FANTASY NAMES
One reader asked the following question, and I'm going to address it today:
Do fantasy books need crazy, unpronounceable names? How do you come up with yours? What are the meanings behind your names? Did any of the characters go through different names until you came up with “the right one”?
Before I get started, I'd like to point you to another post in which I discuss some of the techniques that I use to create names can be found in this extremely old post.
Now, let's address the questions.
1. Do Fantasy books need crazy, unpronounceable names?
No, of course not! I'm not sure where people get this idea that fantasy books are just brimming with unpronounceable names. I've read a LOT of fantasy, and here are some of the names of main characters in the more well-known series.
-Bilbo-Thorin-Aragorn-Frodo-Sam (Samwise)-Gandalf-Merry-Pippin-Boromir-Peter-Susan-Edmund-Lucy-Meg-Charles Wallace-Rand-Mat-Perrin-Garion-Silk-Barak-Luke Skywalker-Han Solo-Jill-Mathilda-Lily-Harry-Ron(okay, so "Hermione" is a bit longer and more difficult to pronounce... but really... the rest are fairly reasonable)
Just to name a few off the top of my head. Now, really, what about most of these is "unpronounceable"?
I do realize that "Aragorn" and "Boromir" are a bit longer and that "Bilbo" and "Frodo" aren't names you're going to encounter amongst your social circles, but they're not daunting to try to pronounce.
So, no, fantasy stories don't have to contain unpronounceable names. Not at all. I think they should reflect a certain unique quality, as the people in fantasy stories are generally also in fantasy worlds and realms that don't exist on Earth, and thus the names shouldn't be common ones that belong to people you might meet on an everyday basis (unless it's a "parallel" world like Narnia or Hogwarts, where it is connected to our Earth). But that doesn't mean they have to be long or convoluted.
Elves, on the other hand, might be a different story. They often do have hard to pronounce, tongue-twisting names, but that's partially because they often speak a different language all their own, so it makes sense that they might have longer, far more difficult-to-pronounce-in-English names. But if it's a main character, I recommend against making it something too ridiculous for 2 reasons: 1) you have to type it more often than most other words in your novel, and you don't want to pick a main character's name that will give you carpal tunnel all on its own, and 2) you don't want your character's names to distract your audience from the character himself or the story he is in.
2. How did you come up with your characters' names?
Mostly I used the website babynamesworld.com and used it to search by meaning. I also used a baby names book I had lying around and tried to find names that had meanings I liked, and sounds I liked. Every now and then, a name just comes to me, but for the most part it is an arduous process coming up with a name. Even tertiary characters take me a long time to come up with a name, it has to be "just right."
3. What are the meanings behind your names?
Many of the names you can look up for yourself at the site I mentioned above. However, a few are blends of names that had meanings I liked, but none of the names themselves seemed to fit.
Kamarie, for example, is my own creation. The name I found was "Kamaria," which means "bright as the moon, like the moon." I liked the meaning, but didn't love the name. I liked the name "Marie" but not so much the meaning, which is "bitter." However, when I played around with it for a while, I found that "Kamarie" fit quite well, and I liked the way it sounded much better - and stole the meaning from "Kamaria."
Oraeyn is another example of a made-up name. I have always loved the stars, and constellations, and Orion is my favorite (probably because it's the only one I can be sure of finding easily). I didn't want to name my character too obviously after a constellation, so I played with the spelling and came up with Oraeyn - which means "Son of Fire," which I think turned out to be fairly appropriate.
Brant, on the other hand, is a name I found that means "sword." And it just fit perfectly without any tweaking.
If you are curious about other specific names in my stories and how I chose them/what they mean, please ask in a comment and I will reply!
4. Did any of your characters go through different names before you came up with the "right one"?
Only one so far. I discovered early on that I cannot just use "placeholder" names. My characters get attached to them and refuse to let them go. Or maybe it's me that can't let them go. If you introduce me to someone in real life by a nickname, I will never be able to call them anything else. I have this problem with many of my college friends - I was introduced to them and knew them for years by either a nickname or their last name, and now I can't think of them by their "given" name, it just feels wrong. I'm sure some of them would appreciate it if I didn't address them by old nicknames anymore, but their first name just isn't "real" to me and I find it incredibly difficult to call them by anything other than the name I was introduced to them by.
The same is true of my characters. Whenever I come to a brand-new character, I have to find THEIR name before I can proceed with the story. I can't just use a placeholder and go back and name them something else later, because inevitably the placeholder name will become that character's name. So, I'd rather take the time at the front end and just find their real name, because it's no fun at all having a character whose name you just can't stand as the author. Yes, this means that my writing flow gets interrupted a lot, especially in the first draft of a completely new series (The Orb and the Airship gave me absolute fits, and I expressed in frustration to my husband one evening, "I know exactly why so many authors write ONE series with sixteen to twenty books in them... it's so they don't have to come up with all-new character names!")
The one exception to this rule is Brant. He started out life as Ramstrand. (He was just supposed to be a farmer, there for a scene or two and then gone). But when he became a main character, I couldn't stand to leave his name Ramstrand... and he really wasn't a Ramstrand, anyway. In the first draft of the book, he stayed Ramstrand, but then changed his name to Brant after the tragedy that spurs him into the spotlight. However, after I wrote book 2, I realized that if he started his life as Rhoyan, changed his name to Brant when he reached manhood, changed his name again to Ramstrand when he settled down with his wife, and then took back the name Brant at the beginning of King's Warrior... well... that was an excellent recipe for confusing my readers beyond the point of endurance.
Luckily, I never liked the name Ramstrand anyway, so it was fairly easy to let it fall out of the story completely.
What are some of your favorite character names (either ones you've read or ones you've written)? Why do you like them? And, if they're ones you made up for your own characters, how did you come up with them and what is the meaning behind the name? I'd love to hear how other authors name their characters!