Jeffe's Top Three Resources for Names

    

ROGUE'S POSSESSION, Book #2 in my Covenant of Thorns Dark Fantasy Romance trilogy, is out in a week! It's been so fun to see readers rediscover this first series of mine.

This week at the SFF Seven, we're talking Naming Resources: Your top 3 sources for choosing names of characters, places, etc. Here are mine:

1. Jeffe's Big List of Names

I keep a list. A spreadsheet (of course! for those who know me) that I add to any time I encounter a name I really like. I save them for important characters. One #protip: there are few disappointments greater than discovering you squandered a really good name on a throwaway secondary character. Save those names for someday!

 

2. Behind the Name

 

BehindtheName.com is a great resource that lets you search for names in all sorts of ways. There's also a surname version, for those tricksy family names. 

3. Relevant Dictionaries

I also use archaic language dictionaries for whatever language family I'm using for a given world or realm within a world. These are easy to search for online, then look up word meanings and cobble together names from there.

 

Names are always important in my books - it's one of my themes - so I'm almost always choosing them for their underlying meaning. Something to look for!

 

Insert Name Here: 3 Resources

Naming Resources:
Top 3 resources for choosing names of characters, places, etc.

For the names that don't just pop into my head, I have lots of rabbit holes to tumble down. Today, I'll share three of my most frequently used resources.

1. 20,000 Names: Back in the days of narrowband (if you're too young to know what that was, get off my lawn!) this site came into being...along with its ads, so run an adblocker if you're going to spend time here. It hasn't been updated and probably never will be. Still, it has names by region, language, fantasy categories, meaning, and genders (it predates gender inclusivity, so the names are male, female, or unisex). 

2. IMDB: Full Cast & Crew Listings: Oh sure, we all know the big names from our favorite TV shows or movies, but not too many of us stay to watch the full credits. The cast and crew list is a gold mine for naming. I don't straight lift a name, mind, but I do mix. 

3. Google Translate (among other translation sites): When it comes to locations or monsters, I use translation site(s) to look up a keyword that describes the place or thing, then I scroll through the assorted language options until a result catches my fancy. I try not to make phrases because #TranslationFail is real and often hilarious. If I ever get called out for this approach, I will accept my shaming. 

General Guidance: Before naming something--from the book title to a backwater town--do a generic web search on that name. It'll minimize the odds of you naming your hero after a serial killer or your ivory tower after a dung heap. 

Sometimes you've just gotta slap a new label on!

 I think it’s safe to say we’ve all been there…we’ve all written a character or chosen a book title only to have a CP/agent/editor strongly advise a change. 

Jeffe had a book title change, but never in her head. KAK had a handful of characters sport new ID’s, if you need some name inspiration check out her post. And Vivien’s confessed to writing about an Asahel…but we’ll never read about him. Hang around a couple more days and I’m sure you’ll find out some stories from Marcella and Veronica!

I love hearing stories from other writers, I love hearing about the book that wouldn’t leave their head, and I love hearing about the characters that shout and the ones that have to be pulled from the pages. I guess that means I’m interested in hearing about yours, but beyond the topic question of have you changed any names…I want to know how you got over the change. 

As writers we become attached to our characters and even our book titles. Our minds are consumed with them for varying periods of time, but consumed none the less. So, how do you leave behind something you’re attached to?

To date, I’ve only changed one character’s name. In one of my fantasy novels I had a MC, main character, named Boromir. 

Boromir? Boromir? Boromir? 

Well, he wasn’t playing hooky, but my agent strongly suggested I change his name since the only known Boromir is in Lord of the Rings. I wrestled with that for weeks because I love that name! I think there should be more Boromir’s ! But, in the end I changed it because I didn’t want readers to immediately have LotR Boromir pop into their heads. 

I made the change, and it was hard to get past! I finished that manuscript in May 2019 and when talking about this character I still sometimes slip and call him Boromir! I suppose it doesn’t help that I picked a similar sounding name, hmmm. 

Your turn. Have you had post-renaming blues? Did you get over it, or do you still mentally call them/the title by the original name?

The Names Have Changed (Because The Editor Said So)

 A rose by any other name...is still Rose, because that's what her name was throughout the draft that took me eight years to write, damn it. Do you know how often I had to type that name, rework scenes with that name, have people call that name, eh? EH?

clears throat

What names have changed in my books during final edits that will forever be known to me as their original names? I changed a bunch of names in my high fantasy LARCOUT because my editor pointed out that half the names I had used invoked stereotypes and biases that clashed with the culture I had created. Fair. With some I agreed, others...not the editorial sword on which I was going to fall. Here are three changed-name examples from a book I published five years ago that still stick with me: 

1. Draft Name: Bishop; Pub Name: Rashan
2. Draft Name: Maynard; Pub Name: Dhaval
3. Draft Name: Phoebian; Pub Name: Sana

The Best Title That Never Was

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week concerns the reality of having to change names. We're asking the crew if they've ever had to change the name(s) of a character or place in a book after we'd drafted it? Who is the character who will forever go by their "unpublished" name in our minds?

For me, it wasn't a character. As far as I can recall, I've never had to change the name of a character or place in a book. If I did, it never mattered enough to me that it stuck in my head. I *have* had to change titles, however, and the one that has never left my head is for the book that became ROGUE'S PAWN, book one in my Covenant of Thorns trilogy.

This was my first published novel - released in 2012 - and was the story that invaded my dreams and wrenched me from a nonfiction career and into fiction. It was, in fact, fantasy romance, but I didn't know what to call it then. I started writing it in 2005, querying it in 2007 and it took me YEARS to sell. 

All that time, I called it by another title in my head: OBSIDIAN.

The title has a lot of shades of meaning and symbolic layers in the story. That book is forever OBSIDIAN in my head.

Unfortunately, by the time Carina Press bit on the book and published it in August of 2012, Jennifer L. Armentrout's book of the same title had come out in May. My editors at Carina said that wasn't the reason for the title change. Instead I sunk my own ship by first publishing the Facets of Passion books with them. Those were erotic BDSM contemporaries, also with one-word jewel titles: SAPPHIRE, PLATINUM, and RUBY. (Ironically, book 4, FIVE GOLDEN RINGS, was supposed to be called ORO, the Spanish word for gold, but Carina thought readers wouldn't get it. I'm still sorry about that retitling, too.)

It was a newbie author mistake. Had I realized that one-word jewel titles wouldn't work for two different series, in two different genres, from the same author at the same publisher, I would have cheerfully changed the Facets of Passion titles instead. Alas!

I'd love to get this trilogy back from Carina someday - largely because I've never liked these covers, either. Would I change the title back? I don't know... I wouldn't want readers to think I'm trying to trick them into reading something new that's actually old. 

What would you say?

    

Naming Fantasy Characters, Places, and Things

The upside of me not being in San Diego on June 1 is that my event at Mysterious Galaxy will be available to all of you via Zoom! Would love if you all joined in!

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is Names: What's your favorite source/method for naming your characters, places, etc?

I have several go-to naming sources that I have bookmarked for fast and easy access. My first stop is always BehindtheName.com, the etymology and history of first names. The advanced search allows you find names by gender (or lack thereof), meaning, usage (including mythological, biblical, archaic, etc.), and keyword. I love to start with a name meaning and triangulate from there. It's also meticulously cross-linked, so you can find associated names and roots.

There is also a Surname version of the site, http://surnames.behindthename.com/, which works the same way and is a great resource for building family trees and genealogies. Both of these work great to name places as well.

Once I settle on a general language group that I'm drawing from for a particular world, or place within a world, I find and bookmark an online dictionary for that language. I love to find the ones that index the old versions of the language too. ::The Vikings of Bjornstad :: Old Norse Dictionary is a great example. I can search for English concepts, find an old Norse version of the word, and then add a bit of drift to the spelling to make it my own.

Finally, I often resort to good old basic etymology to build new words. I look up the etymology of a word that embodies the concept of the person, place, or thing I want - then I break it down into component roots. Sometimes I search for related roots in other languages. Then I piece the concepts together again, maybe add some spelling drift and there it is! New word.

Now you guys know all of my secrets and can no doubt reverse engineer names from my books!