Not sure if this is the right place, but....

How do you name your characters? Do you just slap them a name that sounds ok at the moment or you try to have some meaning, secret clues, jokes, etc... in them?

Usually, I just give them common names. This time however, it's a little bit different. Considering most of my characters are angels or demons, I felt some less 'normal' names were in place. I named most of them after existing angels and demons.

I'm completely name-obsessed, so it always takes me forever to come up with names. I make lists of first and middle names, pick those out, then go through lists of last names to see how combos sound.

Sometimes I get lucky and a character springs into my mind with a fitting name already in place. :)

Moving to Plot Doctoring. It's not off topic if you're discussing your script. :)

Noelle T. I'm exactly the same. I can't give a character a name unless it's PERFECT. Whenever I want to come up with one, however, I can't, and they just pop into my head randomly during, say, civics class.

In my current Screnzy, there is a character named "Sébastien Séraphin Remi Aveneir Chénier Lechance." Longest name I've ever come p with. And it's French, so I can't even pronounce it. But it's fun^^

For me, it varies. I have a few names that are running through my head and have been used repeatedly. I tend to revive those names for characters whose personalities are similar to what my writing was then.

That sounds stupid. Here's an example: when I started writing, when I was very young, everything I wrote was juvenile, obviously. I also had an obsession with the names Laurel or Lauren. So Laurels and Laurens in my stories are often young and innocent. Later, I went through my "dark" phase, and kept naming people Sarah for some reason. So Sarahs are often somewhat evil.

I tend to like more unusual names, which is a personal taste in real life, too. The names sometimes mean something, but not always. In fantasies or science fictions, their names are often strings of syllables, but in a way that I like a lot. I stick these together from fragments of other words, ect. Like Kett or Iyari or Jass, in the story I abandoned for my Screnzy.

In one story, I killed off a character and brought her back to life. Her name was Stacy. Turns out, that means resurrection. As often as not, I'll only look the meaning of someone's name up after I name them.

One thing I NEVER do is name characters after people I know. I just don't like my writing having that kind of obvious connection to my real life. I actively avoid using names of people I know, even if I don't know them all that well.

Sorry for the long post, I'm just obsessive about naming my charactes.

I am the world's biggest name nerd, full stop. I study them in my spare time, and have books upon books and lists upon lists. Surprisingly, I don't put a ton of thought into naming my characters. They tend to...name themselves, at the risk of sounding cheesy. Honestly, though, I just write and whatever name pops out is usually the one I go with (sometimes I change it later). I will occasionally have a name picked out for a certain character, but I usually don't.

My only real guideline is that I'd never give a character a name that I think is bad. I don't necessarily have to like it (Daphne, for instance, is making an appearance in this script, and it's never been a name that I'm fond of), but I would never name a character something that I'm against on principal, like Jaydynnleigh or Nevaeh.

I'm useless at naming my characters, I like them to be compeltely perfect - but I can never ever think of them.

At the moment my main characters are called 'Girl', 'Boy' and 'Brother' haha, I'll name them when I'm done =] (I hope).

Like a few other people said, I can't give my character a name unless it's completely perfect. Otherwise, it feels like it just doesn't "stick". I've tried calling my MC "Hunter" a few times, but it slides off of him like butter off of a bald man's head.

Sometimes, if I'm having trouble coming up with something, I use behindthename.com. It's good because I can look names up by meaning, origin. . . names from mythology, astrology, literature, theology, history, and a bunch of other things. PLUS you can find names by how people feel about them. . . like people vote on whether they think a name is simple or complex, masculine or feminine, urban or natural, serious or comedic, etc.

I use that last option a lot, because I think, especially in writing, a name is the real first impression.

But yeah, I'm totally stuck right now. . . nothing seems to fit. My character list at the moment looks something like this:
PITCHER
CATCHER
COACH
2ND BASEMAN
1ST BASEMAN
RIGHT FIELDER
CENTER FIELDER
SHORTSTOP
THEIR SHORTSTOP
THEIR PITCHER
BALL GIRL
FAN #1
FAN #2

. . . no names :P I hope I get ideas sometime soon.

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It varies. Sometimes I just pick random names, sometimes I invest lots of time into matching a name with a character, or In just go with what sounds right. Like this Screnzy I was tempted to call my Male MC either Todd or Tony - but as my FMC is Katelyn [Kate a few times], it sounded too much like NCIS at least in this case so I went with Sam for my MMC, even though my mantra is that if somebody can pick up on if a name is from a TV Show, book, or movie, that's their issue not mine and I shouldn't change to appease one person because everyone is going to have some kind of association with any name! But I like Sam and Katelyn anyway, and Tony didn't fit him properly in any case. He wasn't a T name. If that makes any sense. Sometimes I don't even make sense to me.

Well...I guess for me, it depends on what I'm trying to say about my characters. I personally beleive that names are something we grow into-that is, the meaning, characters, intentions behind the names that we are given singifys something fundamental about who we are as a person, and that once we are old enough to choose who we are, our name creates boundries that we purposly choose.

Therefore, I have to know my characters before I name them. For example-take Selene. As I've stated before, she's a non-magical princess in a magical family in a magical realm. So, when she was born,like all of her sisters, she was given a name that implies powerful free magic. Because she is the youngest, she has to have a name (or ability) that signifys just how special she is.

In this case, her ability is that she has no magical powers of any kind-dispite being named after a powerful goddess of her land.

Now, the reason I choose 'Selene' is simple-it's the name of a moon goddess, who is a goddess of hunters. Meaning, to me at least, that she's a very independent person; who doesn't want to be a burden to others, and do anything she can to provide for her fellow countrymen.

Considering that she's doesn't have any powers, this usually means that everyone around her-from her servants to the citizens-feel as if she has to be protected. Which, because she's so independent, causes her to act out-and eventually leads to her being kidnapped.

I considered many different names-particularly those names that had meanings of independence, reliance, trouble. Some of the names that topped my chart as I was considering them were: Merrim, Ruth, Ruby, Kitana, Kristine-but none of them had any sense of an otherworldly-feel to them. Those with the otherworldly feel I was looking for-Helen, Electra, Susanna-felt as though I was trying to hard.

So, at a lost, I asked what she liked to be called, and I got the name 'Selene' sliding across my mind before I could blink. I could never take it from her-it's too perfect of a fit.

Now...other times, I'll puprosly name a character something that doesn't fit them-but this is usually becase they don't know themselves. In a story (not for Script Frenzy, or Nano), I had this very confused, troubled, out-of-work guy named Marc.

To me, 'Marc' is the name of someone who is confidant, authoritaive, respectable-everything that he, as my character, wasn't. He kept trying to fight that idea-of being someone who others look up to and respect-and pushing people away.

I never finished that story-mostly because I realized that Marc was fighting himself and I had no way of bringing that struggle to the forefront becuase he didn't see himself becoming someone who others would trust. Every now and then I go back to it, but I can't see a way to show him that he *is* that kind of man. It's a painful process-but it's a process that Marc, for some reason, needs.

I concentrate really hard on the character and then...WALA! A name just finds it's way into my head. Sometimes, however, I do have to look them up (behindthename.com) and browse around fro a while and I'll find the name that just fit's them perfectly. Once they are named, the neam will never change, no matter how silly it might be (ex: Homeless was a character's name in my '08 NaNo, that I later made into a nickname for reality's sake).

For some inexplicable reason, my characters have really strange names this time 'round. My main character is loosely based on me, and her name is Author Gal. Ha. And many of the other characters are from stories that Author Gal (me) is writing:

Audrey, the blue-haired girl-- no idea where her name came from. She's been in my head for awhile now, so I don't know where it started.

Green-- her sidekick, a 12-year-old boy with a knack for rhyming and a special connection with the natural world. His name is probably a little too obvious, but it suits him, I guess.

Kefu-- he's Egyptian, but the name I made up. Been in my head since 2005, my first Nanowrimo. For some reason, he now has a pet wolf. ;)

And then there is Rocky, the Rocket Scientist. I was calling him ROCKET SCIENTIST, but I just shortened it to Rocky.

Finally, there is TRENCH-COAT MAN, or just MAN for short. I don't know if I'll ever give him a real name. He has an English accent. I'm sure there's a name in there somewhere... Any suggestions?

Woow, I didn't realize until now what a strange, strange bunch I've got.

Oh, and the Writer's Digest Character Naming Sourcebook helps a LOT. And it's a lot of fun, too.

for me, i usually name my characters randomly just after what comes across my mind. And i can't change them after that. I tried it on various occasions, because they seemed too obvious for me or too normal or too exotic but I keep thinking of them as the old name so i usually go back to that.
I tend to give names i don#t like to people I don't like and vice versa, but that is just how i feel about them and wouldn't be of much significance to anyone else.
With fantasy, i often just put together random syllables. Sometimes, I will make a story up about it, later on. Sometimes i won't. In last year's NaNo, I was writing a fantasy story and at some point I decided that elves could only have names with vowels and n,m,l,s in them. It was very much later that I discovered I had doen this because n,l,m have a soft sound (for me at least) and s brings some kind of difference to that.

For this year's screnzy, it's different though. I started writing it just to get this weird day-dreams out of my head, about me and this one guy I had a crush on. So my characters are based on real lif epeople. i started to write with their normal names, but I figured that was super obvious if anyone ever found it. plus, i changed some aspects of them, soem relationships and so on so it didn't feel right to keep the original names. I still wanted them to be similar though.
For most characters I came up with other names that had the same letter in the beginning or a similar syllable at the end (e.g.: Maria turned to Julia). But for my main characters (Me and thsi guy i had a crush on) i didn't want to go with that. My name is Bianca which means "white" or "light" so I used stella, which means "star" Plus it's a name i always imagined myself to have when i was a kid. for Arian it was more difficult. I wante dhim to have an unusual name, but something that'd stick in your mind immediatly. i looked up what country the name comes from and took one from the same country that has a similar sound to it (for me that is) - Dartan.

sorry about writing so much but i wa sreally proud of myself when i had found suitable names. ^^

I named one character after an artistic director who annoyed me. While this might seem like an honor, at first, you can rest assured I did not pick a character one would want named after them. Playwright's revenge!