How can I create my own names for my fantasy/sci-fi?

[Dissonance]

I've hit a roadblock with my work-in-progress, and it has nothing to do with the story itself. I'm having trouble coming up with original names. I don't need a whole language. I just need names for most of the proper nouns-- names for the characters and places. I've been using a name generator, and once I find one that sounds half-way decent, I just tweak it a little until it sounds good to me. Then I just assign that name to a person or place that fits it.

Is this a good tactic? Sometimes it seems a bit silly and contrived to come up with names first and then give it a meaning, but I'm pretty sure that's what most sci-fi and fantasy writers do. (with the possible exception of Tolkien?) Should I first create an entire language and create the names based on meaning?

Over a long period of time, I've come up with about 20 names that I like. I need at least 40 more. I've looked at just about every combination of words you can make with the English alphabet, and still I can't seem to come up with more than 20 that sound good to me.

Am I too picky? Do I need a new strategy?

[Sarkus]

Depends how "alien" one wants the names to be.
Most place-names in US and UK (and presumably elsewhere) are based on their history or location.
And I do find that setting the character names early - ideally before starting - helps solidify the character.

But as for actual names, I find it's just a matter of rolling them round in my head. I rarely sit down and try to think of them, though, but instead jot them down whenever I do think of them. It could come to me while watching tv, talking to people at work, or reading.

Totally "alien" names, though, get harder, as I always think there should be some basic convention behind names for a given race/society... maybe all female names end in "i" or "u" and males end in "o" or "a". And the number of syllables denotes rank or class etc.

Another method is to name the characters along the lines of one of their personality traits... a person who talks in short sentences might speak with "brevity", and so you name him "Breviton Speel" or somesuch.
It's a tad conceited, but the ideas generated might lead to other suitable names, just by changing the odd consonant or vowel.

[Fraggle Rocker]

I'm not clear on the milieu of this story.

• Does it take place in some distant (or slightly imaginary) corner of Earth where things work pretty much the same as they do everywhere else? Where the people clearly share our biological and cultural history, being perhaps a lost branch of the human family? In that case their language can belong to an as-yet undiscovered language family. Considering how vastly the known language families differ from one another phonetically and syntactically, this gives you wide latitude in defining the characteristics of an unknown one. Nonetheless, the sounds and sound combinations have to be producible by human vocal organs.
• Are the creatures aliens from another planet or galaxy? In this case both their physiology and psychology can be as different from ours as you want to depict it, and therefore so can the sounds and forms of their language. They may be able to pronounce sounds and sound combinations that we can't. But your practical limitation is that you need your readers to be able to say your invented names in their heads. This will speed up their reading and also make it easier to remember who's who. A name like Qp'xrzf-mt will stop them dead every time they see it, and it will take them two chapters to remember who that is. Alien languages are usually crafted to instil a sense of what kind of aliens these are. Klingon names, for example, are short and full of harsh consonants, planting the idea that they are an impatient, violent people: Worf, Kayless. Remember that in addition to horror, initial K is also used for humor (kvetch, kitsch, kooky, Kukla, Kemosabe).
• Are they mythical, like hobbits and leprechauns? Even though these creatures ought to be as unlimited in their psychology and physiology as space aliens, it's a universal convention in human literature that they can communicate effortlessly with humans and that their names are august, cute, or in some way impressive. Therefore they adhere to the phonetics and structure of the names in the readers' language, often even incorporating words or names from that language. Hobbit names, for example, are cute (Bilbo, Frodo), or just slightly foreign-seeming (Meriadoc), or not-quite-down-home native English (Lobelia, Peregrin).

I hope this quick summary of how some other writers approach this issue is helpful.

I absolutely recommend against trying to create your own language. This is a much bigger project than writing a book. Tolkien did it (Elvish) and it took years. Klingon was done a little more quickly, but only because it has an army of fans who worked collaboratively--after the characters were already introduced and the first words and names in their language had already been heard by millions. Notice that nobody has bothered to do it with Vulcan!

Sarkus's advice is quite good: Give them names that are descriptive. The characters in the Bible all have such names: Michael: "Who resembles God?" Esther: "Bright as a star." Joseph: "The increaser." (Yes my renditions are a little more whimsical than those in the dictionary but I'm sure that's how they were perceived at the time. Nobody remembers now why I named my dog M.C., but when he was a puppy he ran around the house rapping constantly.)

This gives you the advantage of being able to translate their names into English. If you haven't read Alan Dean Foster's wonderful, whimsical novel Quozl, pick up a copy just to see how he deals with the aliens' names, how nicely they work into the story as English translations without ever giving us a clue as to what the Quozl language actually sounds like, how easily it is to remember who's who... and most importantly from the point of view of a fellow author, how the entire mechanism quietly becomes a terrific plot twist that sets him up for one of his usual "Awwww" endings.

Don't you think it would change the way we regard the Bible, if instead of a guy being named "Daniel," he introduced himself with the line, "Hello, I am Judged by God."

Or if your name is Albert, wouldn't it be cool to walk up to a hot chick and say, "Hi there, I'm Noble And Bright."

[rcscwc]

Take up names from east cultures. They anyway are alien to many in the west. A few can be taken from the names of members here. How about Fraggle World/earth?

A practical guide.

Take a few names, cut individual letters on a slip, mix them up, then take out 4, or 5 at a time. Haha.

Eastren names can be easy to manipulate. After all, whole of IEL was conjured out of such juxtapositions.

[Fraggle Rocker]

How about Fraggle World/earth?

They don't think in such expansive terms. The place where the Fraggles live is Fraggle Rock. The Gorgs, on the other hand, giant creatures who try to capture and eat them, regard themselves as King and Queen of the Universe.

[keith1]

Choose names differently for each of the main characters, as a parent would have different methods of naming their children at birth. You can use the method you are using now as one method.
You should be detailing in your mind and on paper your main characters. These visualizations will help you "breath life" into your characters, and naming your characters will become easier. You will be able to say to your characters, "... I see you as a 'Franklyn' that you have grown into, but I will name you 'Francis', as your Catholic mother would have been throwing that around in the maternity room. You father's name was Everett. Your mother's name was Kaitlyn Marie..."

Sounds like extra work for the writer, but it's imperative that your story solidify into believability, so go the extra mile with this part of the process.

[Fraggle Rocker]

Sounds like extra work for the writer, but it's imperative that your story solidify into believability, so go the extra mile with this part of the process.

The writer should do all the work. Unless it's something like a textbook, the reader should not have to work very hard.

[steampunk]

Go to a website with baby names, then look at a phonetic table, one that has all the possible language sounds. Begin to replace one consonant in the baby name. If it's sounds pefect, keep it. If it sound kinda good, then maybe experiment with changing one of the other consonants. You could also do this with vowels.

Another way is to begin with a thesaurus. Pick a word that describes a mood, feeling or idea you want to represent. For example, if you want to name a gloomy town, then look up the word gloom. Use one of the synomyms of gloom. Now, begin the consonant and value thing describe above. The original word will be almost indecipherable when you are done, but you will have kept the mood of the original word. You may even improve it.

[Gerhard Kemmerer]

Would you want the names to be representative of their characters? If so, define their characters and pick out the key elements and make a name from that.
Also, the sci fi names will be products of their environment - even if you made that environment. Elements in their names and found in the story and will give it more authenticity. It won't take the reader long to see the derivatives.

For eg, a creature was born or spawned in a certain scenario, and named after its beginnings, or even how it or its life source dealt with it.

If the story comes with the characters fully formed, you could give them an original name, and a nick name, as so by others in the story, and that nick name may then define its personality.

[Buddha12]

Take regular names and just spell them backwards.... so robert becomes trebot and the movie Tobor was Robot backwards.

[Pasquale]

Another method is to name the characters along the lines of one of their personality traits... a person who talks in short sentences might speak with "brevity", and so you name him "Breviton Speel" or somesuch.

[Dinosaur]

Circa 60 years ago, I worked with some linguists at a pharmaceutical company. The end result was a program to generate marketing names for drugs & other products like cough drops or toothpaste.

The program used three lists of syllables. Each syllable started with a consonant & ended with a vowel.

There were quite a few rules to obtain easily pronounceable words & avoid silly sounding words. For example.

The same vowel was not allowed in two consecutive syllables, avoiding words like dabadat or fedebe.

Consider the drug named Tho-ra-zyne (Not sure of this spelling): First syllable uses the front of the mouth, second uses the middle, & the third uses the back. Such a combination is easy to pronounce & remember. The rules favored such combinations of syllables & avoided combinations which were awkward to pronounce.

The syllables were assigned a complexity rating. I think the rules outlawed 3 simples & 3 complex syllables. They might have outlawed two consecutive complex ones.

There were rules for adding a final consonant. I think words could end with e or a, but not i

Some of the syllables were not ones I would have picked. For example: A second syllable nti, which ended up in words like de-nti-gri-n which was considered for mouth wash or toothpaste but not used. Note that the nti syllable used by the program ended up being split: Partially in the first & partially in the second syllable of the actual word produced (dentigrin).

Such a program is not difficult to write & might be useful for your purposes. It might take a bit of experimentation to come up with lists of syllables & useful rules.

Circa 60 years, you had to be a bit clever due to computers being very slow. You had to avoid actually generating all combinations & then eliminating the ones which did not conform to the rules. Each list had several hundred syllables & generating 200³ words prior to applying rules to eliminate most of them would take too much time. Instruction time in that era was 2-3 milliseconds for simple instructions. 100 instructions times 200³ is more than 400 hours.

BTW: Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote some SciFi. He did not expect his readers to have much knowledge of geography & used place names from Mongolia (EG: Ulan Bator was a Martian city) & other non European countries.

There are a group of Star Trek fans who developed a language (Klingon, I think). They have a sense of humor. The toes are named mar, om, rost, non, & wee from the children's nursery ditty: This little piggy went to market; This little piggy stayed home; This little piggy had roast beef for dinner; This little piggy had none; This little piggy cried whee, whee whee all the way home.

[seagypsy]

Notice that nobody has bothered to do it with Vulcan!

Actually there was a Vulcan language project started by fans but it seems to have been abandoned because the group couldn't recognize the logic in spending so much time to create a language for beings that do not exist.(ok the reasons are pure speculation but there was at least an attempt made)

Edit: apparently even I am mistaken apparently the first working Vulcan language was created by a linguist,Dorothy Jones Heydt back in the 1960's. but efforts to revive it have been made by the Vulcan Language Reclamation Project.

[Fraggle Rocker]

The program used three lists of syllables. Each syllable started with a consonant & ended with a vowel. There were quite a few rules to obtain easily pronounceable words & avoid silly sounding words.

Now they've gone crazy, with names like Rocoxefib. In fact it seems like today all the new drug names end in B.

Some of the syllables were not ones I would have picked. For example: A second syllable nti, which ended up in words like de-nti-gri-n which was considered for mouth wash or toothpaste but not used. Note that the nti syllable used by the program ended up being split: Partially in the first & partially in the second syllable of the actual word produced (dentigrin).

NTI is not a syllable, since the human vocal apparatus cannot make that sound. The N has to be at the end of a preceding syllable. Some African languages have words like Nkruma and Mgabe, but the nasal consonant (N, M, NG) is treated as a vowel. You hum it: N-KRU-MA, M-GA-BE.

There are a few German and Scandinavian family names in the USA that begin with KN, but we pronounce the K as a separate syllable: Knutsen as ka-noot-sen.

Comedians tell us that anglophones regard words beginning with K (or hard C, etc.) followed immediately by a vowel (not KR, CL, QU, etc.) as automatically funny. That's something to bear in mind when naming characters in a story who are supposed to be fierce or evil. Kukla (of "Kukla, Fran and Ollie," a TV puppet show back in my day) was a ninny, not a warrior.

There are a group of Star Trek fans who developed a language (Klingon, I think).

Klingon fans remind us that the Americanism "fan" is a shortening of "fanatic."

They have a sense of humor. The toes are named mar, om, rost, non, & wee from the children's nursery ditty: This little piggy went to market; This little piggy stayed home; This little piggy had roast beef for dinner; This little piggy had none; This little piggy cried whee, whee whee all the way home.

The proper scientific word for the first digit (thumb or big toe) on a mammal or the analogous toe on a bird (usually bent backward) is the hallux.

[Balerion]

I've hit a roadblock with my work-in-progress, and it has nothing to do with the story itself. I'm having trouble coming up with original names. I don't need a whole language. I just need names for most of the proper nouns-- names for the characters and places. I've been using a name generator, and once I find one that sounds half-way decent, I just tweak it a little until it sounds good to me. Then I just assign that name to a person or place that fits it.

Is this a good tactic? Sometimes it seems a bit silly and contrived to come up with names first and then give it a meaning, but I'm pretty sure that's what most sci-fi and fantasy writers do. (with the possible exception of Tolkien?) Should I first create an entire language and create the names based on meaning?

Over a long period of time, I've come up with about 20 names that I like. I need at least 40 more. I've looked at just about every combination of words you can make with the English alphabet, and still I can't seem to come up with more than 20 that sound good to me.

Am I too picky? Do I need a new strategy?

The only thing you need to understand about creative writing is that there are no rules. Do whatever works. Unless you're a linguist, don't bother with a whole language, because it'll just come off poorly. George R.R. Martin just makes up words as he needs them. Khalasar, arakh, dracarys, etc., and with most names he just adds a "y" where there would be an "e" or an "i" otherwise, or doubles up on a letter (think Robb Stark). Joe Abercrombie has similar issues with name creation, and as a result he likes to use friends' names as placeholders until after he's written the manuscript, and then takes the time to come up with a naming system that makes sure they sound naturalistic. There are others who just use famous places like Rome and call it something else, borrowing the naming system and everything.

Do whatever you need to do. There's no wrong way.

[Fraggle Rocker]

Do whatever you need to do. There's no wrong way.

Well sure. But if you're hoping to attract an audience to your art, it's helpful to understand the psychology involved. Would Kris Kristofferson's masterpiece have been the most-covered song in America for several years if it had been about Fanny DeGroot instead of Bobby McGee?

[Balerion]

Well sure. But if you're hoping to attract an audience to your art, it's helpful to understand the psychology involved. Would Kris Kristofferson's masterpiece have been the most-covered song in America for several years if it had been about Fanny DeGroot instead of Bobby McGee?

You missed my point. I was saying that there's no wrong way to arrive at names that work, not that there's no wrong names. If he named all his sci-fi characters after Disney princesses, it might not go over well with his intended audience, obviously.

That said, if you think the difference between popular and unpopular is the difference between "DeGroot" and "McGee," I think it's you who needs the lesson in psychology.

Also, fans of far-future or interspecies sci-fi often lament the use of overly-familiar names and naming styles in their fiction. There tends to be quite a lot of apostrophes about; B'Frap'ner, Fa'Lar'Barf, etc.. I'm sure changing things up and being wholly original couldn't hurt, and might be well appreciated.

[Dinosaur]

Fraggle Rocker: I suppose I should have used the phrase group of letters for use in constructing names. Considering the context, I did not think syllable would be misunderstood.

NTI is not a syllable, since the human vocal apparatus cannot make that sound. The N has to be at the end of a preceding syllable. Some African languages have words like Nkruma and Mgabe, but the nasal consonant (N, M, NG) is treated as a vowel. You hum it: N-KRU-MA, M-GA-BE.

In case you do not remember, the context was:

Some of the syllables were not ones I would have picked. For example: A second syllable nti, which ended up in words like de-nti-gri-n which was considered for mouth wash or toothpaste but not used. Note that the nti syllable used by the program ended up being split: Partially in the first & partially in the second syllable of the actual word produced (dentigrin).

I would expect English speakers to put the n in the first syllable of the generated word, pronouncing it either den-ti-grin or dent-i-grin.

[Fraggle Rocker]

Also, fans of far-future or interspecies sci-fi often lament the use of overly-familiar names and naming styles in their fiction. There tends to be quite a lot of apostrophes about; B'Frap'ner, Fa'Lar'Barf, etc.. I'm sure changing things up and being wholly original couldn't hurt, and might be well appreciated.

It drives me up the wall when they try to increase the alien-ness of alien words or names by building consonant clusters that are unpronounceable by human vocal organs (Hkpt), using letters with ambiguous pronunciations in places where neither pronunciation works (Gpat), tossing around Q just to be cute when C or K would be read the same way (Qronu), adding apostrophes without explaining what they stand for (your example of Fa'Lar'Barf: are those glottal stops or fricatives as in Ancient Hebrew? accent marks? symbols of letters left out in abbreviations? tone marks but not the ones we're familiar with in Chinese?), or my personal favorite as an editor, random smatterings of diacritics (Wťyîxöpůřmełńut).