Remember My Name: How to Name Your Characters

characters writing craft

We know that character names are an important element in writing characters who stick in the reader's mind. There’s the famous (and true!) story that Margaret Mitchell originally named her “Gone With the Wind” heroine “Pansy”, not quite as memorable as “Scarlett”. But how do I pick memorable, meaningful names for my characters? I did some research that I hope will be helpful for you as well.

How do I name fictional characters? Use 4 Rules (Clear, Original, Intentional, Natural) and 7 Methods to Name Your Characters:

Baby-Names
Name Generators
Reference Sources
Root Meaning
Transformation
Wild Creativity
Real Persons - CAUTION!

Let’s dig deeper into those 4 Rules to COIN Character Names and then get practical with the 7 Methods to Name Your Characters. Ready? Read on!

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4 Rules to COIN Character Names

Of course, rules are made to be broken, especially by creative and contrarian people (i.e. writers) but first, try to live by these rules — and then, if you want to, feel free to break them in creative and contrarian ways.

So, for your consideration, using the acronym mnemonic “COIN”, here are the four rules for naming characters in a Clear, Original, Intentional, and Natural way:

CLEAR

Names that are easy to pronounce, easy to remember, and easy to keep apart from other characters in the story will be appreciated by your readers, even if they don’t consciously realize why. Be helpful to your reader by creating clear names. Here are some things to think about (yes, it’s another acronym mnemonic, FLACKS):

Flow - consider how first and last names flow together. Avoid creating an awkward stutter or sibilance by placing similar letters at the end of the first name and the beginning of the last name (ex. James Smith has an odd “sss” sibilant sound in the middle, Patrick Kane makes the reader feel a little “k-k” stutter, with apologies to real James Smiths and Patrick Kanes everywhere, but of course, nicknames Jim Smith and Pat Kane solve it). Examples of good “flow” are a longer first name and shorter last name (ex. Huckleberry Finn) or vice versa. Alliterative names (Bilbo Baggins, Severus Snape, Willy Wonka) often flow well and are fun and memorable. For a longer first or last name, consider how that name, on its own, flows when you read it or speak it out loud.
Length - shorter names are easier to remember. If you have a longer name for a character, consider a nickname. For example “Huckleberry Finn” is mostly just “Huck” throughout. Consider pairing up a longer first name with a shorter surname and vice versa. A long first name paired with a long surname will be a mind-twister for the reader (but, again, this can be solved by using a nickname.)
Awkwardness - avoid character names that are awkward. For example, a character with an “s” at the end of the name (ex. James) makes it a bit awkward to ‘mentally pronounce’ the possessive (ex. James’s). This can be solved by using a nickname (ex. Jim’s) but you need to then use the nickname somewhat consistently so the reader doesn’t get confused (Who is this Jim all of a sudden? Is that the same as James or a different character?). Other examples of awkward names are those that evoke a weird image in a reader’s mind (sorry, Jo Nesbø, but “Harry Hole” can sound a bit odd to an English-speaking reader).
Confusion - avoid giving characters very similar names. For example, having three characters with names that start with the same letter (James, John, Jack) can make it difficult to keep them apart. Similar sounding names, even if they are not spelled the same, such as Tim and Jim, can also cause reader confusion. Of course, some characters are purposefully given similar names (ex. Lewis Carroll’s Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum), but that’s the “break-the-rules rule” when you’re ready for it, or the “Intentional” rule (see below). Just don’t inadvertently cause confusion.
Kinship - if two characters are related, (or maybe some other kind of “kinship” in the sense of being close friends, a couple) you may want to mark this in some way in order to make their relationship stand out. In real life, parents often name their children creatively this way, so it follows the “Natural” rule (see below). This is a case where using the same initial letter in the name would be acceptable because it is not causing confusion, but instead purposefully creating a connection. For example, Nick and Nora Charles (the sleuthing couple from Dashiell Hammett’s “The Thin Man”). Just be careful that the names are still easy to distinguish. Sisters named Katherine and Kimberly feel connected yet are easy to keep apart, but sisters named Kat and Kit would be hard to keep straight. Again, there are exceptions to this rule, when done intentionally, such as two sisters with the easily confused nicknames “Lottie” and “Lettie” in Agatha Christie’s “A Murder is Announced” (you need to read the story to see the intention, no spoilers).

Sound - how does the name sound when spoken out loud, is it clear, could the pronunciation be misunderstood? If you must have a complex and difficult to pronounce the name, then help the reader along. For example, in “Wolf Hall”, Hilary Mantel has a character (not her choice, a real historical character, since this is a historical novel) with the last name “Wriothesly”, but she helps the reader along by having him say “Call me Risley” (since “Risley” is actually how “Wriothesly” is pronounced) and the other character tend to jokingly refer to him as “Call-me-Risley” or even just “Call-me” so that when the name “Wriothesly” is (infrequently at first, then more frequently) used, the reader has been trained how to pronounce it. Clever, no? Hilary Mantel is fantastic!

ORIGINAL

Yes, the name should be realistic (see “Natural” below), but that doesn’t mean it should be flat and unoriginal. The name is a major “tag” that conjures up the character each time the reader comes across it.

Original names will make characters stand out. Flat, unoriginal names will make them forgettable.

Get inspired by making a list of your own favorite characters in the books you love. What makes them original? How can you achieve the same level of originality?

Several of the ideas in the “7 Methods” section below will help you with creating quite original names. Play with it, have fun.

INTENTIONAL

Since names are such an important “tag”, be intentional about the impression you want to create in the reader’s mind.

A heroic character with a somewhat silly (or maybe a weak or sinister) name won’t seem so heroic. A stunning heroine with a plain-sounding name won’t seem so stunning.

Be intentional about the name and consider having the name provide subtle clues about the character’s role in the story. They will be reinforced every time the reader comes across the name.

You can have fun with this. My favorite example is Neal Stephenson’s hero and protagonist in “Snow Crash”, named “Hiro Protagonist”. That’s intentional. Not so subtle, perhaps, but intentional. And clever.

NATURAL

Just as you want realistic settings and other elements of the world you are writing about, you should pick character names that will ring true within your story world.

What time and place does your story take place in? If it’s a realistic setting (i.e. not a fantasy world), let’s say a noir set in the 1940s United States, what names were really popular there and then? There are resources to discover this (see the “7 Methods” below), and it’s worth the effort so that your characters will feel like they naturally inhabit their time and place.

If you are writing science fiction or fantasy, you will have more freedom, but still consider how the character names fit within your imagined world, for example, whether personal names are related to place names and other aspects of the world such as mythology, professions, invented languages, or culture. Just as the name “John Smith” in our real world is a combination of a culturally derived first name (John from the Bible) and the surname signifying an ancient profession (a blacksmith working with iron and steel), are there equivalent aspects that would result in personal names that feel natural within your imagined world?

One (admittedly extreme) example is J.R.R. Tolkien who invented an entire mythology, created several fictional languages, drew detailed maps of his imaginary world complete with the names of countries, cities, rivers, mountains, forests, and other natural features, and then gave his characters names that would naturally inhabit this fully imagined world.

Or consider George R. R. Martin who takes inspiration from medieval history (adding dragons and white walkers), then bases his character names on real medieval names with slight twists, and by considering family lineage as well as cultural aspects (such as the surnames of illegitimate children being “Snow” in the cold north and “Sand” in the hot south.)

7 Methods to Name Your Characters

Now you have the “rules”, the concepts, so let’s get practical. Here are 7 methods to come up with great names for your characters. There is a list of links to resources in the section below, so I won’t repeat “see the list of resources below”. If any of these ideas resonate with you, then check out those links in the “Resources” section below.

1. BABY-NAMES

When real-life parents want to name their real-life babies they have access to lists of names at their fingertips through just a few google searches, as well as baby naming books. Take advantage of these resources to find names for your “imaginary babies”.

These sources will often provide information about the popularity of the names over time, so you can get a sense of whether the name would be appropriate for the time period of your story. There are also specific resources that will give you popular names by decades.

That’s great for first names, but what about last names? You will see other methods below for coming up with last names, but (and this is cheating just a little bit, so be careful), you can consider taking the first name you like and appropriating it as a last name, either “as is” or by adding a suffix like “-son or -sen” or a prefix like “O’ or Mc or Mac” (for Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian origin names) and the equivalent for other ethnicities.

Speaking of different ethnicities, most of the baby name sources will provide information about the ethnic origin of the name and derivations of the name in different countries, as well as popularity by countries.

In the “Resources” section I have included a list of Baby Name sites. This is the last time (until the end) that I will remind you that there is a list of resources, I promise!

2. NAME GENERATORS

Name generators will do (some of) the work for you by pulling from a database of names. Think of these as inspiration, suggestions, ideas.

It’s a good way to quickly generate a long list of names and then pick the one(s) you like the best or “mix and match” by taking the first name from one and combining it with the last name of another randomly generated suggestion.

There are name generators that are specially targeted to certain genres, such as science fiction and fantasy name generators.

No matter which name generator you choose, don’t expect them to pick the one, perfect name for you. You’ll do best if you consider them as food for your own inner creative monster. Work with the suggestions, play, combine, make them your own and come up with the name that is just right for your character.

A special category of “Name Generators” is the “Anagram Generator”. Here you can type in a word or a phrase, and it will generate a number of anagram words. Some of these anagram generators have an option to limit the results to names. A name that also is an anagram can be extra fun as a hidden clue for the reader, whether you choose to reveal this or leave it as an Easter Egg for the cleverest reader to figure out on their own. An example of an anagram revealed is “Tom Marvolo Riddle” in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series (no spoilers, in case you haven’t read it, go find out the meaning of the anagram by reading the books or watching the movies).

3. REFERENCE SOURCES

The Baby Names reference source is a special category, but there are a number of other reference sources you can consider, including:

Encyclopedias - such as Wikipedia, the Encyclopedia Britannica, Colliers, and others. Look up the setting, time period, historical events, and historical characters. For example, can you use a place name relevant to the story as inspiration for your character name, or can you be inspired by a historical character’s name? Encyclopedias are best used as inspiration by reading articles with an open mind and a notebook at hand to capture possible names as you read.
Name Data Bases - such as the census, social security administration, genealogy sites, and others let you browse not only first names but also surnames.
Sourcebooks - such as The Writer’s Digest Character Naming Sourcebook are dedicated to character names for writers and will include suggestions for different countries.
Phone Books - the old-fashioned white pages printed book used to be a go-to source of the name. The online versions are not quite as helpful since they are search engines, rather than being able to thumb through a physical book. But there are online versions, such as at the library of congress, where you can pick phone books from past years across the United States and browse online in that way.
Graveyards - yes, that’s a bit of a macabre source, but still a good one. There are the physical graveyards in your area, but also online obituary sites.

4. ROOT MEANING

The root meaning of a name can be a place to start. For example, if you want a character that is secretly the father of the hero, you can start with a root meaning such as the Dutch word for “father” which is “Vader”.

You can create a sinister character name by taking the French word for death (“mort”) and the Norse word for violence (“vold”), and voila, “Voldemort”, violence and death, a good sinister name.

There is something about the language that lets word sounds take on meaning we can feel, deep down at the gut emotional level, even if it is not conscious, nor logical. Voldemort just feels like a sinister name, in part because we have those deep associations with certain root words-sounds.

In “The Hunger Game”, the root meaning of the name “Katniss” refers to the plant with the Latin name “Sagittaria”, which is “The Archer” (as in the Sagittarius constellation in the zodiac.) And of course, one of Katniss Everdeen’s key skills is archery. This feels like it was both intentional by the author, Suzanne Collins, and also not something that was necessarily meant to be appreciated by the reader. But I suspect that lavishing this internal meaning on the character name was helpful to Suzanne Collins in the bonding between writer and character that is so important. Sometimes it’s enough that you, the writer, know that root meaning, and that it feels right for the character.

In the examples above, you would start with a root meaning and derive the name from this meaning. Alternately you can find names (through one of the methods above) and then research the root meanings to select one that fits.

Or you can use the root meaning of a name to generate another name.

For example, if you take the name “John”, the root meaning of “John” is the Hebrew “Yohanan” which means “graced by God”. You can either take other forms of “John” (ex. Gianni, Jean, Juan, Jan, Janek, Ian, Evan, Ivan, Johannes, Johan, Hans, Shane, Sean, Shaun, all names derived from “Yohanan”) or look for names that have a similar meaning, such as male names that mean “grace” (ex. Aamin, Chanak, Chares, Chezian, Daiwik, Gracian, Hardyal, Hulbert, Kalman, Zayne, all are names that have “grace” somewhere in their root meaning).

Similarly, for the last name “Smith” (meaning “a worker in metal”), surnames that have the same meaning in some other languages include Angove, Darbinyan, Desmet, Ferrari, Faber, Haddad, Herrero, Kamara, Kovac, Lefèvre, Lohar, Pande, Smed, Trengove, Zargar. And that is just names that mean “worker in metal”. You could go further afield and be inspired to pick a different profession, such as “Carpenter” and see where that takes you.

So by a little bit of research and some creative connections, you can take plain “John Smith” and use root words to come up with “Zayne Zargar” or “Gianni Ferrari” or “Ivan Darbinyan” or “Jean Lefèvre” or “Gracian Smed”. Have fun with it.

5. TRANSFORMATION

Using root meanings in the way described above is one form of transformation. Other examples include ideas such as:

Flip - either whole names (first name as surname and vice versa) or parts of a name (ex. “Darbinyan” from the example above, could become “Yandarbin” by flipping the “yan” from the end to the front.)
Compress - shorten the name on either (or both ends), so “Gregory” could become “Gregor” or “Egory” or “Egor”.
Expand - lengthen the name by adding to it, so “John” could become “Johning” or “Benjohn”. Or you can take the contracted version and add to it. So first “Gregory” becomes “Egor” then expanded to “Egoring”
Mash-Up - take two (or more) names and mash them together. For example “Michael” and “Thomas” could become “Mimas” or “Thomel”.
Misspell - taking a real name, or a word, then misspelling it, then either use this misspelled version as the name or combine it with another misspelled name.
Anagram - see the section on anagrams in the “Name Generator” method above.

I’m sure you can think of even more ways of transforming a name. The essence of this trick is to play with the name by ripping apart, cutting, adding, combining, kneading the name like clay, and then stepping back to admire the result.

6. WILD CREATIVITY

Just go wild. Make up a name from your own fertile imagination. Here are some authors that have come up with wildly creative character names as inspiration:

Charles Dickens: Wackford Squeers, Decimus Tite Barnacle, Tudor Stiltstalking, Uncle Pumblechook, Polly Toodle, Luke Honeythunder, Paul Sweedlepipe, Smike, John Podsnap, Serjeant Buzfuz, Affery Flintwinch, Charity Pecksniff, Martin Chuzzlewit, Horation Fizkin, Anne Chickenstalker, Caroline "Caddy" Jellyby, Rogue Riderhood, Dick Swiveller (Dickens created more than 1,000 characters, many with whimsical names like these).
Don Delillo: Bucky Wunderlick.
Joseph Heller: Major Major Major Major, Milo Minderbender, Chief White Halfoat.
William Gibson: Hubertus Bigend, Molly Millions, Lupus Yonderboy.

Thomas Pynchon: Cyprian Latewood, Tyrone Slothrop, Meatball Mulligan, Mike Fallopian, Zepho Bark, Pig Bodine, Bigfoot Bjornsen, Reverend Wicks Cherrycoke, Sauncho Smilax (and so many more).

Neal Stephenson: Hiro Protagonist, Yours Truly, Da5id Meier, Vitaly Chernobyl, Mary cCmndhd (pronounced "Skuhmithid" and anglicized as "Smith”).
David Foster Wallace: Mildred Bonk, Ortho “The Darkness” Stice, Ann Kittenplan, Lateral Alice Moore, Calvin Thrust.

P.G. Woodhouse: Oofy Prosser, Puffy Benger, Fruity Biffen, Pongo Twistleton, Gussie Fink-Nottle, Stiffy Stiffham, Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright, Stilton Cheesewright, Tuppy Glossop, Bingo Little.

Yes, I realize that many (most!, all?) of these break one or more of the “4 Rules”, but that’s what wild creativity is all about! They definitely all follow the O (Original) rule in the COIN mnemonic, even if they are not all Clear, Intentional, or Natural.

7. REAL PEOPLE - CAUTION!

It’s OK to be inspired by a real person’s name. But …. Major Caution: Being INSPIRED by a real person’s name is all good and well, however, you MUST change it up in some meaningful (non-obvious) way, so you don’t cause problems for that person, and yourself.

Using someone’s real name without permission is not cool, especially if your character is a villain.

Oh, and a name that is an obvious “parody” of someone’s real name, is not cool either.

One category of “real people” (though imaginary) are other authors’ fictional characters. To make sure you haven’t inadvertently given your character an “original” name that another author has also come up with, do a web search with your character’s name in quotes (so the search engine looks for exactly that name, not something like it) and the words “in book” afterward. For example: “Zayne Zargar” in book.

The lesson is: be careful that you don’t “steal” a name from a real or fictional character.

So, if you are inspired by a name that is already “taken” (be it a real or fictional person), make sure that you change the name in some way. Use the “Transformation” or “Root Meaning” methods to change it up so that the name is no longer that of the actual person or another author’s fictional character.

Resources

These are some resources I have found helpful in creating names that follow the 4 Rules: COIN (Clear, Original, Intentional, and Natural).

MY FAVORITE ALL-PURPOSE RESOURCE

The Writer's Treasure Chest - everything in one place, curated, organized

BABY-NAMES

NAME GENERATORS

OTHER RESOURCES

Behind the Name - helpful for digging into the root meaning of names
Internet Anagram Server - using anagrams as another way to generate names
Directories (Electronic Reference Sources) - a list of links to a number of directories including historical phone directories
Mail and Phone Directories - both US and international phone directories

BEYOND THE NAME

How to Write Characters Who Stick in the Reader's Mind — now that you have a great name, read my blog post on all the other aspects of writing memorable characters.
It's Alive! How to Write Character Descriptions —my blog article on describing characters in layers: skin, flesh & bones, and soul

FREE COURSE, GUIDE AND WORKBOOK

Do you want to write fiction faster, while practicing your craft and your writing process to consistently get better? Check out this link to the "Write Fiction Faster ... and better" guide and workbook, which comes with a companion course with 23 bite-sized video lessons and 4 worksheets.

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