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Post by Drewmeister on Apr 15, 2009 17:08:44 GMT -5
Hey guys and gals. As you can probably tell I am new here. I finally am working on that book I always said I wanted to write. It has morphed a million times by now, none the less I am writing it now. As of late I have been encouraged by Jeff's web sites to finally sit down and at least write down my ideas. When I found this forum I new I would not be alone in my journey. I hope to find advice and camaraderie here. I found this forum in a real round about way. Believe it or not it all started at the World Net Daily site. I can get into the details later if you really want to know.
Any ways, this being the Sci-Fi section I guess I should stop introducing myself and get to my question. How long do you spend on names for your characters? Do you just randomly pick names? Or do you find names that have meaning? What is your practice?
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Post by torainfor on Apr 15, 2009 17:26:30 GMT -5
Welcome! Yes, we are all on a journey, here, but we're all still lost.
I pick names various ways. I named two characters after my son's God-sisters, Caitlyn and Ashton. For Caitlyn, I took her nickname and built "Katakaren" around it. For Ashton, I rearranged the letters in her name and came up with "Nhosta." For their book-mom, I took my name from German class--"Beate." For one of my cities, I looked down at the laptop I was writing on, saw the word "Latitude" on the case, and revamped it to "Dulditale." My main character is "Petra," because I liked it, "Torrento," which is "storm" in Esperanto. Her ex's last name is "Dolak" because it's the name of the artist of a print in the room where my computer is.
So, as you can tell, I think long and hard about names, making sure they're properly symbolic...no. I just make them up.
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Post by Teskas on Apr 15, 2009 17:48:08 GMT -5
Hello, Drewmeister. Welcome to The Anomaly.
I take ages to pick a name for a character, but because I write near-future sci-fi, or galactic exploration by humans, I tend to use common names, for example, Mike Smith or Linda Jones, that sort of thing.
If I need an alien name, I look in exotic dictionaries for inspiration.
I also take the short cut, and use different name generators.
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Post by Drewmeister on Apr 16, 2009 11:07:56 GMT -5
When I study the Bible, I see that names are very important. This is probably why I feel it necessary to spend so much time picking out my names. My story takes place in a parallel world, however in the same time frame. I want the names memorable (pronounceable for the most part) but exotic enough to make the story convincing.
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Post by tris on Apr 17, 2009 21:36:33 GMT -5
I have to much worn, tatty old baby name books -- mainly because I want my characters names to reflect their character. And a good baby name book will also have variations of the name, including several exotic ones. (The Bible is also a good source of exotic names -- check Endor which Lucas used in the Star Wars movies).
Names tend to crop up in all sorts of places, as well. One of my regular, recurring hero-types got his name because of a typo in our local paper. It just looked right!
Knowing the meaning behind the name helps me stay within character, too. It's kind of hard to make the character do something silly and trite if their name means "warrior by the dark stream."
Referring to the baby name books, I needed one for a desert dwelling nomad of noble character. Found "Saratan" which was a bit more than I needed, so I dropped the second "a". Sartan is easy to pronounce, exotic enough for an offworlder and in keeping with the character's brusque nature.
Just a reality check on baby name books, though. Some of them don't do enough research. So one way to check the legitimacy of the book is to check the meaning of the name "Carol"... It's actually Old French and means "song of joy", so any book that lists it as English and the feminine form of Charles didn't go back far enough. (Old Hebrew translates it as 'shout of joy'). Just FYI
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