Quote:
Originally Posted by Xanthe
It absolutely drives me crazy when an author will populate a book with characters that all have easily-pronounceable Anglo-Saxon names. That lack of imagination by the author always induces an eye-roll on my part, speaking as a person whose surname causes strong men to weep when attempting pronunciation. It always makes me think that if they don't have the imagination to create a unique character, how can they create a unique story?
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As an author, I try to stick to a few rules in naming...
1) If there is more then one "group/race/sub culture/etc" of characters in the book, then their names should reflect that grouping. That is all characters from a group should have same flavor. For example in my series there is a group of humans that live on a planet and are frankly fairly normal/average people.. they have names like Bill, Mike, and so on. There is another group of people that are a reptilian race and they have names like Zalith. I also have a group of aliens from a much more exotic place with names like Salsartazar, Mathorn and Korshalem. The intention is that you can tell when reading my books if you pay attention what culture a person is from by their name.
2) I keep main character names very easy read, pronounce and remember (at least to my own mind). For example the primary character in book one has the name Vydor.
3) I try to avoid names that are over used or well known such as Harry Potter or James Bond.
4) When stuck for a name I will often just star typing letters and see what words I can make out of them.
5) When possible I match names to personalities. If I had a cherry, happy go lucky character I would not name him Marvin or Eeyore for example. I could see the fun in doing that, and enjoy reading people that play games like that at times, but it is not my writing style.
I have played with other languages to make names. For example in book 3 there is a fish that the characters eat that is considered to be a rare and expensive delicacy. I name it aupessi which if you know even a little Latin you can probably see what I did there...
So anyways... that is how I approach it as an author. As a reader... I just want all the important characters to have names that are easy to tell apart and remember.
Hope that helps someone...