How to Name Things when you struggle with Naming Things

Coming up with the perfect name for a character, a location, or almost anything can be one of the most frustrating parts of worldbuilding, or storytelling in general. At times the perfect name just comes to you, but often, when you have to name a thing before you can move on, it can be feel like nothing fits, and what you settle on sounds like garbage the next time you hear it.

It is easy to overthink, especially if it is an important name, like a main character. It is also unfortunately easy to tell when someone has overthought a name. Johnny Stormlash. Nikki Heat.

There is a kind of a love of ironically appropriate names, but for me, unless it really fits the genre to be so cheesy, those kinds of names only annoy me.

So I’m going to go through some ways to circumvent the brainblock that comes up when you really need a name. We’ll cover a few different genres.

Modern Character Names

This is in some ways the easiest and in some ways the hardest. On one hand, there are many resources to draw from, including random name generators. On the other, everyone is so familiar with most modern names, there can be baggage if it sounds like a celebrity name or someone you know, but even more significantly, it can be really hard to make a modern name stand out. And when you do… it feels even more contrived than a made-up fantasy name. Contrived modern names may often sound “too cool” to be realistic.

My favorite resource for modern names is movie credits. You get blasted with hundreds if not thousands of names and surnames at once. I like to scan through, write down best first names, best surnames, and put some names together that sound right for the characters.

And suddenly, from just the one screenshot from one movie I have a big list from which I can choose and put together some interesting fairly believable names. You’ll note I mostly picked out the western sounding names, but if I had a need to name a character with an Indian background, this would potentially be even more useful.

It is easy to forget when you don’t have something like this in front of you, that surnames can be pretty silly, and come in a great variety. While you probably don’t want to go outright goofy, try some of the names you wouldn’t normally think of and see how they fit the character.

Alternate-Reality Near-Modern Place and Surnames

Many stories will simply make use of the world we have. Instead of inventing a new place, they set it in a location in the real world. This brings the characters and the story closer to the reader.

But at times, you want a bit of distance. You don’t want the baggage and history that comes with the town, or you want to start from scratch.

The next strategy is for when you need believable sounding locations for a near modern setting. This might be something like an old west, a steampunk, or maybe a superhero setting. How to some up with something as iconic as Gotham City or Metropolis? These names have become so deeply imprinted on our psyche that they almost feel real.

In this case, I’ll take a bunch of names that I want my name to sound like. For example, lets say I need to name a big American city. It needs to sound big and important. I can even throw fictional city names in the inspiration list.

New York, Chicago, Boston, Seattle, Gotham, Orlando, Denver, Phoenix, Washington, Baltimore, Oakland, San Diego, San Francisco, Portland, Los Angeles, Houston, Colorado Springs, Metropolis, Republic City, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Kansas City, Memphis, New Orleans

With that list I can break things down into parts, and customs, like starting with New, ending sometimes with a -ton or a -land, or the greek -opolis. Maybe take the name and use different phonemes (sounds). So just to brain storm based on that list:

Ravenna, Newbridge, Cheston, San Ricarro, Andropolis, Reedland, Pine Springs, Brenton, New Caimen, Terrace Falls, Albinore. Harkander, Freedock City, Lakeland, New Douphin, Juriston

There are some hits and misses there, and admittedly, this takes a bit of mental work, but it a place to start.

You can so something similar when you want to get across modern sounding names, but in an alternate world.

Jonathan, Ben, Harry, Thomas, Greg, George, William, Katrina, Samantha, Janet, Sarah, Margaret, Cassandra, Erin, Anna

And rearrange some phonemes…

Teleman, Nohl, Firro, Rhonik, Jeoris, Hillian, Galsina, Anentha, Siret, Jarah, Lyralotte, Vanenra, Yria, Ulla

And with surnames. Let’s say you need some Brittanic, Dickensian sounding names. These ones can get kind of goofy, so you can include thematic elements in your prompt list.

Rothschild, Thatcher, Waynright, Preckwinkle, Throckmorton, Birtwhistle, Hancock, Hornblower, Ridgewell, Humphreys, Canterbury, Buckley, Critchley, Tricklebank, Popplewell, steam, brass, wild, gear, rust, watch, clock, time, gauge

Well, honestly I don’t know why you need even weirder names than those, but here we go:

Dreckwell, Bucklebanks, Thatchley, Birtcock, Cantright, Critchwild, Crockbarton, Stumphrey, Brassbury, Rustrickley, Steamwright, Gaugeley, Bellringer, Grimwell, Gearwild

Establishing a Naming Convention for a Culture

Taking a turn now, and with a worksheet you’ll be able to use, I want to discuss something more specific to my kind of worldbuilding. This is a way to describe a culture, or even a species based on their language an the way it sounds.

For example: Star Trek. If you’re a fan, you can almost always identify in a list of names, which ones are Klingon. The Klingons are a bit hokey, but a lot of work has gone in to their language. Look at Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. You could probably pick out an elven name, an orcish name, a hobbit name, and a dwarven name without trying. Though, of course, Tolkien was a linguistics professor and the foundation of his work was the many languages he understood an invented.

Let’s assume you’re not a linguistics professor, but you want a similar effect in your world. Maybe not a whole language, but you at least want that culture’s naming convention to be consistent. Here’s how you can accomplish something like it:

• Determine what phonemes (syllable-sounds) exist and don’t exist in their language.
• Determine common naming structures (consonant-vowel-consonant, such as “Bob”, or vowel-consonant-vowel such as “Anna”).
• Select a few situational differences, like perhaps only female names end in a vowel, or only males ever use an Oh sound in their names.
• Consider one final weird linguistic quirk.
• Make a list of phonemes and fill out the structures accordingly.

To help you do all that, you can use the following tables

You can either pick and choose the phonemes, or cross things out arbitrarily, perhaps in a line along any of the tables. Make a vertical, horizontal, or diagonal line. Only select a few naming structures so the names from that culture are clearly identifiable.

As far as the final quirk, you can get a lot of ideas from studying real languages, each of which is stocked with a vast complexity of such quirks. Here are a few somewhat inspired by real languages, or fantasy languages

• Lots of apostrophes “Ga’Orek” Usually indicates a glottal stop, like starting a new word in the middle of the name.
• Flowing Vowels “Aeloeani” Each vowel is pronounced rather than blended.
• Relevent Inflective Add pinyin-style inflective marks. Upwards dash indicates a rising inflective, downward slash indicates dropping, flat indicates flat, and a “v” over the vowel indicates a dipping inflective.
• Extra Long Vowels: “Braaag” Never using more than a double-vowel is a strict rule in english, so breaking rules like that can represent a very different linguistic convention.
• Conflated Consonants: In some languages, there is no difference between sounds that we differentiate in English. For example in Mandarin, L and R are often pronounced the same way. In other languages, an R and a D can be conflated.
• Situational Variance: I touched on this earlier, with the idea that some names might end one way to sound masculine, but might have a feminine form that ends the same name with a different vowel-sound. Consider that they might not draw the line at gender, but perhaps by age, or by status level, or something else unexpected.

Conclusion

So hopefully this has given you some tools for dealing with naming struggles. The last pieces of advice I have on the subject are first: For modern names, don’t worry about making it sound too unique. Some of the best characters have seemingly plain names, at at the end of the day, it is the characters that make the names stand out. If you are relying on your name to make the character stand out, there is a problem. If the name overshadows the character early on, there is a problem. Look at James Bond. The author specifically chose the most boring name he could think of. Malcolm Reynolds. James Kirk. Bruce Wayne. Clark Kent.

Second: Know your genre. It might be that hokey overwrought names of great power and destiny, or ironically appropriate names are completely right for that setting and that story. Sometimes you want realism, Sometimes you want a badass who everyone knows is a badass the moment you introduce him because his name is Grant Venger, and you’re not asking the audience to take that seriously, but to just enjoy the camp.

Come to think of it, I’m totally gonna use Grant Venger for something.

See you next world!

—Charles