A Look Into Names

I don't know about other writers, but naming people and places is always a big chore for me. Not because I don't like naming, but because I'm very particular on how I name characters. I want the name to stand for something, mean something to me or the person who helped me with the character. Because of this I tend to look in many different places for my names.

• My first is friends. Some of the characters in my stories were characters created by my friends for my roleplaying game or for other such games. I don't worry about the copyright infringements down the road because I asked permission before I started. (Which you really should do.) Everyone was excited about being part of a book that might actually get published (some day, cross the fingers and the like). Some examples of this was Tarkil and Duncan. I would never have come up with Tarkil, but my friend Karl thought long and hard on this character and his name. I didn't want to co-op his character and change the name, it just didn't seem right. And Duncan was my husband's simple farmer, with a simple name. Some flashy name just wouldn't do for him.


• My second is baby name books. Whether you have kids or not, these are handy things to have. Most name books now have not only the place of origin (which is handy if you are trying to stick with a culture...like Tayke for me) and a meaning. The meaning is very important because in a way you are giving a reader a clue into this character, without really shouting it out.


• Third is other languages. I prefer to look into Native American names. Lucky for me I was enamoured with Native Americans from a young age and have many of mismatch of dictionaries laying around. Plus I'm learning Cherokee to help learn about my Grandfather's people (thank you Ed from the Cherokee Nation!). Some of my Native American names are Tsalagi Mountains (It is pronounced jah-la-gee and means Cherokee), Pezuta (which if I remember correctly means healer in Lakotah), Waya (which means wolf in Cherokee) and Iktomi (which means spider in Lakotah). Latin is also a good dictionary to have as well not only for spells, but magic spells.


• The last thing I do is make the names up. Just stick some letters together and call it good. I don't recommend this tactic unless you are just stumped, but it works some times. Van would be my best example. Van was not a good proper name for a noble so I added the letters 'dalar' to get Vandalar. Seems like much more of proper name. Vetch, who shows up later in my second book, is also a good example and example of a name that is apparently pretty good. I play World of Warcraft and you can check names on that site to see if you can get that name for a certain realm. Two years ago I made a character named Vetch but wanted to change realms, so I checked. Suddenly I was inundated with page after page of characters named Vetch. I was floored! I made the darn name up and there is was at noisome!

Have a great weekend and keep writing!