Mistic Pets

Welcome to Issue 18
Created by The Mistic Pets Team

Quick Guide to Naming Characters
Written By Wasteland

Creating a character usually starts with a name.

Names are what people who are looking at your character see first in writing and what they will judge when deciding whether to read further or give up. This means you have to be sure to pick a name very carefully.

So while you may love the name “Uchiha Blade”, other people will see that and run for the hills, as it gives a sense of a dark, brooding, badly written teenage anti-hero fancharacter before they’ve even gotten to the profile; nobody cares about this kind of character. But if you go too far the other way and name your character “Bob Smith”, people will picture office workers or the many stand-ins who die first in zombie movies; characters no one cares about either.

So the trick to the matter is to strike a good balance between originality and the run of the mill.

A common mistake is to borrow a name off of an existing series character, be that books, movies, games, comics, cartoons, or what have you. While this can work occasionally, if you end up basing the character off of the original series, it’s time to start over.  There are also certain names that will just never work as originals, as well – names like Megatron, Spongebob, Bowser, Clefairy, Naruto and so on will never be seen as original characters no matter how well done the 10-page backstory you wrote for yours is.

A second thing that’s usually done is to do a name that just doesn’t make sense. No one in their right mind would name their kid  “xXdeadcrossXx” or “Kagome Violence”.  You’re unlikely to ever meet a “Monster” or a “Hazard”.  “Harlen Quin” and “Horace Morris” promptly legally renamed themselves.

But say you still really, really like the word Hazard after hearing that. The above isn’t to say you can’t use it for a name. In fact, this is where you get to be creative.  Put the word Hazard down for a while and go to look at real names; baby books, old school yearbooks, and name generators are quite helpful here. Turns out you like the first name “James”.  Can you find a surname that looks nice with that? Keep looking, and try writing down combinations as you go to get a feel for how they work. [As a tip,  surnames like Fletcher, Stevenson, and Morris often look more balanced if you’re also going to use a word in a name than more unusual surnames like J’zell and Sadheart do.]

After much deliberation you’ve settled on the name James Fletcher. But wait. How does Hazard work with this?

It works as an alias. Perhaps he’s using a street name, maybe he’s embarrassed of the name James, maybe he’s just a kid acting tough, maybe it’s the name he uses when he transforms into a superhero at night.  So along with the name James “Hazard” Fletcher, you’ve got the beginnings of a character.

It helps to note the setting you’re in, too. James there works well in the popular modern realism or fantasy setting. But say you wanted to make more characters. A blueblooded English character isn’t going to be named “Minami Yasuda”, while a Victorian-era vampire would suffer with a heavy fantasy name like “Kahrrin Bronzesword”. But a Japanese native would do well with the first and a sword-and-sorcery guardian would be in their element with the second. It’s all relative.

And as a last note, no one will ever take a character with a name like Dead’light In-visible Cyril Konoha Scythe seriously. Ever. While that example is highly exaggerated, you have to know that if you character has more than one middle name, two or more aliases, randomly set hyphens or dashes,  a mix of words in different languages, or anything similar - you will be laughed right off the internet.

So, all of that in mind, go create some awesomely named characters!

Comments

Written By meggy124124

I love this article :)

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