How To Pick Baby Names For Character

How are character names made up?

Heya.So there are various ways people come up with character names and an even bigger amount of people telling you how you should pick character names. Some say they should mean something, somehow related to the destiny of your character across the series.Well, that's all and good, and sometimes I do use that method. I love BabyNames.com - Baby Names & Meanings, Most Popular Names' advanced search when I’m picking character names. It lets me search for exactly what I want. (Not an add btw, just a tool I like)Other times, I see a name in a business, or on a street sign. That just calls out to me, creates a character on the spot.I also like Fantasy name generators, I tend to pick and choose pieces of those to build myself a pretty name. My most recent names of that method so far are; Oura-Aquil Kicas Qirries Kalerk-Derrihk. and her brother, Rirra-Uss Krikkeg Arral Kalerk-Derrihk. (Wow, Grammarly really hates those names).The generator didn’t give me the names like that, but I picked them and put them together to make a name I liked. (Also one’s I couldn’t figure out how to pronounce at first… whoops).One of my friends has a fun technique for making her character names. She slams her hands down on the keyboard and gets a series of letters. For example. idfpgis. So from that, she would add some vowels, tidy it up, and that's her characters name. I think she’d probably come up with a name like Fupios, or Dipsco. It gives her a lot of really fun, unique names that no one else tends to have. (Note, she does it much better than I do, so please ignore my poor attempts to explain).What I’ve found with character names, and what I try to remember, is that their parents had to pick those names, had to have a reason why they wanted to name their children that. Be it a family name passed down, or a prophecy of something great to come in the future. I tend to name my royals the names that their parents would want them to be like as a ruler. Victorious, wise, caring, etc.Hopefully, this answers your question.

If you were to name your child after a fictional character, which character would you choose?

My wife and I named our daughter Antonia after the character in Willa Cather’s “My Antonia”. We wanted a name that would combine both Greek and Bohemian cultures. We wanted a name that would fit our new little daughter, that by all evidence of her strong movements in the womb, was going to arrive on the scene full of strength and fortitude.The fictional character is the epitome of the human ability to adapt, survive and flourish. Antonia is a very well crafted female character, and perhaps the best crafted female character I have ever experienced, even though we never directly see her experiences; Her life is described to us through a male character. The book had a large impact on me when I read it as a teenager.My daughter is nearly 16 now. I don't think she has ever been embarrassed by the name. I still love Willa Cather and the character she created. I am not embarrassed by my pick either, even though it could be seen as superficial or as an annoying attempt to choose an intellectual name. The choice for me was at least a declaration of hope for myself: I hoped for the ability to help form a life that aspired to the qualities and values of a character I greatly admired in fiction. I hoped to be able to eschew my innate misogyny, learned from my society and upbringing, so that I might not get in the way of the development a beautiful, strong, smart woman who would be unfolding before me.I am very proud of my Antonia and the person she is becoming day by day. She is more than a fiction. She is more than I could have ever imagined when I chose the name.