Naming things can be a paralyzing process where no matter what name you come up for your fictional person, place, animal or thingamajig, just doesn’t feel right. You may even come up with some naming conventions to help yourself out but the rules just end up feeling like a dull math problem of adding, removing, swapping and rearranging letters. Coming up with names can be... difficult to say the least. There are plenty of people are more qualified to discuss this than me, who have analyzed this subject more thoroughly and put together their thoughts together in a more organized fashion rather than just slapping together a post. So I am going to do something slightly different.
For the longest time I did not register names as anything more than a “Hello! My name is:____” sticker. Names weren’t words with meaning, they were just identifiers that are just that thing and nothing else. If that’s the case, why don’t gibberish words that I came up with don’t feel like names? What I ended up identifying as the problem is that English is kind of a shambling language with no clear naming conventions of its own but steals them from other languages. The realization resulted in some brainstorming that produced these naming guidelines:
Name has a removed meaning
Name has a direct meaning
Name as both removed and direct meaning
Name is arbitrary
((I will have TL;DRs at the bottom of each section))
Removed Meanings
A great number of people, places, animals and things have names that have no obvious meaning making that word a “true name” in my eyes. There is meaning, but that meaning is hidden beyond the “Language Barrier.” In a sense, a lot of names are straight up meaningless sounds to English speakers since there is no English definition for them. Can you tell me what a “Michael” is? What about a “Stephanie?” An “Alaska?” A “Swahili?” These are names that only have meaning in the language they originally came from. Like how Michael was originally the Hebrew “Mikha’el” which means “gift from God/who is like God” or how Stephanie is the English version of the Greek name “Stephanos” meaning “crown.” They have meaning, it was just left behind when the word was taken. Though sometimes the meaning of the word was used originally but faded with time. Alaska for example is the modification of the Aluet word “alaxsxaq” meaning “the mainland” (it’s meaning is actually a lot longer but this is fine) as well as the word “Swahili” is from the Arabic word “sawahil” meaning “coast.” While Alaska and Swahili are good names for the places they represent, is every Michael a gift from God? Do all Stephanies hang out around royalty and stand on their head during ceremonies? Probably not. These names are now only tangentially defined by their original meaning and have become an encapsulation of the thing they represent. Is Alaska the mainland? Sure but most people will tell you it’s the state. Is Swahili a coast? Absolutely, but people are quicker to think about the country of the language.
Names like these can paralyze creatives because how much worldbuilding needs to be done before you can confidently name your main character? While world building is super dope, it is not entirely necessary to make a name or group of names feel cohesive. You only only need a handful of mostly consistent rules to follow. Maybe your Space Epic takes inspiration from the Romans so places typically end in “-a” like Hispania, Germania, Sicilia, Arabia and Britannia. Maybe your fairy tale needs something totally new, perhaps their names are very airy so most of their names are vowels. Maybe people’s names need titles like Mr., Dame, -san or Sire to make any new name recognizable as a name.
((TL;DR Words can sometimes feel like they are exclusively names because the meaning became secondary over time or was lost between languages, leaving only a name. IE Katherine, Boston, canal))
Direct Meanings (Descriptor Names)
This one is... well... direct. I have just shown that a lot of names might have a meaning but it is secondary as an identifier. Abrahams are Abrahams, lions are lions and London is London. Names with direct meanings are the opposite where the definition of the name describes the thing it represents. As unoriginal or on-the-nose as it feels, names for things can be ridiculously straight forward. A “locker” is a thing that locks; a “Texas longhorn” is a cow with long horns that lives in Texas; an “astronaut” is a “sailor(nauta, Latin)” that sails in the “stars(astrum, Greek)”; and “Bigfoot” is a weird forest dude with big feet. There isn’t any mysterious second meaning to these names, what you see is what you get.
A lot of descriptor names are nicknames/slang and modern creations. A person who is new to something is a “newbie”; we call our pet cat “whiskers” because they got whiskers right on the snout; and we call them “computers” because of all the computations they handle. Names with direct meaning can make creatives feel like hacks when they come up with them, but relax, it is human nature.
Name your fictional castle Goldwall because the fortress walls shine like gold and name your character Blade if they are going to be edgy! No one is stopping you and millennia of people are right there with you nodding along because damn. That castle does look gold. (A recent noteworthy example of cheesy naming is in Elden Ring. From a company with famously obtuse story telling combined with George RR Martian, they had all the creative power in the world and decided that a manor in a volcano should be called “Volcano Manor.” No frills like “Volcano Manor, Home of the Blasphemous,” no “Manor of Seeping Earth,” and no “Abode of the Repugnant” just “Volcano Manor.” Gotta love it.)
((TL;DR Names can be ridiculously straight forward where the name has a meaning that describes the thing itself. IE - eraser, sneakers, New Castle))
Mixed Removed, Direct Meanings
Mixed names have at least two components where one part of the name has removed meaning while another component has direct meaning. This usually results in multi-word names where the addition of a word can either separate two similar objects or bring together two separate objects. It can also happen as an attempt to make a word with a removed meaning more familiar by adding a recognizable part.
This happens a lot with animals and places. Examples include the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean (Atlantic referring to the Atlas Mountains in Africa which is turn refers to the Greek word “atlas,” and Pacific is from the Latin word “pacificus” meaning “peacemaking”); the mythical Amazons, the Amazon Rainforest and the Amazon River (Amazon referring to the ancient Greek warrior women meaning “without a breast,” while the rainforest was associated with the warriors because a European explore got his ass kicked by a group of women that lived there); the Himalayan Mountains (Himalaya means “snow abode” in Sanskrit); the Sahara Desert; and the River Avon. The last two names are when these kinds of names become funny since Sahara Desert (Arabic) means Desert Desert and River Avon (Welsh) means River River. Seriously, when you see names like this you really can’t be too hard on yourself when naming things. Feel no shame when you name your fictional waterfall the “Alto Proceritas Falls,” The Tall Tall Falls (Spanish, Latin).
((TL;DR Names can come in stages, going through different hands and times to create names that are a mash of languages and cultures. IE - Gobi Desert, New Mexico, rendezvous point))
Arbitrary Names
In general, these kinds of names are pretty rough to handle because it all comes down to “what feels right.” This is because all language is built upon the fact that, one day, cavemen looked at a rock and all agreed they would call it “rock.”
For very old languages and words that have descended from those old languages have no meaning that you can break down more. The further back you trace a name, the more history will revert it to its original form until finally... there is nothing left to trace. Eventually, the word become a totally meaningless jumble of sounds that someone decided the thing with utters over in the field is definitely a cow.
Just now I decided that “spaps” is the totally legit name for my make-believe bird-like animals that fly using wind they can generate the same way bladeless fans generate, with magic.
((TL;DR Words did not have meaning until people began agreeing that an arbitrary pattern of sounds represents something else. IE Proto-Indo-European - two/dwóh, mother/méhtēr, star/hstḗr))
Finally, here are some quick notes about where to start if you’re struggling to come up a good way to come up with names.
Naming Context
Who, what, where, when, why are fantastic places to start. The same thing can have different names depending on the context of that particular moment. Who is doing the naming? Were the subjects of “The Great King” or where they the victims of “The Blue Tyrant?” Is the nameing being done by a human or something else? Is it “Subject 9b” or is it “Nibbles the Mouse?” Where is the the thing being named? Is it “Mountain Lake” or is it “Valley Lake?” When was it named? Is it “The Intergalactic Launch Point” or is it “The Crash Site Junkyard?” Why is it being named, for what purpose? Is it the “Archeological Dig Site -10” or is it “The Sinking Sands?” Beyond that, the naming conventions you are inspired by in real life or come up with on your own can be remarkably creative.
Names of people, places and things can be named based on any number of its own qualities and the qualities of its environment, but that is not the interesting part,. What is interesting is how a thing is described. Using a single spaceship as the foundation, the name could be simple like “Cruiser”; it could be exaggerated synonyms like “Aether Galleon”; it could be quirky like “Bottle Rocket”; it could follow administrative guidelines that demand clear identification but still has some wiggle room for personalization like “Passenger Class Spacecraft 123.SUC-MI-D”; it could be a poetic description of its creation like “Fire and steel/hammer and forge/shape and build/seal and fly” with a more manageable name like “From Fire to Flight”; or it could be something seemingly childish like a mimicry of the the sounds it makes like “Fffffuwm Pew Pew.” There are millions of ways to go with naming rules and if you stick by them, you can pull of some really extreme ones.
((TL;DR The environment and time of the naming as well as the thing’s inherent properties are great starting points for naming something, but naming rules are way more creative than simple descriptive names. IE - name is the intended goal, name is the result of a bureaucratic necessity, name is never given but rather earned.))
Linguistics
Finally, linguistics. This is something to consider if you are making a foreign culture or language and you want it to feel authentic. Basically, languages have tendencies. Each language has sounds and letters they use and sounds and letters they do not use. Deciding what to remove and what to add to this fiction-culture language will build a solid identity for it. Something I tried once was to make a character with an orc accent and to figure out what that sounded like, I hooked my pinky fingers around my lower lip to act as protruding tusks to see what sounds I could and could not make (no b, m, or p sounds). You don’t have to go that far though. The human vocal chords (and non-human if your are creating with that in mind) are extremely versatile and capable of producing a great number of sounds but most languages only repeatedly use a fraction of those sounds. So depending one if you want that culture to feel strong or soft, you can convey parts of that in the sounds and letters you select.
((TL;DR Names are informed by the language and each language has it own preferred sound and rhythm. IE - rojo, lago, campo; l’eglise, champagne, mademoiselle; montag, bier, fisch))
And that’s it! I hope you took something worthwhile away from this and can feel more confident moving forward with whatever creative projects you are working on!
So, for this otome-like game I downloaded, they asked me to write my name. I chose Dawn Sharp and they/their pronouns. Here is why I think it's awesome and I will use it from now on:
Dawn is a beautiful word.
Sharp is an interesting last name.
You can make puns with Dawn and with Sharp.
Sharp was chosen after Deryn/Dylan Sharp, the girl that crossdresses in Leviathan. Sharp is a bad*ss.
I'm a she, but I'm not sure if my character is, so it has a special conection with Deryn/Dylan Sharp (It's a she, but posses as a he, etc).
Dawn (lady's name) sounds a lot like Don (Donald, guy's name).
So outloud also sounds like "Don(ald) Sharp".
Finally, it also sounds a lot like "done". So you can get "done sharp" (as in something was done sharply). Making it sound like my chraracter is perceptive, and everything done is keen, and neat.
