Names are a fickle, special thing. New parents and writers are probably the ones who think about names most frequently, and one of those thinks about them a lot more frequently. I know writers who love naming characters but hate places, those who have an entire world meticulously mapped and named for centuries’ worth of lore, and those who hate everything. It’s all fair here.
But how to come up with character names?
When I write, generally speaking, I have some rough sense of what the character (or thing) will be like before I go name hunting. For an old fanfic project, all of the main cast had flower-related names, so that whittled down a lot of what was available and what I wanted (and I had my bff who happened to be a semi-flower expert to help with a lot of the symbolism/meaning info). I love naming schemes, but I don’t use them very often for a whole cast. That takes some goddamned determination and a lot of pre-planning.
Names are difficult. Embrace this. Name your character something you like and you think fits them. You’re going to have to be typing it a lot.
Or you could go first person and forget your character even has a name. Let the readers sort it out. (I did that once by accident.)
Most of my characters do tend toward the “meaningful name” thing—I think it’s difficult for many authors to totally get away from that. I’ve borrowed a few names from people I’ve known, too—Hannah (pronounced like ‘Honolulu’ actually), Arianna, Tuesday, Everett—but the characters are always pointedly, totally different from the people. Don’t write people you know. Just don’t.
Try to think about demographics—how old is your character? Where were they born, where are their parents from? What ethnicity are they? Culture? (The age bit especially can be tricky—if you have a modern-day story, you wouldn’t find a 90 year old woman named Keighleigh, for example.) Many baby naming sites (meant-for-writer naming sites have been on the rise, too) let you search by ethnic origin of the name—and some names are the same but have wildly different meanings in different languages or cultures, too!
Also, if you are going for a meaningful name, that’s fine! But keep in mind that this is still a character first and foremost. Whether you’re going to be super obvious tongue-in-cheek, or “only Hebrew scholars over the age of 60 who are multilingual will get this”, be honest with yourself why you’re choosing the name.
This isn’t the post to deep dive into this, but please, for the love of everything, keep in mind DIVERSITY. If everyone in your story is white and have English and French names, you better have a damn good reason. Or better yet, don’t do that. Your characters should be varied and diverse and unique, and their names should reflect that.
(Also, as a general rule, google the full name of the character before you commit to it. If it pops up as an existing semi-known/famous person or character, generally speaking, don’t use that name.)
Here are some sites I use for naming:
