10 Best Tips for Naming your Book Characters

I was once annoyed enough by a certain politician’s statements to imagine what an Ice Age version of her would be like. I had to think of a name for her, and I thought of conlanging some names. But I wanted to save myself some trouble, and I thought of Native names like Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. Those are translations, however, and just about every name has a form like that if one looks back far enough.

So I did that with “Marjorie” finding it, like a lot of similar names, descended from Greek margarites, “pearl”. But pearls are not very common far inland, so I thought of gemstones in general. They are often shiny, thus “Bright Stone”.

I also did that with “Bernard” finding early Germanic for “bear” + “hard, hardy, strong, brave”. So I settled on “Enduring Bear”.

Great now i want to write a high fantasy novel with a character named Bob! LOL! Love you Jenna!

Does anyone know if Esuma (Esu for short) is a real word? In English or another language? I just want to make sure I don't name my character "shoe" or "lettuce".

Thank you for this video! I’m trying to find an old Irish name for a book character of mine that’s from the 5th-6th century!

I think naming characters with subtle descriptors is good. Skywalker, Solo, and Kenobi are perfect descriptors of their characters. I have a really smart character I named Eisenberg to sound kind of like Einstein. Another I had was a cardiologist named Dr. Rudolph. I wanted a name that was red kind of like a heart. Another I have has the last name of Chambers since he's and introvert. And I have another with the last name of Carpenter since he fancies himself on the same level as Christ.

ive really fallen into the similar names pitfall in my dnd campaign
Colvin and Caven will forever be two indistinguishable names in my players' minds...

Is it taeyong of nct on your shirt?

Also that "smash names together to create a new one" reminded me of Celestabethabelle from Gravity falls XD

I once read a fanfic (yes, I know it's not a published work but it's an example) where the names of all characters were (insert a random letter)/n. To some point they were understandable, like the MC being y/n, their crush being c/n, but then it started making no sense. Two bullies were suddenly k/n and h/n. Y/n's brother was j/n. The best friend was l/n. I swear all the readers had a stroke while reading it.

I saw the last point and immediately thought of Rock's full name, "Numuhukumakiaki'aialunamor", from the Stormlight Archive.

Fia, Aria, and Orion; if I have to type more than five letters, I'm out. I also had a Thea, at one point, but try saying "Thea" and "Fia" out loud and you'll realize why I knew this was an error the second I was doing more than reading them.

As a mald fantasy writer. I feel attacked by 10th but it's fair

Like Captain Hook. Was that his name before Tick Tock ate his hand? What a coincidence!

After a bazillion attempts at creating new names for my fantasy novel, I realized that I'm terrible at that, and switched to names from other parts of the world that readers may or may not be familiar with. I also have multiple kingdoms/peoples in my story, so each one is based on a different region IRL. This also includes location names. So my main kingdom is all German names, so I've chosen German words for each location in that region.

Shoutout to Shannon

My cast is in their late 30s and it takes place in the late 90s, which means I'm looking at baby names of the late 50s early 60s.
I didn't find some. Also, took into account a few while born here, are children of immigrants. :)

I'm a Joshua born in the 70s. :) Granted, it was because of Dolly Parton.

The entire intro I was thinking "dang, I can see the ring light reflected in her glasses" then suddenly "if you can see my ring light reflected in my glasses, deal with it" 😳 I laughed so hard omg 🤣🤣🤣

I named my character "Cecile" (Which means "He who is blind") . Cecile Is a villain, But not entirely by choice. Their partner is abusive and the whole reason he is a villain in the first place, afraid of not being loved by anyone and being abandoned by his partner, he is blind to the abuse, and the damage he's causing by his actions, as long as his partner tells them they love him.

Referring to number 7, I came across a story once that had 4 names so similar that I didn't make it a quarter of the way through the book before I was so confused I just put it away and have never bothered going back to it again. I'm not even sure the write was keeping the characters straight in the story.

Idk why but I gave my female main character who was born and raised in a country heavily based on Russia a Russian boy name (misha)

#7: Have you ever read a Chinese novel?

I have used keyboard smashes to name a character, but the next step is to find a name in the smash, so I got names like Yahfi and Acertt.

I came here because my book is a bronze age post-apocalyptic, dark fantasy with heavy metal vibes. I drew inspiration from Conan The Barbarian along with metal album covers like the Emperor Of Sand by Mastodon. So I kind of had a hard time at first naming the protagonist along with the wasteland villains until I watched this. Now I got a naming process for some regions similar to Morrowind's with clan or family names before the actual name for example. Ur-Duhl of The Marr or Xu-Lag the emperor of Edom. Of course there are names like Ozbreck Grey-Brow, Gomez Hermanos or Raul Santiago. But this was a wonderful video and it helped a lot thank you.

" Thanks for not doing the bare minimum asshole "
Me: 😰

I always research names. I even have a list of names that I plan to use for characters and races if I ever delve into fantasy or science fiction. I love linguistics and anthropology, so names and their significance are a hobby for me. But occasionally I throw a ringer in there for fun.

I felt directly scolded by Jenna when she said "I'm looking at you male fantasy writers" after talking about the odd names... let my characters beeee 🤣

In my defense, the names are pronaunceable, it's just that... sometimes I have to do something like... "her name was Liesl (Lizzle)" to make sure the reader will know how to pronunciate the name. But it has a reasonable amount of cosonants and vowels and you can pronounce it!!! There is another important thing about my character's names though, they are distortions of real life people's names, so I have to make sure the reader can ponounce the name without making it obvious the character is based on that speciffic real life person.

And... the story is in a fictional world, there is a fictional language... so the names are based in this language... even watching this videos years after creating some of those names... I still followed your rules 😁

Just saying growing up in the South I knew multiple people who were either named Gunner or went by Gunner. Granted I hated every single one of them... Ignorant conservatives are very rarely people you get along with and by very rarely I mean statistically never

Jenna: how to name your characters.
Me: bird person named Anji Crowcoat :D

I have definitely made my own names for characters. Some examples being prince Apex Enclavius and the fairy Murasako Koyosei.
Picking a naming theme can really help in certain situations, my fairy characters for the most part incorporate the Japanese words for various colors into their names.

After extensive thought and for good reasons I have named my protagonist Dick. That is all.

I have a Harry and a Henry, AND a Bianca and a Diana. I keep on mixing up their names, but I don't plan on changing them. I'm just too attached lol

What if my fantasy world is based on Earth

that moment when you realize you have both an Alex an Aaron AND AN Amy!!!!!!

got an excel sheet of characters with names dredged from multiple name generators & cultural back ground applied to one of my wips. part of the back ground is what if canada but vikings instead of red coats? with a generous dosing of pillaged ireland before the move, so they're using a mix of english, gaelic, norse, and native names with the odd mix of russian spattered in. some of the characters aren't human and their names are more alias's because the default isn't vocal cord compatible for humans. (they're water spirits & true names are most pronounceable under water.) unsurprisingly the humans aren't interested in sticking their heads under water in alaskan/artic waters to hear that just to still be unable to pronounce it. goobered the first letter commonality, but well... the water spirits are bonded to the fleet, and for logistical reasons class siblings have the same first letter to their names. the main five siblings all use K though their names are different enough i suppose... kiska, kanaga, kagamil kagalaska, and kodiak, though kagamil and kagalaska tend to lurk in the back ground, they're just a tad interchangeable without impacting the story & will probably catch more distinctive nicknames at some point. kanaga and kodiak are more active. and kiska is the main one interacting with the plot. other characters include commodore briggs, alma skuldottir, and bartley, (another ship spirit)

Another way to deal with the issue with characters with similar names is making sure they are not all main characters. It is not such a huge issue when it is someone who just shows up for brief periods in your story.

in our debut novel on wattpad, me and my friend have our protaganists named izumo and isabella. not a problem until we decided to give isabella the nickname izzy. izumo and izzy.

let's just say i dont think i'll be finishing that sequel book any time soon...

Someone please make GRRM watch this 😮‍💨

Imagine your MC getting confused with the BBEG just because their names rhyme and have a similar dress style.

George Martin's Rhaenyra, Rhaenys and Rhaena are like 💃💃💃

I just go to the Lisophile name generato— oh

I've got mixed feelings about the worldbuilding/era names, particularly th example of names in the medieval era. There were definitely people named Dave and Sarah back then; those names are old as dirt. There are people in the Bible named Dav(id) and Sarah. Maybe these are just bad examples tho? Like, fair enough, I find it difficult to imagine someone in the Medieval Era naming their children Jersey or River or Storm or Chase. That said, I don't know anything about the history of these names.

Edit: Also, how dare you, Cletus is a very sexy name! /j

I had a theatre teacher who always said no one in the audience is Sherlock Holmes, they won't know that the characters is wearing green because she is envious etc. We named a character Maylin which means beautiful waterfall and our costume makers designed a gorgeous blue dress inspired by the name meaning.

I know readers may not know the name meaning but I like to have that.

I base my characters off of real people in my life and switch the letters around.

Looking a us male fantasy writers my protagonists name is literally just kip
Yes my account is named after my main protagonists