Names are important. I always felt that my name was a big part of my identity, maybe because I was 12 before I personally knew anyone else named Morgan. That name is much more common now, and I often hear mother’s calling their little girls named Morgan.
I take the naming of characters seriously. It really bugs me when a character in a book has a frivolous name – or at least appears frivolous to me. On the other hand, it annoys me when names are so similar that I have to think about it to keep people straight. For instance, in Lord of the Rings there are two main bad guys – Saruman and Sauron. So similar! Now Tolkien knew very well what he was doing. Apparently, Saruman means “man of skill” and Sauron means “foul or putrid” in Tolkien’s made-up language (according to Wikipedia, which of course is always correct, ha ha). Those are meaningful names for those characters, but while reading or hearing the names it is easy to confuse the two if you are not familiar with the story.
Tolkien was a linguist, and I am not. Even so I find it fun to have some meaning behind names. I would hope the parents of those characters would give some thought to their child’s names, so I should too. Putting some effort into finding a character name also helps each charcater to have their own identity and not be “thrown in” for some effect. That doesn’t mean this is an easy task. I find myself picking names I like for one reason or another, especially for my protagonist, which helps me to have affinity for that character. Here’s some of my tips for thinking of names:
- Derivatives of words in another language – this results in made-up names, but sometimes that’s good, especially for last names.
- Direct translations of words in another language. Some of our common names already fit this and it allows you to put the spirit of a character into their name. The best example of this I can think of is the character Remus Lupin in Harry Potter (lupin means wolf in latin and the character is a werewolf – the moment the character was introduced I knew he was a werewolf).
- Flip through a baby name book.
- Look up the top names according to the census – common names are good because you’re less tempted to use names of friends or family who might not like their portrayal in your story.
- Flip through a yearbook.
- Do a Facebook search for the area you’re writing about and see what names pop up. For me this is good for places I’ve never visited.
Or, we could all make up our own language, like Tolkien.