A guide full of tips and tricks that hopefully doesn't recount the same old stuff in every other writing book under the sun, Wattpad and published alike. Covering everything from helpful resources like Susanna's Pacemaker to treating setting like ch...
Would smell as sweet. I haven't really talked very much about character and character creation (aside from voice, but hey). It seems fitting to start properly and officially with names.
I notice an alarming trend, especially when peeking into club threads begging for help choosing last names for characters. The Anglo-Saxon names are abound. The go-to options are always quite plain: Black, Fletcher, Woods, et cetera, et cetera. They are often very simple, rooted in England, and monosyllabic. That might be a generalization, but it happens enough that I want to roll my eyes.
Names are a balance. They matter. Holden Caulfield, Darth Vader, Margo Roth Speigelman. Their names mean something. Readers remember them for a reason. A careful balance of meaning, syllabic balance, rhythm, and combination of sounds. That seems like a lot of factors. It's not.
Memorable, pronouncable, meaningful.
Real Reality
Fantasy is a different beast, so let us begin with the standard universe as we know it scenario. Here's the deal. North America is a multi-faceted, multicultural melting pot. Mostly, it is immigrants. If you can't trace your heritage back to a Native American tribe, you trace back to an immigrant. That is just the nature of the beast. That means there are a lot of last names. England is a very small country. For the love of God, can not all last names be English names. They aren't innately boring in themselves, but when the trend of Anglo-Saxon domination appears, they get old fast.
The trick of using last names rooted in different languages, whether it be Polish or Japanese, can be the pronouncability. There are still foreign sounding names that retain the ability to be easily read by a user. Go for those names.
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Sounds Good To Me
There is something about a name that flows. There's something about a properly balanced name. There's something about repeated sounds.
There's the classic, easy alliteration: Wyck Warner, Molly Mercer, Reed Richards, Clarke Kent, Peter Parker, Jessica Jones. The list goes on, especially if you're listing off Marvel characters. Alliteration can make an otherwise bland name stand out. Jessica and Peter are, by themselves, common. An alliteration turns them into memorable bad-guy ass-kickers. A good call for shorter names.
Similar sounds: Flynn Allman. Jane Madarang. Leo Zalinka I wish I had more examples that weren't just my characters. They're not quite rhymes, but something about the flow sounds nice. Imperfect rhymes can give nice rhythm without being as obtuse and cheesy as a perfect rhyme. It also helps it be less obnoxious if there's a mix of syllables. 1-2, 2-1. Something along those lines.
Short and long, long and short: Pairing a short name with a long name or vice versa is a good trick to have in the arsenal.
This is all a pretty complicated way to say try saying names out loud as you attempt to mash them together.
Meaning: This is completely dependant on the story. Sometimes I really gun for a name to mean something. All the last names in Natalie's Diary are carefully chosen. Driscoll means intermediary, which certainly has something to do with Natalie's role in the book. Some of the name meanings border on spoiler-y if anyone decided to look them up. In Team Spirit, I took zero meaning into account when choosing last names.
Aside from the straightforward meaning of names, I've also taken into account famous bearers of names, such as unfortunate queens and a lot of saints. It's kind of a fun layer to add to name all your characters after patron saints, especially if their patronage matches character.
Another thing I've taken into account is family crests associated with surnames. Rhys Davenport gained his last name specifically for the family crest.
Building Fantasy Names
I think too often fantasy falls victim to mimicking medieval England or Western Europe, ergo, a lot of it can become quite similar. If you're breaking free of that version of the fantasy genre, here are some ideas to integrate some linguistic culture into your made-from-scratch worlds, tribes, and races.
Naming Structures: So, there's some super cool stuff that still exists in different languages today. Iceland still retains some Patrynomic naming. That is to say, when you hear names like Petersen, Larsen, Johnson, et cetera, these are residual surnames from Patrynomic naming. If Lars is your dad, Peter Larsen you shall be. And your son, John Petersen. Et cetera, et cetera. This is also where names like Ramirez, Martinez, Rodriguez, -ez being the 'son of' type suffice. Something to consider when building fantasy names. (Especially helpful if it's important to remind readers of who a character's father is, perhaps?) For girls, -dottir, dotter, datter or an alteration of it was a common suffix. Matrynomic systems also existed.
Thai Names: I learned fairly recently that in Thailand, there is a vast, vast abundance of last names because Thai family names are unique to immediate family. There are rules for creating new names, such as they must be less than ten letters long and must not be the same as any other in the database. When I looked up stats, 81% of surnames were unique in Thailand, and given names only 35% were unique. Another interesting fact is that the rate with which people change their given name is much higher than average, people changing their name to ward off bad luck after divorces and whatnot.
Russian Diminutives: At the risk of possibly confusing readers... Slavic names often have levels and levels of nicknames. Formal names, school names, family names, friend names, lover names. If you can wrap your head around it, it's a cool way to instantly establish how intimate a relationship is by what a character calls another. As far as basic breakdown goes: for a name like Daria, diminutives include Dasha, Dashen'ka, and Daryonka. If you're actually writing a Russian character, you need to look into this way more. I'm simply presenting it here as a jumping off point for creating the impression of fantasy language and culture without inventing an entire language.
The First Name
Last and not least. I don't know if there's an exact science to choosing a first name. Sometime I'm very picky about meaning, sometimes it's off the top of my head. Really depends on the book you are writing.
What I have noticed on Wattpad is that there are certain names that pop up a lot. Back to back, I read books that both had Lydias in them and in a scenario like that, I find it harder to separate them as characters. I'm always thinking back to the last Lydia I read about. Find a name that offers uniqueness to a character without naming them Saggitarius Lysander McCarthy.
There is nothing wrong with an average kind of name. Dress it up with nicknames and a solid last name and a strong personality to go with it. Acknowledge that there's a little stereotyping to certain names. Don't fight it unless that's your goal (like Spinelli and the Ashleys in Recess, yeah?).
So, I'm slow on my draw this week. I promise there shall be one.
In a moment of unrelated news, this week, Natalie's Diary is complete! Watch out for Team Spirit to come, something utterly different that doesn't involve anyone dying. I promise. There are gay teenagers and no one dies!
