So, you’ve gotten your plot figured out, you have your hero and your villains and everything in-between but there is one last thing that you can’t figure out to save your life: what to name your characters.
Naming characters honestly doesn’t need to be something that takes weeks to figure out. Stephanie Meyer, said in one of her interviews that she named her main character Bella because that’s what she would have named her daughter if she had one.
If you’ve been brainstorming for a while and still can’t seem to find the right fit, try using one of these techniques below for naming your characters.
Symbolism/Themes of Your Story
One of my favorite authors, John Green puts a lot of thought into the construction of his characters and what to name them. Green’s book Paper Towns follows the main character as he pieces together clues to find his enthralling yet mysterious classmate, Margo Roth Spiegelman after she disappears one day. The main themes of the story are about identity and breaking the status quo. Everyone who claimed to be close to Margo before she disappeared eventually had to come to terms with the fact that they didn’t actually know her at all, they only saw her the way they wanted to see her.
In his official Paper Towns Q&A Green explains:
“Margo’s name has go in it; I guess that’s probably the reason I chose it. Her last name, Spiegelman, means “mirror maker” in German—like, the guy in the German villages who made the mirrors was the spiegelman. And Margo functions as a mirror to the other characters in the novel: What they see when they look at Margo ends up saying a lot more about them than it says about Margo herself.”
Personality Traits
One thing you can do when you’re thinking of what to name your characters is simply naming them in a way that reflects who they are. In the 2016 anime Yuri on Ice, the character Viktor Nikiforov is the main character’s love interest who has won multiple ice-skating championships. His first name, Viktor means “conqueror” or “to win” in Latin and his last name in Russian means “Carrying victory.”
There was no better name for this character.
Country of Origin
An easy way to name your character, especially if they weren’t born in your country, is to find lists of popular names from the country your character was born in.
Some names are just more prevalent in certain countries and would make sense in your story world.
Time Period
Going back to Twilight, Stephenie Meyer didn’t only name her characters based on what she would have named her children, she named them based on the time period they were born in.
“I’m not a huge research junkie, because I’m always more into creating the fantasy than the reality, but names are one of the things I do spend some research time on. For example, for Jasper’s name I searched roll calls for the confederate army in Texas. Both “Jasper” and “Whitlock” are on those lists, but not together. The name Cullen exists on seventeenth century English headstones. Other names I find by time and place of birth—I look through the most baby popular names from that year or census records from that city.”
New Moon Q&A with Stephenie Meyer
Jasper, Rosalie, Carlisle, Esme and Emmett are not very popular names in 2000’s but they were fairly common names in the 1800s and 1900s when these characters were born.
Mash Some Words Together
You might be familiar with a certain villain named Lord Voldemort, which wasn’t a name before J.K. Rowling mashed a few words together.
J.K. Rowling has said that she invented the name Voldemort, and its French origins – ‘vol’ means, variously, ‘flight’ or ‘theft’; ‘de’ means ‘of’ or ‘from’; and ‘mort’ means ‘death’ – give it a sinister backstory entirely in keeping with Voldemort’s image.
Wizarding World
Whatever you decide to name your characters, make sure it make sense with the story you’re telling and that you like it. You might be naming someone’s future favorite character so make it a good one!
