How the hell do you people come up with names for stuff?

[ConansWitchBaby]

Background: I'm a dumbass.
End Background.

What and how, maybe where

Spoiler

do I dare ask when?

does this stuff come for you? I mean everything. Titles for your works to how a thingymabob that gets mentioned once in ten thousand words gets a name. It took me almost three months for my first story to get a title let alone the name of the protagonist.

Should I just go about getting a dartboard for names and wing it for titles at this point? Most of the time I just put in "MC" and "the other guy" or "weebbait" to do a replace all eventually.

Spoiler: More background

To be fair. Names completely escape me and have always done so my entire life. Fuck. It took me until the age of seven to even remember my own name. I barely associate anyone with nicknames and just what they are wearing at the moment.

 

[PancakesWitch]

by reading other stories

 

[Indicterra]

Dishing our names is the easiest part of making a story if you ask me

 

[CSDestroyer]

I find names one of three ways:
1. I have a really nice name that I don't have a use for, or a name from an old story I never released publically. I've got a list of them, and will use them depending on if they fit or not.
2. Whenever I am bored, I simply mash together words until I get something that sounds like a name. Then, I note it down in the above list.
3. I steal them from am inspired by other stories, video games, and movies.

I'll give some working examples of the three.

1. Junil. This name is inspired by someone I know named Juniper. I've thought of this name years back, only now got to use it.
2. New Frontierland. Name of a city. It's a mash-up of several words and uses North American-inspired naming conventions.
3. General Forge and General Brington, these names were inspired by the characters General Gong and General Spiderton from an obscure game known as Patapon.

My naming doctrine is heavily geared towards North American-British names, or at least, names that sound like it. I don't have any real reason for it, other than that I don't want to use Japanese-sounding names, and I think the 19th century American naming aesthetic sounds classy.

Sometimes, I don't get a name at first. I've got several characters who are important for my next story, but simply do not have names yet. So, for now, I just use a placeholder.

 

[Jerynboe]

I’m something of a nerd about this. I go to baby names websites for people. For locations and concepts, I tend to mash words that have certain meanings from other languages together and then doctor the results.

One example for something I never put online was when I needed a name for a city ruled by holy knights, which was secretly built on the tomb of a dead god. I mashed “heim” which is a suffix for “home” in several languages together with ael or iel, which is at the end of a lot of Angels names in Christianity and means “of god”. That gave me Heimael or Heimiel, but I didn’t like those so I added an r and got Heimriel. It’s a linguistic abomination, but it sounds like the name of a city and it has a meaning even if I am the only one who knew it.

 

[georgelee5786]

I make up gibberish in my head and tweak it until it sounds real

 

[Deathfunny]

Names, we'll I'm currently making my story, there’s yet to be a character in there with names, I mostly call them for what they are physically.

 

[Hans.Trondheim]

Background: I'm a dumbass.
End Background.

What and how, maybe where

Spoiler

do I dare ask when?

does this stuff come for you? I mean everything. Titles for your works to how a thingymabob that gets mentioned once in ten thousand words gets a name. It took me almost three months for my first story to get a title let alone the name of the protagonist.

Should I just go about getting a dartboard for names and wing it for titles at this point? Most of the time I just put in "MC" and "the other guy" or "weebbait" to do a replace all eventually.

Spoiler: More background

To be fair. Names completely escape me and have always done so my entire life. Fuck. It took me until the age of seven to even remember my own name. I barely associate anyone with nicknames and just what they are wearing at the moment.

I sometimes use RNG, and often use whatever comes into mind. I don't give it much thought; it always stuck after that.

 

[SternenklarenRitter]

Chemistry class. We go through a whole lotta weird sounding compounds, some of which can be inspiration for nicknames or insults. There's also a whole lotta processes named after old dudes from centuries ago whose names are pretty out of fashion but still sound proper in a feudal or fantasy setting. Markovnikov would make a good baron, and Selenocystine sounds kinda princessly, while for some old witch you could pick Niobe.

 

[K5Rakitan]

You need to think about it in the shower, take a walk . . . USE CONDOM OR YOU WILL NEVER TAKE ANOTHER SHOWER IN PEACE EVER AGAIN, AND YOU WILL ALWAYS BE PUSHING A STROLLER ON EVERY WALK YOU TAKE, AND IF YOU ARE LUCKY ENOUGH FOR THE LITTLE CROTCH FRUIT TO TAKE A NAP IN THE STROLLER, YOU WILL BE TOO EXHAUSTED TO THINK!!!!!!

 

[Aaqil]

You need to think about it in the shower, take a walk . . . USE CONDOM OR YOU WILL NEVER TAKE ANOTHER SHOWER IN PEACE EVER AGAIN, AND YOU WILL ALWAYS BE PUSHING A STROLLER ON EVERY WALK YOU TAKE, AND IF YOU ARE LUCKY ENOUGH FOR THE LITTLE CROTCH FRUIT TO TAKE A NAP IN THE STROLLER, YOU WILL BE TOO EXHAUSTED TO THINK!!!!!!

 

[LesserSarcasm]

Take the main city train network / city names of 2 seperate cities/countries and start mixing, like USA and Canada, Montreal California, you get the name Montefornia or Calireal, can be done with other systems aswell.

 

[Agentt]

Random name generator.

But ah, there is no shame in naming your place after letters. Big time authors have used names like Q city.

 

[CarburetorThompson]

To name a female character in a fantasy story, just bang on your keyboard and then end the name with ia

Sentia
Wsenphia
Yniria

Works every time

 

[ConansWitchBaby]

peabvaia

 

[Chaos_Sinner777]

Variable. Sometimes a name comes to me and I stick with it. Other times I half settle on one thing and try to iterate to make a better one, which may or may not work. Yet other times, something just gets in my head and won't allow me to come up with a different name, even if I'm not fully satisfied with that specific one.

 

[Vnator]

Fantasy Name Generator

Just Google it and it should be the first result.
Beyond that, as you use it and keep writing, you'll develop a talent for coming up with names that don't make you cringe

 

[GlassRose]

My process is probably distinctly unhelpful. It has three variations:
1. Think about character, pull name out of the ether that sounds like it belongs to that character based on vibe.
2. Think about character, discover what letter/sound feels appropriate to start the name based on vibe, run through a mental list of different names including that, and pluck the one that feels right.
3. Think about character, pull out a random syllable to start with, continue throwing on syllables and swapping them in out and around until you have something that sounds like a name and kinda vibes.

My process is intuition + lots of resources to draw from.
I've never understood people's struggle with coming up with names. Just take a list of names, mentally or not, and choose one that feels alright? It's fine if it's somewhat arbitrary, the so-called wrong gender, or completely random.

 

[2wordsperminute]

I don't do this for all names, but sometimes I'll just string together Japanese kana until I think of a western name that could be written using that string of kana.

 

[ElijahRyne]

Background: I'm a dumbass.
End Background.

What and how, maybe where

Spoiler

do I dare ask when?

does this stuff come for you? I mean everything. Titles for your works to how a thingymabob that gets mentioned once in ten thousand words gets a name. It took me almost three months for my first story to get a title let alone the name of the protagonist.

Should I just go about getting a dartboard for names and wing it for titles at this point? Most of the time I just put in "MC" and "the other guy" or "weebbait" to do a replace all eventually.

Spoiler: More background

To be fair. Names completely escape me and have always done so my entire life. Fuck. It took me until the age of seven to even remember my own name. I barely associate anyone with nicknames and just what they are wearing at the moment.

I just mash letters together to get names.