A Rose by Any Name....

[Kaysea]

After Avril and my discussion in the Speculating thread, it got me to wondering how everyone comes up with their persona names?

I know a friend once asked how I came up with them at the drop of a hat, and I shared an old trick with her.  But I wonder how everyone else manages?

I also have favourite letters to begin names with, K & T being the main ones at the moment, but that's another story altogether.

Oh, and the trick I used to use, swapping around the syllables in a name.

Vickie - Kievic
Mikel - Kelmi  (see! There's that K thing again. LOL) and,

Jane - Neja (even works for single syllables if you're lucky!)

*snickers*

Bree - Ebre

Eimi - Miei (sounds like May)


So what's your secret??

[Jane]

Here are my riverboat NPCs:

Barr, 72, (uncle)
--my uncle Barry

Neke, 38, (cousin)
--my cousin Nicky

Tyno, 35, (second cousin)
--my second cousin Tony

Jezz, 5, (niece)
--my niece Jessie

Vaheri, 74, (uncle's widow)
--my aunty Valerie

Denna, 46, (cousin)
--my cousin Donna

Barli, 33, (sister)
--my brother Blair

Riverboats are family environments, so I just used my family.

In general though, I start with a name I like the sound of and then replace enough consonants to get a different look, and make standard changes to try to avoid mispronunciation.  M'kellen, my main character for many years, was Anne's T'gellan (early T'gellan!) reprocessed.  Davriel is Gabriel similarly treated.  I think I nearly always start with the sound of the name.

[Paula]

I get my names everywhere.
Either I use finnish ones, (mostly on npc's, occasionnally if come across rare one like Kustaava, I use it on PC), other ethnic-languages, altering exsisting names Aileen -Aileyan(her dragon names cames from Norwegian word for love)  or mythology (Telemon). Or I just use random collection of syllabies that look good (Aivorn, E'naer, Zelanka). Rigella comes from the star name, Rigel. Her father's name Rigmor is actually swedish female name.  
etc...

[Vix]

I'm nowhere near that creative! Occasionally I'll chose a name that relates to whatever is on tv as I write (as a Philadelphia Eagles fan, I once had both Donova and Macnabbin) or grab the name of someone I meet (Dawnjalee and Callandra were both kids I taught). When my daughter and I were driving to Florida during NaNoWriMo month one year (and not managing to visit Bree), I copied down interesting place names that I could twist to my liking.

However, my most likely source is this handy-dandy Name Generator.

[PastMember]

I have this thing for Gaelic/Celtic names - so I usually go to a name listing site and go through their Gaelic names (Irish or Scottish). When I create a character, I usually have an idea of what I want it to start with. N, C, T and M are my favorites.

Like with Kaefen. There were a few names I like, 1 male and 2 female. And now that I think about it, I can't even remember what the names were. But, I pretty much combined the sounds and spelling that I liked from the 3 names and somehow came up with Kaefen.

In another club of mine awhile back I had a Harper girl name Magiere. Which is a combination of Magee and Gere - both male names.  

Another, my newest character at Arolos is Caeldan - I just changed the spelling of Cayden after seeing the name Cailean.

In other words. Lol. It usually takes me forever to figure out names and thats one of my favorite parts about creating 'sonas... is naming them.

[Kaysea]

Another, my newest character at Arolos is Caeldan - I just changed the spelling of Cayden after seeing the name Cailean.

I like the name Cailean, my youngest daughters name is Cailee.

Though my oldest daughter chose the spelling, I would have preferred Kayleigh. But I have grown used to Cailee now, sort of... LOL

[Dana]

I usually pick names for my personas at random    Or, if I see a name somewhere, and I like the sound of it, I'll use it and change the spelling or something...  Once, I actually used one of those name generators for Pernese names, and that's how Traelyn got her name, along with her dragon Nyith.

[Ainsley]

I've only ever submitted one persona for Triad, but in other writing I've done, I like to look at the meaning behind names.  I've gotten several names from Gaelic, Hebrew, or Norwegian origin.  Sometimes, though, I just go for how a name sounds or mix up the syllables a bit.

[Mikel]

Do I really need to explain this again?

It will just result in Kaysea shaking her head and Vix laughing at me.

[Patrick]

I think I already said this but I like to use my graphing calculator.  I put it on alpha lock, close my eyes, and type random letters.  I then use those letters as a jumping point for my names.  Ones I like I write down so I have a list to use.  But I really like that letter switching thing Kaysea.  I might use it on characters I want to base off of friends.  Thanks!

[Vix]

Do I really need to explain this again?

It will just result in Kaysea shaking her head and Vix laughing at me.

Go ahead and explain again:
Kaysea will shake her head and I'll laugh at you whether you do or not.

[Mikel]

Do I really need to explain this again?

It will just result in Kaysea shaking her head and Vix laughing at me.

Go ahead and explain again:
Kaysea will shake her head and I'll laugh at you whether you do or not.

Well, there is that.

Most of my personae names are derived by taking either a characteristic of the persona, or his job, and washing it through babblefish once or twice (or more) until I gert something that strikes my fancy.

Matril is named after my Grandson (MATthew RILey)
Occhipinti is the name of a multi-talented friend of mine.
C'pouk is the acronym of something my friend calls me.

[Bree]

I like to look up word etemology at http://www.behindthename.com and smoosh stuff together.

Sometimes I am guilty of Mikel's foreign language trick as well. D'bei and Racheneth are two names I've used in the past, D'bei being a smoosh of Dieb and Racheneth coming from 'rachen' which mean, respectivly, thief and revenge in german. ;)

Sometimes they grow from family names, too. I had Abrei, and as I slowly built out her extended family, I had to make up names that would explain where she got her name. So her father became Abentor, and his brother became Torian, and then Talrian got his name from there, and Talryne and Rialine got their names from him and their mother, Linyne.

O'dan had a similar experience, with his brother Dantial ending up with his name and then is son Odarian as well. ;)

[Eimi]

Sometimes I go for random "this sounds good" names.  Sometimes I get names from words around me that I smoosh together (usually for NPCs, that's how I got M'tone - from our "Milestone" textbook).  Some names are admittedly from Japanese (D'cal's blue dragon is named Aosorath - Blue Sky) and kanji whose meaning I smush together (Bree, didn't Meijah's name come from "evil" and "name"?)  And I have found a couple names from other languages that I liked the meaning of so I played around with them.  For my PC personas, especially lately, I've been trying to get one for each letter of the alphabet (though admittedly, I have doubled up on a couple letters....)  So, yeah, my names come from all over the place :D

[Rochelle]

I am a collector of names, and they come from everywhere. Sometimes they are just mushed together, like Eimi does, sometimes they come from random collections of sounds, some are signs that I passed (R'syl's ex-wife Masair is a casualty of my daily commute to work -I pass under the Bahamas Air sign...), some are even spelling mistakes. Sometimes I just have a letter or sound that I like, and I keep playing with it until I find something I want. More than a few have evolved from family names within a story, and I keep a separate listing for real names from different countries that catch my interest. Occasionally I tweak one of those, but more often I just look at the listing of names I made up in bored moments and tweak those (like Tatitem).