Quote:
Originally Posted by DavidRM
Sometimes, because I'm not German, I take a word like "weaver" and translate it to German ("Weber") and call that the surname. I'm not saying it's a *good* idea, just one I've used.  |
Well, makes perfect sense for German characters. German last names include ones based on jobs just like English (though the equivalent of "Fletcher" which doesn't seem uncommon in English, is nothing I encountered so far).
I know there was at least one kid in my class at school with the last name of Weber.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DavidRM
In the US, there are even "most popular baby name" lists by year, going back to the 1930's. So I sometimes use the age of a character to pick a year to comb through. 20 year old girl? Popular girl names of 1990. 45 year old man? Popular boy names of 1965.
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There's something like that for German first names, with the by-decade lists going back to the 1890:
http://www.beliebte-vornamen.de/