How to come up with good names for characters?

[Allie]

I always strugle with giving names to my OCs that sounds good and actually make sense, so I wanna ask you melonlanders what are some good ways of naming characters with a name that fits them?

[invader_gvim]

I like to think of a few words that describe a character I'm making and then name him out of syllable from those words. Also once you have a cast of characters it is easier to make names because just take sounds from a few different characters and jumble them together.

Give them the first name that comes to mind with no regard for if its cringe. First of all,

cringe

is a conspiracy to make us not have confidence. Secondly, you can change any name you come up with later.

[Corrupted Unicorn]

There's many ways.

Preferrably, you'd want a name that makes sense for your character. If you like onomastics and baby name websites, this can be a fun way to explore new names.

Before I had a good grip on what makes a "good" name, I straight up thought up of a significant word for the character, then looked it up on Wikipedia in different languages, and chose the one that sounded the coolest for me 

If you want extra consistency, you can come up with naming "rules". They can be as simple or as complex as you wanna make them. A famous example is the Homestuck characters, whose names all relate to their themes and always have specific numbers of letters for their name and surname, depending on whether they are a human or a troll.

In my personal case, when it comes to the objectheads in my toon world, I like to give them names associated with the inventor of the "item" they are (like a radio called Medley Marconi, or a stack of dynamite whose full name is Trinity Nobel Toluene). Is it accurate? Do I always make it fit? No, but it's a fun way for me to learn more about the objects I make characters from.  I'm also a big fan of alliterations, but again, it's a "soft" rule and I bend it as many times as I want. Hell, my main character's name comes from a random girl years ago. It breaks any of my rules, so it's just his stage name while his "legal" one follows my conventions... more or less 

So yeah, feel free to try methods and come up with self-made rules: but also remember rules are made to be bent and broken

[_ghost_]

I really like to look at Behind The Name. You can filter by all sorts of different variables, like first letter, masculine/feminine/neutral, language of origin, different categories like various mythologies, meaning, etc. Or you can pick a theme of some kind and go through the wikipedia list for that thing (inventors, saints, musicians, whatever you want) to look for names that jump out at you.

If you're trying to do something fantasy related and don't want to use existing names, you can still start with a collection of existing names that you like and then change them to fit patterns (pick a few letters that are usually used at the end of feminine names or masculine names, come up with a couple interesting combinations of sounds that very commonly follow each other, etc, and make sure that these are not hard rules but rather things that are common) for your fantasy language(s). You can also make up patterns for how many names a person has and what order they're in; in one place, people might put surnames first and given names last, while in another place it's the opposite. Maybe middle names aren't common in one place but everyone has one in another. Maybe in some places it's common to have both parents' surnames while in other places people only have the father's or only have the mother's. Remember that different cultures will have different naming conventions, there's no such thing as a "normal" way to have a name in general. Just normal for a specific context.

[BlazingCobaltX]

I speak multiple languages and sometimes I pull a word from language A and pronounce it as you would in language B - tada a new name is born! Personally I am less concerned with the meaning of the name and more with it sounding good or pleasant. Considering every word/name ever is made up, I feel more compelled to make names out of thin air than go to Behind The Name (but this is a good idea tho). Of course, when you make up a name: Always do a quick internet search if the new word doesn't have an inflammatory meaning in another language.

[_ghost_]

Considering every word/name ever is made up, I feel more compelled to make names out of thin air than go to Behind The Name

All names are "made up," but the vast majority are not made up out of thin air. That's why most names have a meaning. People are more likely to make up their own spelling for existing names (think of all the different spellings of Kaitlyn or the trend of using the "leigh" spelling for names that originally ended in -ly) or take two different existing names and smash them together than they are to make up a name entirely. That's why I recommend creating common patterns even in fantasy; you don't have to, but it's a better representation of how names actually work in most languages.

[bodypoetic]

Slight tangent: the fun thing about English is that it has words that come from Latin, Anglo-Saxon, and French. Each of these carries different cultural connotations - Latinate words feel more austere or official, French words feel fancier, Anglo-Saxon words feel more homely or down-to-earth. If you're drawing from regular words, it can be fun to play with those associations! (Obviously all languages will have these etymological quirks, English is just the one I'm most familiar with.)

Some of my strategies I haven't seen mentioned:

• Pick and mix names from authors on my bookshelves.
• Name as a tribute to an earlier version of the same character, or a character they were inspired by.

If you're working in a fantasy setting, giving your fictional culture a meaningful naming convention is a great asset. This is something I've encountered a lot in LARP, and it always rules - you are immediately making decisions about characterisation and instantly conveying that characterisation to others. Some of my favourite examples: characters have an initial between their first name and surname to indicate their planet of origin; characters have no names until they come of age, when they choose them for themselves; characters' names are haikus, only the first line of which is publicly used (and revealing the second and third lines is an act of extreme intimacy).

For anything set in the real world and/or modern day, this guide is a lifesaver. It breaks down how names work in lots of different cultures in a really accessible way.

[candycanearter07]

I personally just think of words related to the character until I find one that "fits". Yeah, it's not super scientific or whatever, but I think it does kinda give my character names some consistency (all of them are 1-2 syllables ish). Also, I like taking a normal word and mutating it sometimes(ie blu(e)b(er)y and c(h)er(r)y for bluby and cery).

Of course, that also messes up sometimes, like how I named my HONEY slime SAPPY because I confused tree sap and honey for some reason :P

[MercurialBlack]

I often generate something completely random, which sounds alright, and if I need it to have more meaning, I go backwards from what I've generated and edit it to match the character.  It's like trying to solve a maze by drawing lines starting from the start and the end at the same