How to Name Your Characters

hey guys it's shaylen and i'm here today with another radio video so today i'm going to be making video I'm really excited about just cuz it's something I find really really fun and that is naming characters this is a very highly highly requested topic now obviously you could take the stance of just pick a name right like pick a frickin name but there is actually so much more that can go into naming a character and today I wanted to make a video talking about some things that you can and/or should consider when you're naming your characters so this video is actually going to be two parts yes there's so much to say on seemingly such a simple topic the first part is going to be on picking a name how to pick a name for a character as you'd think and then the second part is going to be something that's also requested a lot and that is going to be creating names for like a fantasy or other type world creating names is like a whole different game and it's much more of a headache I just wanted to keep them separate since it's just a completely different situation when you're coming up with a name into my name a character I can't picture the character so when I first get an idea for book it is the first thing I do is name a character up into the point running that character they're just a blur they're this vague blur and I can't picture them they're just kind of there and then when I name them I can picture them now I used to just kind of pick names that I liked and didn't really have a method for it and that's okay you can do that but you can also put more character you can put more thought into it I'm just going to go over my steps that I use for naming a character I keep a list of names on my phone whenever I hear a name I like it could be anywhere in one of my tutorials if we're introducing herself on the first day and someone has a name I really like I jot it down anywhere that I hear a name I like I jot it down just on this list so the first thing that I do when I have to name the character is read through that list and sometimes there's a name on there that just sounds right and picking a name for me isn't about picking the name I like the most it's picking the name that seems to fit the character the best somebody do the list and if something just seems right for the character then cool we're done if not it's time to the baby names websites I always say that if you look through my browsing history you'd think I was either plotting to kill someone or was pregnant or probably both because there's a lot of sketchy searches like about how to poison someone and there's also a lot of looking at baby name don't like when you open up your browsers like your most visited websites and mine is like you know YouTube Facebook Twitter Tumblr my University website named Barry that's how often I consult named Barry and then I kind of just start looking at names a lot of the time I can feel a letter going my hair's so Hermione today oh my god a lot of the time I can kind of feel a letter this happens to me more than you think but like for example for when I was aiming to character Ally I'm from blue I was like her name starts with an Allie totally starts with an L and so I literally was just looking through L names until one clicked that said I'm gonna go over some things that you can or probably in some cases should consider sometimes they're optional some you definitely should while you are naming your characters number one is common names so I used to not think about this and I don't think it's only you should overthink but it's telling you should maybe think about so example I made the mistake of naming a character one of the most common names in history I named the love interest from our book the definition of impossible John now here's the thing that is a very very very common name you can bet that the majority of your readers have met someone with that name you can also bet that you will meet someone with that name because you know who has that name my landlord yes very strange to me when I meet someone with the same name is one of my characters it's been years and years that I've been planning this book I've been putting this book since I was fifteen I can't change his name now I can't think of him as any other name so it just he can't be changed his name is said his name is John but I do regret picking such a common name that's just something to consider is if you're going to give your character a really common name like your readers probably met someone with that name if you're going to give your character really common name I just think twice about it because it's gonna mess up you and your brain when you Dube Lee needs someone with that name and you just have to keep in mind that the more common the name the more likely the reader has met someone with that name and the more likely they're going to have set connotations about set name obviously there's nothing you can do about people who read your book will know someone with the same name as your characters they will have the same name as your character it's never happened to me because I have a weird name it happened there's nothing you can really do to avoid it necessarily I would google the name first name I mean it doesn't really matter but like once you have that first name and the last name google it see if there's like some you know politician who had like an awful scandal with the same name you don't want to name someone well-known you don't accidentally give your character the same name as them and I would do that relatively soon before you you know get attached to a first and last name combination next up I wanted to talk about using names to character on whether you do it intentionally or not it's going to happen your name characterizes you in more ways than you think you're thought of as your name so obviously you can just give your character a name and it does not intentionally use it to characterize but it will still be used to characterize from the point of view of the reader because the sound of their name is going to immediately click some some sort of view of the character whether the reader is conscious of it or not whether it has to do with them having certain connotations of the name basing people they know or not whatever the name is its sound is going to immediately affect the view of character from the reader so whether or not this is intentional or not from you your character's name does characterize them however you can also use a character's name more intentionally to characterize if two examples of this so in one of my writing classes I have a fiction class and we're doing an exercise that we call one brain so basically we are all writing a story together all 45 of us when we were brainstorming our story and we decided to write about this character who's like in her 20s and she's kind of a successful more like corporate person and she has really hippie parents so obviously it was thrown out that if the character has hippie parents they're gonna give her kind of a hippie name like for example the name we picked was chrysanthemum but if she's removed from that life she's probably going to take on a nickname like Chris that characterizes not only her but also her parents because the name of her parents gave her characterizes her and the way she interacts with her name characterizes the main character just like how in my book I'm fine the main character Andy her real name is juniper and the fact that she chooses not to go by that name that characterizes her the name she chooses Andy characterizes her and when you inevitably get the backstory of why she's named juniper and why she doesn't go by that name that characterizes both her and her mother you can characterize the characters parents and a character by the name you choose and I would really consider when you're naming a character what kind of name their parent would give them and if it's not the kind of name that you think fits your character maybe they take on a nickname does a huge amount to characterize them and obviously there are other ways that a name can characterize a character those are just some examples that said I would consider nicknames that your character might have does your character go by a nickname if so why is it a logical nickname like for example the main character of my first book that I ever wrote her name was Elizabeth she went by Ellie and main character Jenna from my book chain reaction she goes by Jem very logical you would think that probably anyone named Gemma might go by Jen if it's not a logical nickname what's the story behind it how did they get this nickname do they like being called this nickname if they do why if they chose it for themself why did they choose it for themself if they didn't why did they just how did it stick nicknames can be huge for characterizing maybe even more than your given name because it kind of came to you throughout your life rather than being assigned to you when you were born before anyone knew what you're going to be like let's talk about heritage in names so I'm going to just talk about this by talking about a time that I screwed up this is really especially considering when you're giving your character a last name where they're from where they live where their family is from if you're going to give your character a name it should reflect the culture that this character is from for example my main character Gemma from chain-reaction her family immigrated they are her parents are first-generation immigrants from Mexico and her last name is Marquez initially I didn't even think of this and she had another name which was not a Mexican last name and then I wrote the book and I was like what the heck and I changed her last name because I realized that I was wrong you should consider where your characters from in terms of their culture and heritage and ethnicity when you're giving them a name I'm saying with their first name it might depend on how long their family's been here so like my name is shaylen which is a made-up name that my parents just kind of invented but I think it's kind of Irish II sound mean that wasn't my parents picking a name from the culture of my family depending on how prominent the characters culture is in their life I think and let's talk about time period it's kind of the same thing if you have a character that's born in 1945 and you give them a really modern sounding name it's going to be kind of weird some names just weren't commonplace or maybe didn't even exist in older time variants so if you're ready historical or even if you just have a character that's like old you might want to consider that stuff if you're naming a character from any time period like any decade I would always look up what names were popular in that decade and let's talk about meaning should you give your character a name that has a specific meaning I used to have the stance that I didn't really look into this I didn't look into the meaning of the name because I was always like you know your parents named you when you're a baby and it would be weird if you had a very symbolic name to your life this is fiction and we can take things to the next level the best example of this and really the only time I really consciously tried was in my book Chain Reaction the main character Jemma tidewater like many times her name was just an event Jemma I named based on the meaning of her name because the name Jemma means a precious gem which in the context of the story is hugely symbolic and we can go even more into symbolism kind of some other examples of meaning and symbolism times that I've used those in my writing also from chain-reaction there's a character Isaac Frank the Isaac was right uhm I just picked that name for him his last name is Frank he's a scientist I named him after dr. Frankenstein because there's some similar thing matic things creating a monster between Frankenstein and chain-reaction I'd read Frankenstein relatively recently when I was naming the characters and I was just like I really like a thematic carryover between these two works one being my work and nowhere near as brilliant as Frankenstein because freakin Frankenstein so I decided to name a character after dr. Frankenstein Frankenstein's a little obvious so I just shortened it to dr. Frank and then another one one of my most proud of naming moments in my book winter houses the love interest name is Caleb his last name is lamb not lamb a lamb but lamb like L am be like the animal the main character heidi crew last name is volkova and I hope I'm saying that right it's a Russian last name I remember she had a different name before I hadn't thought about it I knew that her family its her family's very complicated but her family was Russian so I knew that they had a Russian law same and I just picked one randomly and then I was like whoa I have a thought so I looked it up and I found a name and there was a Russian last name with that meaning the last name Volkov means wolf so symbolically in terms of the characters and their relationship having a main character whose last name is wolf and her love interest his last name is lamb especially with those two characters means so much and I am so proud of that that was my video on Aiden characters if you name in the more fantasy genre then stick around for my next video where I'm going to be talk about how I come up with fantasy names thank you so much for watching if you have any questions you can send me an ask on tumblr and I will see you in another video bye ah

Channel: ShaelinWrites

Views: 44,584

Rating: 4.9323468 out of 5

Keywords: writer, writing, author, novelist, creative writing, writetube, writetuber, writing advice, how to write a book, how to write a novel, aspiring writer, teen writer, writing vlog, teenager author, creative writing degree, books, nanowrimo, naming characters, how to name characters

Id: 9SLAaKBQafc

Length: 12min 42sec (762 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 23 2016