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I'm sure the film was really good, and the dog was obviously dodgy, but they could've just yelled "shoot it!" without having to explicitly identify it as an alien 10 minutes into the film. Kinda took the suspense out of the movie a bit for those of us that understand Norwegian. It'd kinda be like making a cipher concealing the resolution of the plot and have the "cipher" just be Polish.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
I'm sure the film was really good, and the dog was obviously dodgy, but they could've just yelled "shoot it!" without having to explicitly identify it as an alien 10 minutes into the film. Kinda took the suspense out of the movie a bit for those of us that understand Norwegian. It'd kinda be like making a cipher concealing the resolution of the plot and have the "cipher" just be Polish.

The first scene of the film is an alien spaceship crashing into the ice - I think its clear what the film is about?

My favourite character names are in Iain M. Banks' novels.

For example:
Rasd-Coduresa Diziet Embless Sma da' Marenhide

or Dizzy, for short...

 daedalus wrote:
Most of the names I use are inspired from coworkers / clients, but I have a large pool to choose from there.

I just noticed your rank is Kid Kyoto...

That makes me feel weird.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 daedalus wrote:
Most of the names I use are inspired from coworkers / clients, but I have a large pool to choose from there.

I just noticed your rank is Kid Kyoto...

That makes me feel weird.

Haha, yeah, I guess it is. I never changed it when my last DCM lapsed. Apparently the title thingy defaulted to "Classic dakkanaughts".

I got nothing.

I actually have a very-early WIP set of notes for a scifi novel I'm wanting to write. It's very much a space opera along the lines of Star Wars or Star Trek. For character names, I just use actual first and last names, appropriate to the particular character's ethnicity. Of course, this only works on the human characters, so I'll have to get creative once I get down to adding more of the alien characters. I figure if they sound like they came from the same language for the same species they'll be okay, right?

For me, I do tend to go to history, and I tend to borrow some of history's oldest naming conventions.

As in, if I'm writing in a setting that is "English" I'll use some variations of random first names, but then Surnames will be the usual fare of Farrier, Smith, Goldsmith, Weaver, Thatcher, etc. German settings I'll do similar, but with more Germanic sounding names, etc.

For one school project I was "forced" to place characters in an Asiatic setting, so I started mis-spelling what few Japanese and Chinese type names I knew at the time (Subaru, Mistubishi, Ichiro, Kawasaki, etc. )

I think if I were doing a much larger scale work, like a Wheel of Time or some such, I would put some effort into greater differentiation, borrowing some Arab conventions (using al in front of a surname a la, Rand al'Thor), but I'd also borrow heavily from Scandinavian/Slavic naming conventions to keep things flowing.

Any name does carry connotations. Take John McClain for example. It’s a good, no nonsense, blue collar name. The character would have felt very different of he’d been called Sebastian Fitzgerald-Smithe III.

I have always had issues with naming characters... not my strong point.

BUT, I do have a method to at least get me started. When writing a fictional piece, I will often take into consideration the heritage of the character I am trying to name, and/or the faction they hail from. Does this faction feature of lot of people that came from Israel? Look up common Israeli names.

Must admit, I have always had mixed feelings about names that mean something in the larger context of the story... short of the character having been purpose-raised (like a soldier or hero from birth) it seems odd that their name would reflect upon the situation within a story at any point. Of course that is a matter of personal preference.

A character's nickname on the other hand has a lot more potential, as that would likely be based on events that have happened within the story.

When naming unimportant npcs for my RPG campaignd I have a running joke going where they are all some derivitive of 'Jeff'

Jeffrik, Jiff, Jeyeff, Jefrina, etc.

We had a DM who had a habit of naming NPCs Richard, because he'd forget to give them a name, and then he'd have to make one up on the spot.

I try to generate 10 or so names (from coworkers like I said earlier) before games I run for throwaway characters, and then just put a checkmark next to them as I use them. I got burned too many times by donkey-cave players deciding they were going to take the random level 1 bandits hostage and start trying to talk to them.

I had about a 6 year span where any character I made to play in a game had a name that started with a D. Daedalus. Drevin. Drexel. Duncan. I'm sure there were others.

I don't know. Naming a character based on traits they have seems more then just a little contrived in my opinion. Kinda like WWE stage names. Unless your setting provides all parents with accurate long distance foresight I can't imagine them nailing such names with perfect accuracy. Stick to what's appropriate to the setting and let the character develop a reputation for their names with clever and creative plots rather then short cutting it with names like Buff Bigarms or Dandy Candyass III.

 Overread wrote:
In general names can be a tricky area for many people, especially when the actual name might not matter (ergo its not connected to properties about the character); or where if it matters its an internal reference (eg all Starks are important in Game of Thrones but they could just as easily be called Quarks or Philips or any other name as the story makes the name important).

It may start of that way, but characters grow into their names. I feel quite strongly that trying to write a character called Ned Philips into the same character traits and plot as Ned Stark would go badly. For one thing, Ned Philips is obviously bald.

 Da Boss wrote:
This only works because none of my players can speak Gaelic. Otherwise it would seem really silly. I actually read a campaign setting once where someone had obviously done this for all the place names and so on, and it was hilarious to read.

Yeah, this would bug me if I knew. There was a 2000AD story once where all of the main characters had their names ripped off from historical Japanese figures such as Akechi Mitsuhide and Oda Nobunaga. It completely ruined it for me. Did the author think he was the only one who had ever had an interest in the samurai era?

That use of Finnish names would have driven me crazy in the same way if I had seen it.

 LordofHats wrote:
My thoughts;

Getting hung up on names I think is a common trap for writers. Fundamentally, a name isn't actually that important. You can change it in seconds with control+f. Meaningful names I think are also kind of a trap. Especially if you try and imbue meaning before you even know who the character is.

Ultimately what's important is personality and giving the character depth, motivation, and imo strong dialogue that informs people about who the character is. Word choice is important. How people talk says a lot about how they want others to perceive them. All of those things are a lot harder to nail down and change than a name once you get started.

You say that, but I recently spent a long time agonising over a choice of two names, because when I C&P'd one of the names in, the guy was fundamentally honest, but out of his depth, but when I C&P'd the the other name in, the guy was a slimy creep who had no morals and I had to alter some of what he said and did to make it feel right. Now, you might say that is just my prejudices as the writer, but ultimately, the name I used would determine the way the character would go, which in turn would affect the plot. Now, that might not be the same for everyone, but ultimately it is important for me.

A similar example is a character I played on a Neverwinter Nights persistent server for many years. I had the name Kered pretty early on. I knew I wanted him to be a xenophobic politician. Brilliant, but manipulative, giving lots of speeches along the lines of Enoch Powell's River of Blood speech. Immoral, but charming. I went through Kered Black, Kered White, Kered Tower and about a million other options. None were quite right in my head. Then I came up with Kered Rose and the character fully coalesced and became real to me instantly. I created the character and was in-world within ten or twenty minutes and played him for at least half a decade. As soon as I had that name, I had a face too (Young Roger Moore).

My final point would be to mention Steven Erikson. He is, in my opinion, the absolute master of creating a set of names distinctively belonging to each of his world's very different civilisations, without basing it on real-world names.

Which is why titles of nobility are so perfect. Sure, his actual name might be "Jeff Jones", but to you commoners he's LORD Candyass III, thankyouverymuch!

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Stark is a good example I think of meaningful name, Stark to me implies cold, plain, unadorned. Tells you something about the clan. Seems a deliberate choice unlike say Lanester (unless there's a meaning these I don't know).

What you are missing is the Wars of the Roses reference. Stark = York, Lannister = Lancaster. Edit - OK others posted this earlier.

Stark does work as a house name for multiple reasons though.

ProwlerPC wrote:I don't know. Naming a character based on traits they have seems more then just a little contrived in my opinion. Kinda like WWE stage names. Unless your setting provides all parents with accurate long distance foresight I can't imagine them nailing such names with perfect accuracy. Stick to what's appropriate to the setting and let the character develop a reputation for their names with clever and creative plots rather then short cutting it with names like Buff Bigarms or Dandy Candyass III.

Yes.

I've always found overly meaningful names to be really cheesy. I mean no one names their kid Deathgar the Destroyer fully expecting him to become some barbarian despot except in comedy. We don't get to chose our names most of the time. They're handed to us by others, even our nicknames or lofty titles. Such things are rarely as on the nose as bad/mediocre fantasy fiction sometimes is.

You say that, but I recently spent a long time agonising over a choice of two names, because when I C&P'd one of the names in, the guy was fundamentally honest, but out of his depth, but when I C&P'd the the other name in, the guy was a slimy creep who had no morals and I had to alter some of what he said and did to make it feel right. Now, you might say that is just my prejudices as the writer, but ultimately, the name I used would determine the way the character would go, which in turn would affect the plot. Now, that might not be the same for everyone, but ultimately it is important for me.

I would call that the prejudice of the writer but that's not exactly a bad thing. My thought that a name is inconsequential is my own prejudice as a writer.

There are different methods for everyone when it comes to this sort of thing and what works for some, a few, or even most might not work for others. The prevalent part I think though is not to get hung up on such easy to alter details. If a name helps you guide a character do what works for you, but I think it helps to not be trapped in the conception stage. This is a hurdle even for experienced writers.

Stephen King has dubbed it the 50,000 break point, because most people hit the hard wall around that point. The conception stage, where the story is nebulous and fluid in your mind starts to collapse as the whole their either comes together or breaks up and needs editing to bring it together. For me the easiest way to get over that hurdle is to accept many aspects as "trivial" and not worry about them. Names are one of those things.

My final point would be to mention Steven Erikson. He is, in my opinion, the absolute master of creating a set of names distinctively belonging to each of his world's very different civilisations, without basing it on real-world names.

Agreed. Even good fantasy authors I find struggle coming up with good/cool names that don't come off as cheesy or absurd. Erikson never seemed to struggle with that.

What’s wrong with Deathgar the Destroyer?

I'm just saying. Who the feth names their kid Deathgar the Destroyer XD

You know. Like how a ridiculous number of comic characters have absolutely absurd names when combined with how on the nose they are with their super hero/villain personas. Edward Nigma. Otto Octavius. Nathaniel Adam. Stephen Strange. Julian Gregory Day. I mean jesus Calendar Man is pretty dumb on the face of it but then they give the poor guy a name like that XD

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
When naming unimportant npcs for my RPG campaignd I have a running joke going where they are all some derivitive of 'Jeff'

Jeffrik, Jiff, Jeyeff, Jefrina, etc.

I give them a first name starting with N, the initial P, then a last name with the initial C. So they're all NPCs.

As well as being an in-joke that always got a smile from the veteran players, it actually helped focus the game. Because sometimes people will interact with or just screw with an NPC just for fun, but other times they're actually trying to advance the game and think this guy is important. It takes players out of the game to stop and ask if they're just playing with this guy or if they think he's important, so calling a bunch of characters NPC is an easy way of communicating that these are just functionary characters with no greater purpose than providing some exposition or a bit of gear or whatever.


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 LordofHats wrote:
I've always found overly meaningful names to be really cheesy. I mean no one names their kid Deathgar the Destroyer fully expecting him to become some barbarian despot except in comedy. We don't get to chose our names most of the time. They're handed to us by others, even our nicknames or lofty titles. Such things are rarely as on the nose as bad/mediocre fantasy fiction sometimes is.

A great real life one I read about the other day was General Sir Evelyn Barker, a british commander in WWII. The guy had a long and distinguished career in WW2, and in Palestine after the war, where things got more than a little unsavory and its best we leave it at that. He was a training and physical fitness fanatic, so in a crappy bit of fiction a person with that background would have a nickname for being a hardass like Major Pain or something. But in real life the guy's nickname was 'bubbles'.

Which itself is interesting - Barker as a child posed for a painting by his uncle, and that painting later became famous when used in advertising by 'Bubbles' soap. Which adds more dimension to Barker and British military history, giving a background of aristocracy and even whimsy which is then contrasted against the actual character.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that if a character is one thing on the page, and is then given a name that states that one thing, like your example of 'Deathgar the Destroyer' well then its probably a boring character.

I'm not bothered by people having symbolic names. It's all a part of building atmosphere, if dramatic confrontations always happen during thunderstorms, funerals on rainy days and celebrations as doves take flight and rainbows appear... well it's hard to argue about Captain Strong or Dr Von Brilant.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Fifty wrote:


Yeah, this would bug me if I knew. There was a 2000AD story once where all of the main characters had their names ripped off from historical Japanese figures such as Akechi Mitsuhide and Oda Nobunaga. It completely ruined it for me. Did the author think he was the only one who had ever had an interest in the samurai era?

I can do you one better. James Clavel's novel Shogun is fantastic, BUT... it's the story of how Tokugawa Iesu came to power except the main character is renamed Torunaga for some reason. So frustrating, I wanted to cross it out and correct it through the whole book!

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
I'm not bothered by people having symbolic names. It's all a part of building atmosphere, if dramatic confrontations always happen during thunderstorms, funerals on rainy days and celebrations as doves take flight and rainbows appear... well it's hard to argue about Captain Strong or Dr Von Brilant.

But that's exactly the point. If the character is written as smart and then you give him a name that gives a nod to him being smart, then all you have is a one-note character. That isn't made okay because its a story where the story's saddest moment is at a rainy funeral and the climax is a fight on the top of a building during a thunderstorm, when stories run on cliche and shorthand then its even more important to make sure the characters are interesting and fun to read about.

It isn't the use of symbolism that's the problem, the problem is any character that can be summed up in a single word isn't a character, its an archetype at best.

As an old writing buddy used to say; any character who can be summed up in a sentence is probably boring as feth

Well this isn't going to help anyone but a lot of my more fantasy/sci-fi names are plucked out of thin air. I often write characters without a name for a while as well as I see it as less important as their actions or dialogue.

I think it's important to consider the genre/setting though. If it's historical I usually go for a mash up based on whatever census/historical data I can find. I write schlock/pure trash anyway so it doesn't really matter how stupid the names are, though I still like to ground them somewhat in reality.