Stuck on important character names

[chrispenycate]

My characters don't like being renamed.
I've got one (he's a dragon, but that's irrelevant) who grew out of his name chapters ago. It'll be easy enough to do the substitution when I find the right name, but while he agrees with me the one he has now is just wrong, he's a conservative, and won't answer to anything else.
And names crystalise a character out of the amorphous fog crowd, they carry magic – to label something is to control it (of course, having some of its toenail clippings helps, too)
Still, I always did get the bolshy characters, the ones nobody else wants to work with.

[daisybee]

a good source of names are local newpapers, or phone books, or signposts to lord knows where-I jot them all down, simply because some are so wonderful.

I never ever worry about names too much-I think in fantasy you can get that, does it sound made up? kind of mentality, which is a bit daft, because you know - it is! I mean take a look at some celeb baby names, you can't get weirder than that lot.

My mum found a brilliant name in some gardening section of the local community news, Aryantha C. Potts. Real names beat meaningful names sometimes.

Besides, names are not so hard to change.

[Lith]

I sympathize also in that I don't feel like I can figure out a character until I know his or her name. I can't use place holders. I have to at least find something approximate. I just can't write a fantasy story starring "Fred."

What if "Fred" was a three headed merman that was born a lion god? But I think I see what you're getting at- modern names often sound funny in an exotic location. A lot depends on context.

Crispy- is that ill-suited name going to be worked into the story as an ill-suited name? Just keep plugging away at it- it's absolutely wonderful when you finally find a suitable name after a long period of knowing the one you have isn't right.

[Winter Lord]

Come up with terms like "von" and "zu" which mean "of". (They are of Prussian origin.)

Take your first name, and play around with spelling it differently. (example, my middle name is Craig, which could be written Kraeyg.)

[Laerten]

I have found names for a lot of characters by using 27,000 Baby Names, Meanings and Origins at Baby Names World - it contains over 27,000 names and there is a great feature where you can search by the meaning of the name.

Some examples:

Sir 'Valiant' came up in Latin as Sir 'Walerka'
Sir 'Kingly' came up in Latin as Sir 'Bacilio' (I actually like this one!)
Sir 'Scared' came up in Latin as Sir 'Sannan'

There are names from dozens of languages/areas but my favourite names mostly seem to be from the Sanskrit section as they just seem to fit fantasy characters.