How do you pick your names?

[gi-jones]

We on a conscious or subconscious level associate qualities with names.

Absolutely. The thing is, imho, that the associations are personal. A name won't mean the same to you as to others. My point is really that you have to choose names, that means something to YOU, but should never expect the audience to think the same way.

 

[Randall_Oelerich]

A perhaps too obvious name from one of my favorite films: Riley Hood (played by Eric Roberts); the romantic interest of Rosanna Arquette's character (Cassie) in Nobody's Fool (1986, written by oscar nominated writer Beth Henley); Riley Hood has a checkered past, and 'Hood' fits well. Nothing random about the name Hood, just another interesting observation of naming characters.

A character's occupation or personality traits can be loosely morphed into names with a pleasingly random result. ...

 

[HorseFilms]

Ifyou're looking for random character names, just check out your e-mail spam - yes, it really is good for something

I've been keeping a list of good spam names for about a year.:beer:

 

[Russell Moore]

In my first short God's Warehouse. I researched some of my names. Tyr was an old Norse god and the person that named him Dr. Gustav is of Swedish origin.
Another character, Mr. Marsh. I likened to an actual marsh. It may appear beautiful in the right light, but it can also be dark, dangerous and hide the unknown.

The last short I wrote( Jon's Fall), I was in such a crunch for space, I just used names that were short. Jon, Teri, Meg.

 

[AuditoryVisuals]

I usually think of random names. Seems a little unrealistic (to me) to name someone for their personallity. Unless it's a nickname.

I also use ethnicity for last names, and may sometimes think of who their parents are and why they gave them that name.

 

[Sad Max]

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.

First of all I think it's important to state that names, in reality, don't mean anything. ...

This reminds me of a line from a Larry Niven detective story - this isn't verbatim, but someone asks the lead character why he's always having to be such a hardass...

Look, if my name was 'Max Steel' or 'Trip Hammer' or something, I could let things slide. But when your name is Bruce Cheseboro, kid, you can't afford to make mistakes.

Standards for character naming vary, for me. Sad Max is a character from a short story, an Australian who came to Los Angeles hoping to hit the big time, who finds nothing but failure and despair. Disneyland Joe is based upon a boss my wife once had, who couldn't find his way from Santa Monica to Disneyland despite having lived his entire life in Southern California. An author friend creates character names like Fat Sam, from Vatsamaya in the Bhagavad Gita.

I also enjoy sort of parody-ish names: Robert Anton Wilson's Buddhist monk, Ped Xing, or my own characters with names like Salvatore Monella, or Admiral "Tar" MacAdam...

In a Greek-mythology-tranplanted to-modern-Los-Angeles piece, the characters have modern-English-sounding names derived from the old Greek characters' names - Briar for Briareos, for example.

 

[John LaBonney]

There was a discussion about this some time back (one that included my first dvxuser post, no less (gosh, I'm feeling nostalgic all of a sudden)) here: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=67368

I still use http://www.kleimo.com/random/name.cfm frequently. It uses data from the U.S. Census, and is really a great tool for coming up with character names.