How I Choose A Name
When I need a name, I first try to see if the characters already have names — sometimes they do. In the case of my new project, the first guy was relatively easy because he basically said, “Um, hi, I’m Eric [Lastnameeventually].” I said, “Awesome!”
The other two were a lot less forthcoming, so I popped over to Seventh Sanctum’s Quick Namer and started with a set of 15 names. After a few clicks, I saw the name ‘Delmar’ and started thinking about de la mer, discovered that one of them had ‘Delmare’ as a surname, and wanted a French first name to go with.
Serendipity’s French Male Name Generator gave me Silvestre. So now I have Eric, Silvestre, and… I don’t know, yet. I’m still looking. I have a flexible list of rules that I use when I’m looking for another name to fit with those I already have. They’re something like this:
- It can’t be another E name, because I already have Eric (and I have A Thing about names that are too similar)
- I’ve already used Conrad, Bartholomew, James, and Benjamin too many times
- Ideally, there will be a way to make a decent-sounding nickname out of it
- It does not involve any extraneous punctuation/numbers masquerading as letters/silly spellings
I still haven’t decided on a name for the guy, though I’m tempted to go with Deandre or something like it. I’ll figure it out eventually.
