Naming Characters

What is in a name?

Good question.

Usually when I name characters, the name is just there for me and I plug along happily. Problem is, I am now getting to the point where I can’t recall all the names I’ve used. You have all these minor characters and old stories that one day could get resurrected and published and you don’t want accidentally reuse names over and over. You don’t want readers to think you only have 40 names in your back pocket and you keep reusing them over and over again because you have no creativity. Then there is the other problem of what if you use the name now and later find that it just HAS to be the name for the new character you’ve created and no other name will be as ‘perfect’ but the name is already used?

Anyway, I think I am going to have to start making a master list of character names so I don’t accidentally and unconsciously always have a ‘Ben’ or something in all my stories. Although that could be kind of funny…especially if he was a barista or something. Then eventually he could have his own story with all these other characters from the other books visiting him. It would be so Maeve Binchy.

But I doubt I’ll do that. Here is what I do when I get ‘stuck’ though. (Funny, I have never been stuck on a character name for longer than about 5 minutes and rarely have I gone back and changed a name.) What I do is go online. There are some great baby name websites and I just discovered that the American Social Security Site has the most popular names from different decades. Super cool if you need an older adult and you want the name to fit the time they were born in. What I’ve heard other writers do is save names from spam they receive. Isn’t that funny? Imagine the creative names they get there!