enough for the audience to interpret how they survived and why they don’t have a family name
For a character of mine i thought of the nickname “candlelight” and he would be called this because of how weak his powers were
Candlelight actually sounds like a really cool nickname! Thanks for taking the time to share! Best of luck!
I have a question, do you have any tips for incorporating racial and ethnic diversity into your manga specifically as this is the style I primarily work within and, well manga isn't particularly great at this. I know this is largely influenced by Japan's population being primarily of Japanese descent and inclusion of racial diversity being generally of a lesser concern, but I live in a country where realistically the cast are not going to be the same race and nor do I want an entirely pale cast. It also doesn't help that for the most part it seems characters are designed more so based on personality rather than to communicate their racial and ethnic background.
Take Izuku Midoriya for example, he doesn't really look like any race in particular as his eyes are rounder than any actual person would have and he has green hair (although I tend to assume that if he were to have a realistically designed counterpart that they would just have black hair and that the dark green serves as highlights and fits into the general anime hair colour theory and thus reflects his personality over actual physical looks). Compare Izuku to David Shield and there one could not tell that they aren't from the same background unless you knew the characters' names and the story. And this holds true for many series. I'm not saying that a series needs to always make race explicit and, I'll confess that even in real life I often have no clue what race people actually are, but I believe it would still be beneficial for many creators to perhaps have a better understanding and idea on how to design characters that represent more than just one skin tone.
Sorry for the long and poorly worded response, I wasn't exactly sure how to best phrase this. I've just been working on a series and wanted to have characters that weren't all the same skin tone and realised I didn't know how to go about doing it, nor did I have any manga on my shelf to help me out.
With Manga the characters almost always depicted in black and white with plenty of greyscale and tones to fill in the blanks, so skin colour will always be difficult to protray properly. Same with hair colour so having coloured versions of the characters may help with that and as for physically racial/ethnical features you just need to study them as you would anything else in art and make them fit in your style.
Thank you for taking the time to share all of this! You make some valid points! I too value diversity in my stories and try to focus on non-white characters for my main cast. Since I have Mexican descent, I decided to make my main character and his family darker toned with textured hair. I plan to make a video on this topic in the future. The company I work with, Saturday AM champions diversity in manga. I highly recommend you check some of their series out
They have MANY cool manga titles that feature characters of different races. For designing characters of different races respectfully, I recommend you check out WhytManga's RUclips channel. He is published in the same magazine as me and has created some great manga tutorials around this subject!
Best of luck!
Nah, I disagree, names are less important than you might think.
The character's design and personality are much more important, you can do whatever you want with the names. Wither you want to express some hidden symbolism, or you just want to name a bunch of foods you like, or maybe you are making a joke about their personalities or look or even just your current mood, the name is the easiest part of making a story because everything else about a character makes the name memorable. The name of your story however, that is different, and that can be one of the most difficult and final decisions to make in a series (you might even find that the name of your series changes after it releases due to fan input or marketing after it blows up). Character names, they don't matter... I want to say, "Just don't go too corny or cheesy like for example 'All Might' ", and "Avoid names that are too similar and too close to each other narratively LIKE what AOT did with Erwin, Eren, Armin", or even "don't be too typical or stereotypical, like Sasuke from Naruto" but obviously, even that can be very successful. You actually can do whatever you want.
Hi! You’re so close to 35 thousand subs that’s CRAZY good luck! Also could you make a video on character design? I’m having some trouble making good outfits, hair, and faces for the characters in my comic
Same here buddy
I will add it to my list of upcoming topics! Thanks for taking the time to leave a nice comment and video suggestion! I really appreciate it!
This isn't related to the video context but I would like to give you some advice or constructive criticism if that's okay. I noticed when you were drawing the hair you started with the hair strands. I've always found it to be easier for me if I drew the head first and then the hairline. And then you can decide where to start drawing the hair, how it parts, and so on. I hope this helps :)
All good! I appreciate the suggestion! I'll give it a try in my next drawing!
@@MonitorComics okay :) 👍
Sometimes, it can take me longer to come up with good character names than it does to write the entire story.
Katsu is going to be my Main Character... It´s literraly just the meaning of my Name as a Japanese Name.
Hanami, Nanami, Gojo, Geto, Jogo, Choso. Even the writer's name is Gege
And then there's the "Only known by their nickname" trope. Even if you're character has the most common pedestrian name e.g. Jack Williams, David Smith, Jane Jackson; you can count on the likes of Jack being only referred to as Sparrow.
Great point!! Thanks for taking the time to add onto the discussion!
My story have more than one main protagonist and all are important
Make a video on how to handle more than one protagonist
Well I m not writing a manga
But will make an anime on it in future
Thank you for taking the time to leave a video suggestion! I will add it to my list of upcoming topics!
Every single day I regret naming my characters Neon & Nine I could probably write an entire book for each of them on why their names are "symbolic" and "meaningful" but the execution kills me inside
the name I chose for my main character is "Ki" (still working on a last name) which is the the first kanji for Hope, his great predecessor has the name "Bo" the last kanji for hope. Ki also translated as spirit and energy, also the word for Air, and air symbolizes the spirit and the "vital breath of the universe" heres a lil thingie "J.C. Cooper points out that wind represents the power of spirit in sustaining life and holding it together"
That sound awesome! Love the meanings! Thanks for taking the time to share your character name and your thought process for developing it!
Im writing a story where all the main characters have flower based names. The main two are as follows.
Violet Bell - the main character. Blue violets symbolize watchfulness and faithfulness, and thats what Violet is - someone who always stands by the people she cares for, and will always look after them. Additionally, its part of the famous "roses are red, violets are blue" poem. Meanwhile I just chose Bell for her last name because I thought it sounded good.
Rosa "Rose" Farina - Red roses are all about love, and pink roses are about happiness. Rose is a character who lives for love in all its forms - romantic, friendship, etc. Similarly, she's an unbridled optimist, hence the meaning behind the pink rose. Farina is an Italian name meaning "flour," referring to the fact that her family owns a restaurant - the Farina Italian Eatery. Also, part of the "roses are red, violets are blue" poem.
Personally the names have been kicking my ass for years but for my central story I ended up taking a step back and just calling my characters by nicknames since they are set in my country and folks are called by a community name not their birth one. It's kind of ridiculous actually, I've had family die and only learn their actual names from the pamphlet thing given out at their funeral! Hell, the first time I heard my own name outside of a class setting is when I ended up moving to Canada (I'm still not used to it😭)
Mc is just Sunny bc folks always hear his mom shouting for him to go give out the food she made on sunny days (he'll be stuck with that for years, I was Passion bc I used to help my gran sell passion fruit at market plus I had a temper as a kid lol)
Personally i'm trying to create a lot of characters for a story that's sort of inspired by some web series that i loved (and that i continue to love) for example Gwain Saga.
For the character names i don't follow a specific ruleset, if the name represents the character, than it's fine by me!
For example, i called one of my characters Lucy, i called her like that because she's able to create light outside of her body, in my native language "Light" is called "Luce" so i searched for some names that could fit well and.... Ta daaa! Name found!
I usually have semi-hard to pronounce names, but it depends on if the reader knows how to speak/write a different language.
Like my character Lili Dwr, she.. a self-insert (yes, I know people hate those. But it's just for fun) so her name is welsh like my name irl. Usually the people I meet can't pronounce the name, just like how a lot of people can't pronounce my irl name.
There's more of a deeper meaning this name, so if my translation is correct, lili dwr means "water lily" in welsh. Water lilies are very pretty, but are on top of water, which I have a phobia of pools/oceans/swimming. I thought this was interesting, since i plan on having my ashes thrown into the ocean as a fuck you to my phobia.
There's a bit more, but I forgot about it since I didn't write it down.
Now we just need how to come up with a name for your comic/manga
Very true! That is on my list of upcoming video topics!
I also recommend from experience fantasy name generators that create names from letters. They're very useful if you want your name to sound a specific way or have a nickname but have to find a matching name for it.
THAT IS A GREAT TIP! Thanks for sharing!
Thank you. You deserve this. For a long time I found myself struggling in coming up with names for the characters in my story, and you helped me with the exact problem. I have begun writing a novel last year, and I am still stuck at episode 3. One of the characters in the novel is a man in his forties named Edmond Smith, Queen Tiana's watchdog. His previeous surname was Hersmith, but I realized it's to complicated. The name Edmond represent a king, so I wonder if it's a fitting name for the royal watchdog.
One of my characters is called Eric which sounds pretty basic. But the reason his parents chose that name is actually more interesting. Eric was derived from the irish word Éraic (meaning: a tribute paid in reparation for the murder of an irishman) when Eric's mother was pregnant with him, an Irish man threatened to slay them both. And so to protect his wife and unborn child, Eric's father killed the man.
Once Eric was born however they soon realised that Karma had struck and they would be paying for this irishmans death for the rest of their lives, through raising an unpredictable and dangerous child.
Hence, Eric is literally an Éraic!
Names of my Ocs:
Protagonist: Baird Lymson
Antagonists: Melody Demour, Hijack and Blaz Janseus
Other characters: Kaizen Noame, Norman Wethart
Idk if their names sounds good or cool, what do you think?
The name that I've came up with that I am most proud of is the name of the main character for the fantasy story I am working on now - Stella Stern.
"Stella" means "star" in italian, while "stern" has the same meaning in german. Meanwhile Stella's nickname is "Star", as she was always the "brightest star" of the class, the "miss perfect".
I really like how the name sounds, it has a nice ring to it. I also thing it matched the character's "stern" (lol) personality, having been raised to become a knight, while also conveying how much of a guiding light she would become to her friends.
On the other hand, this name also reflects her power - the power of light, similar to that of a star - as it is revealed later in the story that Star is a Nephilim - a biblical being born from a human mother and an angel.
Stella is an awesome name! Thanks for taking the time to share your thought process behind naming this character that! It was really insightful! Best of luck!
@@MonitorComics Thank you for your feedback!! Wasn't really expecting you to notice my comment, I'm glad you answered!
Wow, is that a new intro or has it really been that long since I've had the chance to watch one of your videos? Either way, I like it.
Very helpful video. These are all points that I've learned to use during my years of research and practice, so having them all in one place like this will undoubtedly be helpful for a lot of people.
An extra tip/suggestion that I use when naming characters is selecting an existing name and replacing at least one letter/syllable with a totally different one in order to make new names. It's been pretty helpful.
That's a great additional tip! Thanks for taking the time to share all of that Hollow! My Intro is actually the same, but its funny you mentioned that. I've been planning on either making a new intro or commissioning an artist to make one for me for about a month now. So at some point soon there will be a new intro haha
@@MonitorComics My pleasure, Monitor. Thank YOU for the helpful video.
I'm looking forward to seeing your new intro once you've got it planned and made. I'll definitely miss the current one!
i like to play around with already existing names and mixing them with other names or even words from different languages!
for example i thought nezuko from ds was a cute name, but i really wanted my girl to have a name that means rain. Searched up what rain was in japanese, and i got Ameko.
That's a great way to go about it! Thanks for taking the time to share your process!
meanwhile we got names from Phoenix wright
So uh haha
Uh i literally just went up to a Japanese anime name randomizer
I feel like an absolute noob now
No worries, random name generators are great tools and good starting points! Sometimes if I am REALLY stumped, I'll use those for inspiration!
I'm ways stumped lmao, i lack creativity at this point 😅
Julius Novachrono is probably one of the best names that have been thought off for a character
I've named some of my characters after instruments
Baz= bass
Tamryn= tambourine
Gita= guitar
Wuuhh like Dragonballs with the foodstuff (veggie) theme huh? I dig it
@@jefflight8188 basically, yeah; thanx
Tip 7: Avoid names that are already known in pop culture.
Meanwhile Araki: hmm... I'm gonna name this dude VANILLA ICE
Araki is a madman. He references SO MANY bands and musicians in his character names LOL
I've got so many side characters that its kinda hard to name some of them. I usually just look into how the word is pronounced in a certain language. I'm needing some ideas if you want to let me know. I've got most planned out but its kinda hard to name all of them differently so i'd love to hear from others who may have ideas I could use if they wanted.
I'm planning to adapt a Sci-Fi roleplay story of mine I did with a partner and our two characters. My character is called Aegon Schmidt and I named him that way because of a character called Eygon from Dark Souls 3 and I thought it was a cool name. I looked it up and saw it was a German name. My character's culture is based on German culture, along with it being a common Valyrian regal name in the Song of Ice and Fire world, along with it being short and simple to pronounce, I thought it was perfect to use. His last name indicates his middle class status since he's not of noble birth though his family are wealthy investors.
My partner's character's name is Zelenia because it's a variation of a tragic yet popular folk heroine's name, Helena, and so was named in honor of said folk hero in her culture. There's more to it but it might not make sense if I explain it here. I hope to publish it someday soon.
i alway name simple name just based on what they reference from, i draw furry dog based on cheem meme, i named her Cheemy,
I find making an idea for a character easier than finding a name. I play Dungeons of Dragons sometimes and I can make a character with a story in a second but takes me more than a minute to find a name. Same goes for my story ones
Very true!! I'm the same way with DnD. Thanks for taking the time to check out this video and leaving a comment!
I generally tend to lend towards themes. In one story, I have different races, humans, elves, dwarves, demons, and pixies. Human names are based on latin, demon names are based on historical figures, dwarves are based off of crafts and stones (Julie-Jewel, Cole), Elves are based off both magical and nature based names, and pixies are only nature based.
In another story, I had to name the royal family, and for that I looked at names used in the British Royal family, and found names I thought suited the character. Zeid for the charismatic crown prince, Yue for the one and only princess with a kind heart and playful nature, and Xander for the wild and intelligent youngest prince. And part of what influenced me to choose Xander for the youngest was that I noticed the Y and Z of the other two and decided I wanted to make it XYZ. On the other hand, their parents are A and B.
I HAVE IT!! Lingo No Goofy
One of my characters names is Levi because of how deceptive I think it is as a name. It’s not inherently good or evil just like the character and all of his arcs.
Sounds cool! Love the name and intention behind it! Thanks for checking out the video and taking the time to share your thoughts!
I made a some characters with names that don't have have meanings through search they just came to me when making them and stuck because no other name would fit when I did try to find one, is that ok?
Absolutely! There doesn't have to ALWAYS be an underlying meaning to anything!
Coming up with names is really difficult especially if your characters are foreigners.
VERY TRUE! Thanks for taking the time to check out this video and sharing your thoughts!
Oh boy won't I have fun I get around to planning part 2 of my Manga as well as part 3, I'm thinking Middle Eastern, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Russian and American
UMMM IM SO LUCKY TO FIND THESE VIDEOS WHAAATTT WOOOOWWW THIS IS SOOO USEFULLL THNX UUUU
Lull i was just struggling with this nice timing
I hope this video could help you a bit! Thanks for checking this video out so early!
I'm not even kidding, I have been using the among us colors as the naming scheme for the villains in my dnd campaign. I suck with names, so having something besides bob, Steve, jimmy or translating their character main trait through three different languages is nice.
LOL We love the among us colors!
i agree on the eighth tip becuase there is one my hero academia charachter and his name is ojiro mashirao and im like WUT
TRUE I just refer to him as tail man lol
I also like to give my characters middle names and even nicknames. For example, I've one character whose name is Clément Ernest Durand Corbin. He's a friar in a French-speaking fantasy world, and due to this, a lot of folks pronounce his last name as Cœurbon, effectively changing the way his name is pronounced; but there's more to it than that. The last name Corbin means someone with a hoarse voice or black hair, and Clément has black hair. But the reason the change to Cœurbon is so significant is because it's literally "good heart" in French. But then, to add juxtaposition, Clément, before becoming a friar, was a bloodthirsty warrior, contrasting with his name, Clément, which is literally "clement". Add to that, Ernest means "earnest". Basically, I go for names that both align with and juxtapose a character's personality while also giving hints about their backstory.
That's actually really interesting! Thanks for taking the time to share all of that! I like your thought process! Best of luck with this story!
One piece is great at this
When I create characters I always just think of someone I know and use their name, sometimes slightly changing it up
That's a great strategy! Thank you for taking the time to share that tip!
My MC is called Gokunjiro Kurozumaki
Awesome name! Thanks for taking the time to share!
Thanks for this, I kept seeing your videos in my recommended every once and a while and it always makes me think about this manga I'm working on, I haven't been able to write a script but I'm going to watch more of your videos to continue progressing, and maybe I'll get better at drawing for find an artist after I complete the prologue. Thanks again
That's awesome to hear!! Thank you so much for deciding to check my stuff out! I really appreciate it and hope it can help! Best of luck with your project!!
Names I came up with:
Makai
Roku
Saskia
Natara
Maruchi
Hoiku
Sigo and etc
Very cool!
@@MonitorComics thx
Name generaters
Leaving my comment here because I loved this video and I am fleshing out my own manga/anime plot and I think so far it's great but I'd like thoughts on my Ideas
Its Concept is Descendants of and Ancient All Powerful Vampire (aluding to dracula but still deciding how to mention it or if I even should) who, like in Hellsing, is able to absorb and store people's life forces, essences, and powers in hisself using blood magic.
And who he choose to defeat was Oroboros the World Serpent, god of creation and existence and a dragon that has no end.
This is all the anime backstory sorta like Gol D Roger from one piece.
But he defeats the Dragon and steals some of its Unfathomable Power.
But was Cursed To Die eventually by the dragon. Dispite his immortality.
So he Passed On his legacy to 3 sons an 1 Daughter. All Children he had through magic means with humans so they'd be half human and not be cursed to die in the sunlight like he was.
With one secret Child of Oroboros(The Main Character.) that was Effected by his blood magic when they fought and basically became the same
And I think it's kinda a cool thing naming characters especially for anime because it usually has hidden meanings.
The show is either gonna be Called "DoragonBuraddo" or "Doragon No Chi"
Which literally translate the words "Dragon Blood" and "Dragon's Blood"
The children the Ancient Vampire has are other MCs that help the Main one.
There last names are all "Ketsueki" which is Blood.
The Main Character is Ryū Ketsueki.
Maybe Ryūden but either way translates to "Dragons Sons Blood"
And then the other MCs are Named
Shinji which means "Believe"
Goto which means "Every"
Mono which means "thing"
And Nei which means "Flatteries" Or "Insecureties"
And the way there names say Believe Every Thing, or Believe Every Insecurety, or Believe every Flattery. Idk it's kindof a cool detail I like.
I also feel like the names are pretty simple and Memorable.
Ryū Ketsueki
Shinji Ketsueki
Mono Ketsueki
Nei Ketsueki
Idk they just sound found on the tongue and all I thing they're Great names with cool meanings.
Well, in my country we don't have surnames and my story is based on the characters that lives in my country. And I don't feel like naming my characters in my language. I'd probably name them in english. But i'm not sure if i should make english names that doesn't have surnames. So, I don't know what to do Lol
@Rainbow Rose Princess Mishti Yea I think so
@Rainbow Rose Princess Mishti Oh okay, thx for replying!!
Currently I am thinking of a story about a bunch of people creating a guild within a game, so within the story each of the main characters has two names. An online username and their actual name. It is much easier for me to think of a username since I and all my friends play video games, but their actual names are a lot more troublesome.
I’m having a hard time with one of my villains because they style of my comic is supposed to be specifically a power metal amv. I already have a couple hitmen with names like “Pulse Breaker” and “Slaughter Dog” but I have this one third world pirate whose name I can’t come up with
Me personally i just go with the the hunter x hunter approach where he plays with random syllables and they just sound cool, Example: chrollo and kurapika. Plus im trying to make a supernatural world thats like earth but not the same, think hxh
Watching this video because I'm actually pretty terrible at naming characters. Of the ones I have named, my favorite is Service-With-A-Smile "Viss" Sharp, who was raised in a future capitalist hellscape where puritan style virtue names, and Dee, a character with DID with the personalities Diane and Delilah, both D names from songs about women, symbolizing how both personalities only see themselves in other's perceptions of them
I have a lot of fun creating names for my characters. I'm on a project that is actually more of a self project since I don't consider myself an artist, that's not the job I chose, but creating characters and stories is just too much fun to me. I have this story with two factions called Rebels and Repressers, and their names work pretty much like superheroes or mha heroes, despite them being on the other side of society, kind of. Also there is a lot of hip hop culture in there which I really love and giving nicknames is something really common. First attempts were trying to be overly complicated, then I started erasing them and starting from zero again. For the protagonist, Gabriel Arnegeed, I just gave my name the English way, then anagrammed "renegade" a way it could look cool. And for the rest I noticed that going simple helps creating really cool names. Like Norbert Warston, because he is more structured and muscular and his father is in the "Rebel military" called "Rebellic". Then I have this dude called Taisuke Yorker, because even if it's not the earth, it's something really similar to it, and the equivalents to Japan and the US do exist, also Taisuke is one of my favorite dancers.
Let's see nicknames. Vectorblade is a cool one I came up with, for a guy called Martin Kernan (not much of a meaning). It probably already exists but who cares. I really like Headgroove and Miss Sileride tho, one is a girl who loves listening to music with her headphones and wants to become a DJ (her surname and name respectively start with D and J on purpose) and the other one has a missile/looking object propelled with small rockets she rides, it came from a word pun I really liked.
I name my characters based on the world they're in. So what I do is create the characters and the world, give the character abilities and powers (if any) and then I go back and name them when I have a plot and base world outlined.
So if they're in Japan, I'll give them Japanese names. If they're in a new world in a different dimension then our own, I'll give them unique, unorthodox names.
Some of my character Names:
Sayzer
Calistoga
Hrizellio
Britain von Gangsterbond
Thank you for taking the time to share your process! That's a great way to go about it! Love the character names! If I had to pick a favorite I think I'm leaning towards Sayzer! Best of luck with your story!
Same, except I also name them based on their Nationality
Thank YOU SO MUCH BRO
I struggle with this alot of times
Of course! I hope it was able to help a bit!
Never really thought about guidelines for naming characters before all that much! This are some really cool tips to keep in mind and even if you got to break them, you can do it intentionally and with style at least. Like sometimes, you got to sacrifice easy pronounceability because the kinds of names in the setting are very unfamiliar to say an English audience. But might be worth it if the name is still really great and fitting for the character.
I find coming up with character names to be very fun especially when your efforts reward you with The Name and I might get my frustrations at times, but still enjoy the process of hunting for a name nevertheless.
Just the other day I found a The Name for a character I've been coming up with. As I am an aspiring game dev, I decided to take inspiration from Fire Emblem: Three Houses protag customization and would allow the player to customize the MC's name and gender. At the same time, the MC has a default name and I'm pretty proud of it. Their default name is Anu, a reference to the Egyptian Death god Anubis. This is fitting as in a fantasy setting where each of the twelve Western zodiac signs is represented as a god or goddess, Anu would be the deity representing Scorpio. I have many other names I really like for my other characters but talking about all of them would make this comment really long lol.
8:02 as well as this, Bungo Stray Dogs involve actual author names (Allan Edgar Poe, Aktugawa, Atsushi, Dazai etc) along with one of their works as their power name (akutagawa - rashumon). All these people existed (except Naomi I think) but it’s set in modern day