What's in a name?

I've had people ask... wait, no. I don't think I've actually had anybody ask, but I'm sure there are authors out there that have had people ask how they come up with names for their characters. I have a few different ways of naming characters-some more involved than others- and any author out there reading my blog is welcome to chime in their different methods in the comments.

The least interesting way one of my characters gets named is by me just plucking a name out of thin air. This usually happens in the early stages of writing when I am just trying to furiously get ideas down on the page and more often than not, the name gets changed to something more fitting as the character develops.

A perfect example of this is Alfie Vihar, the main character of my Henchmen series. Alfie was a name I just picked because it was very ordinary and I fully intended to go back and change it into something more interesting. By the time I got done writing First Shot, the character had become Alfie, so I left it. (As for his last name, I literally made it up by rolling through the alphabet and putting syllables together... which is a way I make up names for fantasy and more than a few other last names.)

Sometimes, I name characters after other fictional characters or people I know. Although, I really try to avoid the latter. I don't want to offend people if they think I based a character on them and that character ends up being an asshole.

I named Jeremiah Gibson from the Henchmen series after Leroy Jethro Gibbs on NCIS, whom I loosely based the character on.

picture from www.fanpop.com
Leroy Jethro Gibbs: Silver Fox/Ass Kicker

The method I most often use to come up with names for my characters is by searching baby naming websites. It was kind of weird at first, what with all the sidebar ads for diapers and formula, but it is seriously one of the best ways to name characters. I already have an idea of who they are, so finding a name is fairly simple after that. Plus, I like picking names that have meaning. Sometimes, that meaning applies to the character.

For example, I have a character in my novel, Tribute, who is of Polish decent and is the Chief Justice responsible for keeping the peace. I named him Casimir which is a Polish name that means "announcing peace."

I've also done some historical research to find old names that would work for characters. Nikolai Maklakov from the Henchmen series came from two leaders in Communist Russia and many of the names for The Whiskey Widow, I found by searching for the most popular names in the 1800s.

The easiest way I find names for characters is by asking people for ideas or finding them as I go about my day. Sometimes I'll find an interesting name in an article or while I'm at work and I add it to the list I keep in my phone to use later. Gideon is a name that I've carried around for nearly a year before I found the perfect character to bare it.

The way I name characters that is the hardest to explain is that some characters come to me named already. I don't pick it. It is already so entwined with their character that it is the first thing they tell me on our adventure together. Red is the main character of a trilogy that I am in the process writing. She came to me as Red. Granted, it is actually a nickname and it took me a while and some digging through baby name sites to get her real name, but she will always be Red.

picture from http://ellawilliams.deviantart.com/art/Little-Red-Riding-Hood-393051934
Spoilers

Burke from Love Drunk and Dragon Tears is another character who came already named... which is pretty much why Lydia, the main character, couldn't think of a nickname for him, because I couldn't think of him as anything but Burke.

Naming characters is one of my favorite parts of writing. For my characters, the name helps establish ethnicity and therefore aids in how the character might look, move, and react. A character named Seamus brings to mind a man of Irish/English decent while a Phil could be any ethnicity. The names also show how important a character is going to be. If somebody has a more generic name like Sarah, the chances of them being a side character is high, while somebody who has an interesting name like Ciara, is probably going to be pretty important. That isn't a rule for literature by any means, it's just one more way I keep myself entertained while writing.