How do you pick your names?

sheeep

sheeep

Active member
Just curious about how you go about picking names for your stories. Personally I just wait or hope for something to pop into my head.
 
i use www.behindthename.com

the etymology of every name in my stories has significance. for example, Ron and Carol from "I F*cking Hate You" both have music and song related origins. "Heart of Now" goes even deeper. the names often point to that characters core trait. for example, the name 'monica' points toward motherhood (and this character is the matriarch of a group of friends) as well as the latin word moneo, which means advisor. and its her advice that drops a moral dilemma on the main character.
 
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Ifyou're looking for random character names, just check out your e-mail spam - yes, it really is good for something
 
Sometimes I just pick a random name, the first that comes to my head and sounds good. That being said, I sometimes go deeper like Zak does. It all depends on my mood, the story and the characters.
 
I recently finished a horror screenplay, called "Dead Mine Seven." It's a story about 6 people trapped in an abandoned gold mine, being killed off by a creature. You may recognize the basic story line of (Some group of people) trapped in a (spaceship ("Alien)", mine, room) being killed off by (psycho, monster, etc.). One of the classics of this formula is of course "It, the Terror from Beyond Space" (1958). So, as an homage to that film, I derived all my character names from the names of the actors & director from that film:
Marshall Thompson, the hero >> "Marla" (the heroine)
Edward L. Cahn (director) >> "Cahner"
Shawn Smith >> "Sean"
Kim Spalding >> "Kim"
Ann Doran >> "Annie"
Ray "Crash" Corrigan (the creature) >> "Ray"
 
For main chars I think the names should conjure an image pertinent to the character. For example, I wrote a short script about a woodland faery, and in human form her name was "Heather" (also a woodland plant). Look at the film "Man on Fire"; Denzel Washington's character goes crazy with revenge to get back the little girl (Dakota Fanning); his character's name: Creasy. (creasy => crazy). Dakota Fanning even says Creasy as if it almost sounds like "Crazy".

sheeep said:
Just curious about how you go about picking names for your stories. Personally I just wait or hope for something to pop into my head.
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Of course the char names should never sound similar, so as to not confuse the audience. Avoid names starting with same letter, same phonics, etc.

sheeep said:
Just curious about how you go about picking names for your stories. Personally I just wait or hope for something to pop into my head.
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I've noticed a certain trend in most films that at some point durin the film, a character will say the films title.
 
Depends on what kind of script I am writing. If the setting is a fantastical or far futuristic sci-fi world then I will either make up names that when read or pronounced will seem to fit the characters looks or personality. I sometimes use mythological names. Sometimes I will take a name from Greek mythology for example, and alter it slightly.

For more realisitc, contemporary set stories, I like to use behind the name as mentioned by Zak above. Usually I use that site for first names for my characters. For last names I break out the yellow pages and flip through looking for interesting last names that fit my characters. I also modify these character last names as well.
 
I think something that hasn't been stated that should be fairly obvious is to consider a character's ethnicity and ancestry.
 
True. One of my characters of recent, an American Zimbabwean, ended up named Ambrose Ndlovu, while a Dutch American ended up with the name Max Kluivert. Ethnicity and ancestry is a good way of picking naming schemes.
 
I have kind of a quirky thing I like to do. I my films, one character is somehow related -- distantly, most times -- to a character in a previous film.

For instance, in my current feature 'Tangled Web', a character in the opening scene is on a business phone call. She says, "Yeah, but not if Harrison has something to say about it. You know how he is." Though 'Harrison' is never mentioned again, in my mind she's talking about Ran Harrison. Ran Harrison was a corporate exec character from my previous feature 'Afterlife'.

In 'Afterlife', there was a minor character at the end named Dr. Wilson. The lead in my previous short film 'A Matter of Life' was Meredith Wilson. In my mind, they are distant relatives.

It's just a fun little thing I do. :) (Fun for ME, anyway.)
 
First of all I think it's important to state that names, in reality, don't mean anything. They are given to babies, that haven't really developed into persons yet. As such names are random, and I don't really think an audience usually gives the names of characters in movies much significance. That being said, I spend a lot of time choosing the names of characters. It is usually the very first thing I do when writing. That is because, even though names are essentially meaningless, they do have a meaning to me. I think it has to do with people you already know. If I write a character that somehow resembles a person I know i real life, it makes sense in my head to use a name that has some similarity.

What I do, practically, is get a list. One of those parents use when choosing a name for their kids, and then I just start reading until I stumble over something that I can associate with the, usually at this point vague, idea I have of the character. But in a way I use the name to help define the character in my head. You just have to remember that most of the time, the name will mean nothing, or something enterily different to an audience, so it's really just at tool while developing the character.
 
I disagree. We on a conscious or subconscious level associate qualities with names. No accident Pierce Brosnan's character was named Remington Steel, or Tom Selleck's character is named Jesse Stone; those are extreme examples, but the names help us assign qualities to characters.

gi-jones said:
First of all I think it's important to state that names, in reality, don't mean anything. ...
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A character's occupation or personality traits can be loosely morphed into names with a pleasingly random result. So suppose you've got a tax acoountant to name:

'Tax Accountant', basing the name on the first parts of the words, could morph into:

Talley Acuna
Tad Atwell

On the second parts:

Max Tanner
Jackson Cantor

A car (or auto) thief (or robber):

Carmen Thiel
Otto Roberts

And so on...

I find it to be an amusing little process that usually works quite well. You just have to be careful not to make it too obvious.
 
Yeah, a lot of the stories I write are based on things that have happened to me or real people that I've known, so I often do loosely base names on the real thing (and I'll do the same thing with places, company names, etc).
 
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