Fanfiction Lounge

How do you name your characters? Do you randomly name them or do you want their names to be meaningful (in a way), ominous or show off their personality? Also, where do you get their names from if any?

With my main fic, I don't have to worry too much about nanes as I'm working with canon characters for the most part. XD I did go with the most 'known' names for the main characters though (Wes and Rui), and with the few characters in my fic without names in the game, I actually tend to go towards common names, such as 'Tom' - a half-jab at the named characters'..names, which get really odd in Orre. Skrub, Doken, or Wakin are merely mild examples... heck, just look at Miror B. (Even if that name actually has reasoning behind it, it's... odd). Some have jokes within them as well...heh.

For a one-shot I did, I honestly just gave a bit of personal thought and came up with names that I thought sounded nice, without looking for any hidden meanings within their names.

How do you name your characters? Do you randomly name them or do you want their names to be meaningful (in a way), ominous or show off their personality? Also, where do you get their names from if any?

Well, as evidenced back with my "naming dillema" I try to give my charecters a name that is suitable to thier personality. But there are some issues surrounding this way.
1) An really evil and unusual na,e would be odd because what parent would name their kid that? On the other side they could've got that name by changing like Voldermort in Harry Potter.

2) Sometimes I name charecters after my friends and enemies at school. What they don't won't hurt them :P

bobandbill said:

a half-jab at the named characters'..names, which get really odd in Orre.

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[cackles evilly]

How do you name your characters? Do you randomly name them or do you want their names to be meaningful (in a way), ominous or show off their personality? Also, where do you get their names from if any?

I usually just think of a name for the character that I've seen before and liked, and if that doesn't work I'll refer to the wonderful resource that is Behind the Name. However, sometimes if I don't refer to that site when I have more foreign names in mind I end up giving the name of a Hindu god to a female Vaporeon... [blushes] Oops. In my defense, though, the only time I had seen the name was for a female character.

How do you name your characters? Do you randomly name them or do you want their names to be meaningful (in a way), ominous or show off their personality? Also, where do you get their names from if any?

Well not to sure if people look it up, but I use Latin last names often, and this has to do with their personality.

How do you name your characters? Do you randomly name them or do you want their names to be meaningful (in a way), ominous or show off their personality? Also, where do you get their names from if any?
To tell the truth, I don't think names are extremely that important, so I just name my characters randomly. However, I did get Bunny's name after watching one comedy movie. XD

How do you name your characters? Do you randomly name them or do you want their names to be meaningful (in a way), ominous or show off their personality? Also, where do you get their names from if any?
Only one of my characters has a name that I plucked right out of thin air, and it stuck. The rest of my characters all have names with special meaning, relating to something about them. Of course, I have twelve characters who have names with special meanings, and I completely forgot what the meanings are.

How do you name your characters? Do you randomly name them or do you want their names to be meaningful (in a way), ominous or show off their personality? Also, where do you get their names from if any?

I have a combination of completely made-up names (Kairn), names that actually exist (Eli), and names that are made up but are a play on something that does exist (like Tira, which I derived from terra).

How do you name your characters? Do you randomly name them or do you want their names to be meaningful (in a way), ominous or show off their personality? Also, where do you get their names from if any?
I mostly just take names that are fairly common (Tyson, Haley, Alexis), but not too common (Bob, Jack, Fred). As for bad guys, Haz, they don't even have to have evil-sounding names (like Mizan said), even if they did choose them themselves. Hell, take one of the bad guys in Shattered. This guy was homeschooled for 15 years, never leaving the house. After he , he left home and went to work for the emerging Team Galactic, and changed his name. What did he change it to? Evil McEvils? No. Slasher Bloodwake? No. Samuel.

How do you name your characters? Do you randomly name them or do you want their names to be meaningful (in a way), ominous or show off their personality? Also, where do you get their names from if any?

I know that in A Darker Day, Elise's name just kinda of came to me, along with most of the others. Occasionally I name them after something incredibly profound *is thinking of a cat named Bob* or something that suits them, but more often than not, it's a rather left-field name that just pops up.

*I've been here alllllll along. What do you mean I left?*

on bolded topics

Hey, people, long time no see!

Before going any further I have a sort of announcement.

Remember the topic about the bold topics? The one that read, I think, how valuable do you think *bold topics* are? -- Well, I made use of that inability I have to care about something much more important to take some time during the weekend, and I came up with an index of bold topics covering everything related to writing and FF that we have discussed in bold topics during the 1st half of this year: from Jan 1 to Jul 1 2009.

I don't know if you people think that this may be of interest for people crawling searching the Lounge and trying to find topics of interest. And since the index comprises several related topics and things that are not very easy to search with a Search Box, I thought that maybe I can post a trial thread with the index and if there exists interest I can delve in the 2008 topics and index them up, for example.

All in all, this would be essentially a grandiose excuse to catalogue and explore the times this Lounge and its members have gone nuts (because YES I DID index such things as THE LOUNGE MUSICAL!!! :cheeky:) an attempt to build an alternative, pseudo-index of the Lounge topics.

What do you people think?

Coming back to current bolded topics...

How do you name your characters? Do you randomly name them or do you want their names to be meaningful (in a way), ominous or show off their personality? Also, where do you get their names from if any?
For the most part, I try to derive names from other known names or variations on known words whose meaning point to a particular attribute I want to play with.
Darius Mezze, for example: the family name "Mezze" comes from a Persian word for the noun "snack": an entrée comprised of a selection of (very) varied appetizers. The main attribute of the family is the variety in their ocupations (athletes to managers, after all they posess a large Estate). "Darius" essentially translates to "kingly heir", so you can easily guess what am I trying to say about his position in the family.

Other than that I simply play with the names that come to my head. The "Trainer" in "Sixth" I named "Ravir" because I was looking at the TV at the time when the name came up (it is a skin care product I believe).

Figures.

When writing Fanfiction, what part do you love writing the most? Intense Pokemon battles, fights in between humans, filler, or some other stuff?
I love writing conversations and tense moments. If I could do better, I think I would love to write complete mayhem battles *checks the battle writing thread*.

XKCD

That webcomic is simply great. Not only it does math and romance (weird and fun combination), it has a very particular cast, such as the BlackHat Guy and the WhiteBeret Guy. If they appear in a panel mayhem and hilarity ensue.

It also has very beautiful and... um... strange moments:

(URL: http://xkcd.org/618/)

...not to think about the woodpecker!

I think XKCD has mentioned Pokémon on at least one occasion.

solovino said:

I think XKCD has mentioned Pokémon on at least one occasion.

Click to expand...

They did. It was one of the few jokes I didn't get.

EDIT: Found

The second guy probably thought 'Ubuntu' was a new species of Pokémon or something... I've seen that joke before, and didn't really laugh at it the first time either. :/

...AND WOOHOO, NEW SIGNATURE LOLOLOLOLOL

How do you name your characters? Do you randomly name them or do you want their names to be meaningful (in a way), ominous or show off their personality? Also, where do you get their names from if any?
I usually just name them randomly. Rarely do I actually look for an appropriate meaning.

Leah: This is the only character I've named with the meaning in mind. A long, long time ago, in a very different version of Mentor, Leah was a teenager that had insomnia and was addicted to her Ivysaur's Sleep Powder. Back then, she perfectly fitted the meaning of her name, 'tired'. Now, after several changes, Leah now fits the other meaning of her name, 'bitter'.
Ed: I happened to be watching FullMetal Alchemist while thinking of a name. Enough said.
Ally: I don't remember at all, though in the previous version of Mentor, her name was spelled 'Ali'.

Hm, an index of bold topics sound like a good idea. Go for it, solovino! :)

And you're awesome of putting the lounge musical. :D Put the poetry showdown in the index too! XD

Was that tired-to-bitter part done on purpose? If not, that's an extremely awesome coincidence. ^^ And as for the list of bolded topics, I think that would be a very useful post to have - if only for the times where the FFL gets slow and we can't think of anything. It's happened quite a lot lately, I think. [brick'd]

Giratina of Never-Turn-Back said:

The second guy probably thought 'Ubuntu' was a new species of Pokémon or something... I've seen that joke before, and didn't really laugh at it the first time either. :/

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I thought that was one of the funniest examples of xkcd.

It may be lost on some people in this forum, but to the world at large Pokemon is the embodiment of juvenile tripe. Thus, comparing something that someone takes seriously--like a Linux distro--to Pokemon is the ultimate way of being condescending.

How do you name your characters? Do you randomly name them or do you want their names to be meaningful (in a way), ominous or show off their personality? Also, where do you get their names from if any?
Very occasionally, I'll give people names for a reason, and that will be their parents' reason, not mine. For example, the main character in my story, Bevan, has a name that means "son of Evan", who is his father. This was simply to demonstrate the domineering nature of his father: he ideally saw his son as an extension of himself, rather than as an individual. Everything else? Completely random.

tHow do you name your characters? Do you randomly name them or do you want their names to be meaningful (in a way), ominous or show off their personality? Also, where do you get their names from if any?
The names I choose generally have some meaning, like the earlier mentioned Alise Satoru, but not always obviously so.

In my short story "I Like Your Shoes.", the main character is a former scientist slowly losing his mind in a mental institution due to Grove[nson]'s Disease. He also has an unusual interest in shoes... You later find out a former associate of his had the last name of Schumacher, the significance of which should be obvious.

Oh, and "Grove's Disease" was named after my ex.

While I have only visited the site once, I thought a few of you might find this funny:

I KNOW. ;________;

Seriously, I never click on a TVTropes link unless I know that I have a good amount of time.