10 Tips for Picking a Character Name

Choosing a name for a fictional character can be as hard as naming a baby. After all, it is often the first detail that defines who your character is. For many writers, it’s a crucial first step to getting their story started. And while it’s true that you could just pick any name for a character, choosing one that truly embodies your character will be worth the result.

As people who are name obsessed and writers, we’ve thought a lot about real and fictional names. So we’re sharing our 10 essential tips to help you pick the perfect character name, starting with this rule of thumb: Be creative and thoughtful, and do your research.

1. Consider genre.

The genre of your story plays an incredibly important role in selecting a character’s name. Readers will need to believe that a character with this name exists in this world. And reader expectations often come from precedence, from the stories in that genre that have already been written. For example, fantasy names often take inspiration from Anglo-Saxon or Norse names because these legends share the similar fantasy story elements of magic, sword fighting, and royalty.

Let’s dig into some more examples. When we think fantasy, we don’t think Emily, we think Danaerys. When we think sci-fi, we don’t think Fabio, we think Anakin. In these two genres, readers are looking for names that transport them to a world different from their own. But how can a genre-appropriate name do this? By sounding nothing like the names that we hear in our daily lives. We probably know a Sarah. But we probably don’t know a Danaerys. And while we may not know a Fabio personally, that name has such deep ties to the romance genre that it may draw too much attention to itself if stuck into a story with dragons.

Genre will also help to determine how much room for creativity you can have with your characters’ names. In realistic literary or historical fiction, there are more constraints: era, location, anachronism (which we’ll discuss later on). But if you’re writing a young adult story, children’s story, contemporary romance, or satire, you have more room to choose.

Within contemporary young adult lit, you can play with fast-rising or popular names. This is because it’s more within the realm of possibility that children would have names that are popular in the now. Also, contemporary names are more liked by young people, so using a currently trendy name can help make a story more appealing, its characters more likable. In fact, sometimes YA characters can even spark a revival in popularity for a name.

In romance, your names can be over-the-top and on-the-nose (for example, Christian Grey in Fifty Shades of Grey). Readers are searching for escapism, not realism. People are more likely to buy a romantic hero named Gavin Danville than one named Burt Rutabaga.  But that doesn’t mean your characters can’t have names more rooted in reality, especially if you’re looking to make your protagonist more relatable. For instance, Bridget Jones from Bridget Jones’s Diary has an everywoman kind of name that is accessible (Jones is the second most common surname in the UK) and down to earth. Her name is fitting of her character, whose awkwardness and vulnerability make her one of the more relatable rom-com characters.

Then there’s satire. Here, names can have more weight as wordplay. You can go full Dickensian if you want to use character names to drive home a point. The villain can be named Lucifer . . . or Angel. A conman can be named Rip Offerman. But be careful with satirical names. It takes a deft hand to render irony correctly, and you must be mindful to punch up, not down; otherwise a poorly chosen name can seem downright mean or worse.

Now, it’s always your choice whether or not you want to follow genre naming conventions or to subvert them. If you want to subvert them, then it needs to be done purposefully, and you may have to explain in your story why.

2.     Pinpoint the era.

A regency-era romance set in England is unlikely to have a heroine with a modern name like Laiken or Nevaeh unless it’s a time-travel story. A hard-boiled detective in the 1940s is probably not named Jaxon or Brayden, unless it’s their surname. Getting details like this wrong can pull a reader (especially one who’s conscious of baby name trends!) out of your story before you can get them into it. 

There’s a wealth of information online to help you find era-appropriate character names quickly and thoroughly. The Social Security Administration has a tool that will show you the most popular American names by decade, and you can also use Baby Name Wizard’s Baby Name Voyager to see a graph of a specific name’s popularity over time.

Remember, though, when selecting names by era, your character isn’t usually born the year the story takes place. A 30-year-old heroine in 1970 was born in 1940. When doing the research, go back to the character’s birth year to find out what names were popular then.

Choosing a name that is in the top 10 in popularity can be a way to clue readers in to the age of your character, without having to state it. But remember that you don’t have to pick a super common name from that period to be era-appropriate. Instead, try selecting one that was somewhat popular at the time, fits into the style of the era, and doesn’t come off as anachronistic. If you want to go off the beaten track for a main character’s name, one way to add name believably is to surround, for example, a 1960s Elodie with background characters named Mary, Susan, and Richard.

3.     Factor in the character’s personality.

Whether we like it or not, most names have immediate associations that color how we view others and how others view us. And this is true in fiction, too. A character’s name can give insight into the person or people who named them, and it can be shorthand for a character’s overall personality. Sage may be a nature lover. A boy named Priest may be from a religious background. Or they can be the complete opposite of their name. Faith may be a nonbeliever and Temperance could be an addict. In an example from literature, Cormac McCarthy’s antagonist in No Country for Old Men is named Anton Chigurh, but as much as his surname sounds like “sugar,” he is decidedly the opposite of sweet, which makes him all the more chilling of a character.

A character’s name can also be a way for the author to practice sleight of hand. An important character in a story could have a humorous or embarrassing name or nickname that obscures their importance until later, ultimately surprising the reader. For example, in T. H. White’s A Sword in the Stone, young King Arthur is known by the nickname, Wart. In the Harry Potter books, Neville Longbottom is given an embarrassing surname that makes readers and his friends underestimate him, only for him to emerge in importance later when the occasion arises.

4.     Consider ethnic and/or racial background.

We say consider because sometimes this matters and other times it doesn’t matter at all. For example, if you’re writing in sci-fi or fantasy, our Earth-bound biases usually don’t come into play, nor do common earth-bound names. But if the sandbox you play in is one decidedly down to earth, a fine balance needs to be struck in naming characters when considering ethnicity and race. You shouldn’t discount ethnicity and race entirely, but it also shouldn’t be the determining factor in your name choice, as other factors (such as where a character was born) are also significant.

Research matters when coming up with a character name outside your own background or beyond your naming expertise. One example is in naming a character of Asian background. A Chinese name is very different from a Japanese name is different from a Hmong name. J. K. Rowling made this mistake in her Harry Potter books when she named a Chinese-British character Cho Chang, not realizing that Cho is traditionally a Korean name and Chang is a Chinese surname. For this mistake, she received a lot of criticism.

Our tip: try not to default to the most common or stereotypical last names and first names of characters outside your own background. Take care with these names in the same way you would with names with which you are more familiar.

Names—last names and first names–can be a subtle way for the writer to hint at diversity without having to go into visual description. They help expand the world in the story while showing the writer’s awareness of the world around them.

5. Research, research, research.

Start by looking up root meanings. Meanings can be a subtle or obvious way to give your character additional depth and meaning. In Star Wars, hero Luke Skywalker’s first name means “light,” and his role is to balance out the dark side of the Force. Then there is Lolita of Vladamir Nabokov’s eponymous title. Her name means “sorrow.” While a character’s name doesn’t have to match up to their personality or fate, it’s wise to make sure that the name doesn’t convey something you don’t want or didn’t intend.

Looking up a name’s root meaning is a start to your research, but that’s not where it should end. Is there already another character with the same name? Is the name you selected associated with someone famous or infamous? Harness the power of the internet and start with a quick web search of your character’s full name. Are there any undesirable associations? (If your romantic hero shares a name with a serial killer, maybe go with something else.) Or does someone much more famous already own that name?

Change up your web searches by trying alternative spellings, using just the first name or last name, ask in writing or naming forums like the namenerds subreddit or the Nameberry Forums, and ask family and friends. It doesn’t hurt to be sure!

6. Consider the name’s importance to the story.

Ask yourself these questions: Does the character’s name reveal a secret? Does the name define the character in some way? If the answer is yes, this is where research into meaning and associations is important. Related examples include Jhumpa Lahiri’s Gogol Ganguli in The Namesake, who hates his name, and Remus Lupin from the Harry Potter books, whose name gives away his secret almost immediately if you’re familiar with Roman mythology or Latin roots.

7.     Say it aloud.

We recommend saying a potential baby name aloud to get a feel for its sound and to see if you like it as much when spoken as on the page. And we recommend doing the same with a fictional character name. Does it trip you up when you say it? Does it sound too much like the name of something or someone who already exists in the world? Would you like to hear it read on audiobook or said aloud by your favorite actor?

As for “difficult to pronounce” names, if you want to use one, go for it! If people can learn how to pronounce Poirot and Schwarzenegger, they can learn to pronounce a name like Saoirse or Xu. The world of names can be too bland otherwise. Just use them in moderation and with purpose. And know that there will be readers who read it incorrectly. You’ll want to think about whether this matters, and whether the reader’s pronunciation of your character’s name affects the story or the enjoyment of it in a significant way.

8.     Distinguish your cast of characters.

By definition, fiction is not reality. It may be realistic that a group of women born in the 1990s have repeats in names like Samantha, Emily, or Brittany. But you don’t want to write a story where there are multiple characters who all share that name unless it’s relevant to the plot (for example, mistaken identity) or character (it is a family name). Instead, choose a variety of names with different sounds for the main cast of characters in your story. Naming one character Ashley and another Ansley may confuse your reader (and sometimes, yourself). As a general rule, try to avoid too many names that start with the same letter or share the same sound (like Chelsea and Kelsey).

9.     Think about location.

A story set in the fictional city of Smalltown, USA, will probably have a different cast of characters than a story set in Nairobi, Kenya. Not only will the style and origins of names vary, so will the variety of names. A story set in San Francisco or New York will have a greater mix of names from different backgrounds than a story set in a small town, which may be much more narrow in the variety of influences on names.   

The same root name in one location could be completely different in another location, too. John in England is Jose in Spain is Jack in America is Jacques in France. Be mindful that your name choice reflects this reality.

10.    Be consistent.

Be consistent in how you reference your character. If your intention is to have a character go by a nickname—let’s say “Dex”—there needs to be consistency in how the characters and the author refer to them. This does not mean that every character needs to call them the same name. Maybe Dex’s friends all call him that while his mother calls him by his given first name, Carl.  But it should be consistent in its logic. And if there is a change in how a character is referenced—a budding romance, a growing respect or disrespect—there should be a reason for the change.

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Though it can be easy to get caught up in details, don’t let picking a character name stop you from the actual act of writing. Some writers we know use the names of friends or family members as placeholders while they decide on that perfect character name. Just make sure to hit find and replace before you publish, or you might have some explaining to do! (Word of advice, don’t use the name Will for this, as you will experience frustration when it comes time to find and replace.)

In the end, a carefully chosen character name can add extra richness to your story and make your character come to life. Look through our curated name lists in our archives for ideas!

And fellow writers, please share with us your favorite tips for character naming!