Nano (or other writing!) prep: Good name sites

[aldersprig]

So, you're writing something! Good, good, that's always a good first step no wait.

So, you're planning on writing something! (or pantsing, in which case come back to this post in November, or whenever you write it ;-)

You probably have characters, and they probably need names.

(I got through two very long chapters of a theoretical serial without naming the characters, once. I'm pretty sure the Finder is just named Finder by now).

Names with Meaning
Behind The Name is the most accurate, comprehensive name site I've found.
Think Baby Names is also pretty good.
20,000 Names has nice lists: "Dark" Names. "Weather" Names. And so on.
Want to name a character appropriately for a historical American era?
the Social Security Database goes back to 1879 with the top names for each year.
Via anke: "In case anyone wants to name someone from Germany, www.beliebte-vornamen.de has lists of the most popular baby names from 1890 to the present. just pick the birth year and see"
And here's a huge resource on historically accurate names: The SCA's name articles
A Name-suggester site ("I like this name." "Try these names.") via meridian_rose

If you can still get your hands on a phone book, that's a great way to pick out surnames.

Or check out Wikipedia's lists of most common surnames by location.

Names with no Meaning
Fourteen Minutes has a lovely random-name-sound generator
Springhole has several name generators
Seventh Sanctum is like the granddaddy of name generators
Chaotic Shiny has quite a few name generators, too.
This one's new to me (Mithril & Mages) but makes some fun names.
Serendipity Generators via meridian_rose

A list of Naming resources via meridian_rose

Baby Name Wizard, via inventrix and Cal's long and useful discussion on Behind the Name and Baby name Wizard.

There! Now that all your male characters are no longer named Jack (or maybe that's just my problem), you're ready to go.

Well, I mean, your characters are ready to go...

...well, at least they have names.

Know any more great sites? Let me know!

Comments

[anke]

In case anyone wants to name someone from Germany, www.beliebte-vornamen.de has lists of the most popular baby names from 1890 to the present. just pick the birth year and see

[meridian_rose]

I've never done NaNo, for reaons I've written about in the past, but, for other reasons I strongly feel I want to attempt it this year – or at least some sort of Rebel NaNo where I get to write other things too!

As a result I'm desperately trying to get all the information together before I start. I'm mostly a pants-er but NaNo doesn’t allow you to spend days thinking about things like names. And the names have to be right; one of the eternal joys of fanfic is that, even if you hate the names, all the characters are already named and have jobs and you can get on with the plot.

So this is a timely post and I'll be checking out some of the links – I already love behindthename and Seventh Santcum, and I was playing with http://www.babynamewizard.com/ today, plus in my bookmark list I have
http://www.writing-world.com/links/names.shtml
http://nine.frenchboys.net/randgirl.php fantasy, French, Japanese, Mediveal
http://www.magicbabynames.com/ as with babynamewizard, you input names you like and it suggests others that are similar in some way, can be useful if you're overly attached to a name and need a variant for a new story, or for finding siblings for existing characters!

[aldersprig]

I'm not doing Nano this year, actually - I wrote a post on it here (http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/908277.html), but I'm doing a lot of long projects and, well, lots of people I know ARE doing Nano ;-)

awesome links, thank you!

[inventrix]

I can't believe you don't have Baby Name Wizard! Forget the SSN database; use their Name Voyager instead~

Also, each name's entry has a list of common sibling names, which is extra handy for making your characters' names sound plausible together.

They also have a number of lists of names popular in other countries.

Behind The Name is also excellent for non-English names, both by browsing their lists and their random name generator. You don't need to care about meaning to get good use from it. ;)

Bonus! BtN's random name generator can give you a random surname as well! They are pulled from its surname sub-site - which, like the main site, is categorized by language of use. It's less comprehensive than the main site but still very handy.

Both the main BtN site and their surname site allow you to view names sorted by popularity/commonness for various countries, right on their front pages.

[inventrix]

For fun and as examples, I generated a name on BtN for each of several languages!

Japanese: Hoshi Fukui
Portuguese: Clementina Catarina Zezé Mendes
Greek: Alexandros Gregorios Iordanou
English: Marian Sunshine Outterridge
German: Beata Irmentrud Heintze

Handy trick: generate random full name on BtN, put first name (and middle, separately, if you have them) into BNWiz, grab sibling names and bam! You have a whole family!

[inventrix]

Example, because I can:
I (don't really) have a female American protagonist, so I generate a female English name: Enola Elisa Fowler. I'm going to exercise editorial control and make that Elisa Enola.

Elisa has two younger brothers, so I'm going to look at her sibling names, then pick Daniel and Benjamin.

Now, for their middle names, I look up sibling names for Enola. I'm really tempted and intrigued by Sherlock and Mycroft, but decide her parents were not Holmes fans. I'll pick Kalem and Cory.

Thus! Elisa Enola Fowler, Daniel Kalem Fowler, and Benjamin Cory Fowler.

[aldersprig]

That sibling thing is kinda neat.

I have a sudden urge to give my characters more siblings...

[inventrix]

I have a Problem with remembering to give my characters families. >.>

[aldersprig]

IIRC, we've discussed that.

Sigh, Shahin, Jamian, and Kai are all only children, at least in the way they were raised - no, wait, Jaya has a brother.

[inventrix]

*coughlaugh* Addergoole naming schemes are canonically bizarre, though.

[aldersprig]

...you come up with the best taglines for my stories!

"Canonically Bizarre."

[clare_dragonfly]

Accurate.