I can't honestly say how I make up names. A few evolved from rip-offs of Tolkien's names, a couple are variations of real names, but the rest.... I don't know; they just come to me, I guess.






A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people- Thomas Mann




My writing blog: [aspiringpen.blogspot.com]

Names? It depends. A lot of the time, I've used a baby name book, a name website, or another name book I got a while back. With the last two, I generally randomly choose a nationality and look through the names until I find one that I like the sound and meaning of (and haven't already used a couple of times). With one story, most of the names of the major characters sort of just came to me (all but one are real world names).

Occasionally, I just make a name up. That tends to be my process for naming places, as well; I just fit a few syllables together until I like the sound. I've sometimes randomly hit keys on the keyboard and then pieced something together from the gibberish, but that's not a normal method for me.

A lot of times I look at behindthename at names from a certain nationality that I think my civilizations are similar to. Sometimes I just use normal names. Sometimes I make names up. It just depends.

Usually I just type random keys on the key board. 5/10 times it I'll be almost perfect. Other times I put two words together. Or go latin for something then tweak it ever so slightly

oh, sometimes I do this stuff on whims. My main character in one book book was named by my inspiration of Celtic music and implements. Another was named for my love of wraiths. And still others are just ordinary family names. :P

And for the names of places...hmmm, I guess I just think of where a specific race would live and what they would call a place. For the wraiths/gaurdians of the world their land is more nobly named, even if it's a horrid place to live (because they destroyed it) and for the humans, I have their one town named for more rest, a place people can relax.

Hm... people names really depends on what I'm writing. Fantasy, most times I just make them up (and same goes for places in such situations). But if I'm going for a certain type of name, either I'll tweak existing names, or use Behind the Name or something like that :)

[www.babynamescountry.com] alllll the wayyyyyy.... for nams of people at least.for places or groups of people i either chose a very obviouse name for them (like calling blue people the blues) or i pick a latin name that means something relavent to them and tweak it slightly

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That which does not feel pain is dead.

#3. I have a blog series about this...[thewordsmithsshelf.blogspot.com]



President and Founder of Twilight is Overrated Club
The Traveler as Vice President
Current Members: Galadriel, Trav,Eberwolf, Aljeron12, Sulmandir, vareth in silico
Purl, LovelornLark, Mindarin, Anna-Light Warrior, Caeli

There are three rules of writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
— W. Somerset Maugham

OK, I missed one.

Question 2: I could never count my charries, simply because--besides the ones in WiPs--I also have many characters that do not live within stories but are merely scene-bound or floating around in my computer waiting for a life. But most of my stories have one of each (male/female) for the main characters, often equally devided for POVs. I HAVE noticed though, that my stories that are more likely to be finished feature males as MCs. Dunno why.

Question 3: It's different for every story. For my current fantasy work, I was trying to thwart every possible cliche, so I have Asian elves and Middle Eastern/African humans, and all my people names are NORMAL. My main character is an elf, but his name is Daniel. It makes things a bit more fun.
Other people names come from all kinds of places--one story, each character had a name that meant something about them. One, I took every single name from the names of authors of books on my shelves. It just depends.
Place names, I'll usually make up with random syllables.

Pay no attention to the bird behind the curtain!!
Trav is a SHE
http://www.musings-in-a-strange-land.blogspot.com/
I am a Wraith of Yore...fear me and my power of forgotten-thread blackmail

Names are probably my favorite part of storybuilding. Finding a fitting name for a character makes me want to write the character, you know? I did a blog post about it a couple years ago, but can't really be arsed to look it up. :P

Sometimes I build my language from scratch, and come up with names from there (this is what I did for last year's NaNo, when I'd just finished The Kite Runner and couldn't get those sounds out of my head). Sometimes I pull from real-world names, with modifications as the world languages demand. Sometimes the name comes to me first and everything else follows. It's the same with characters as it is for places; it depends on the story, when I'm writing it and how long I'm planning to write it.

QUESTION #4: Tell us about one of your first stories/characters!

Ooh. This one's gonna be fun. :D I want DETAILS, people; let us commiserate!