I steal letters off of license plates.
While you may or may not be as entertained as much as I am, someone on the Nano forums asked how to name their characters.
This is my reply:
I'm a horrible person. I steal letters off of license plates.
My car? KVD. Which translates into Kevid. My old car was was MHE, which would be Melahe, Morhed, Mohinder(<3) or Mhena or any number of things.
Also? Girl names can be boy names too. Alexis and Kim are both girl and boy names. Same with Mackenzie and George. I really dislike the romantic languages and their 'a means girl-name' convention. (My name is Rachel so I like more biblical conventions of completely random endings.) So my females are more likely to have really dirty sounding names. Like Mivin and Ura/Maggie. Remember, Nancy Drew had a chick friend named George. And in the originals, it wasn't short for anything, she was named after her Grandfather.
I also have a few favorite letters, like 'm' and 'z' and 'k' and 'v' which I throw liberally into names when I feel they need a sharper our smoother sound. Like Verrick. If he were a modern character they would name him Rick or Richard, but he's not so he's Verrick.
Another trick: I pick a word I don't mind and build a name around it. I liked the word scion, mach (like mach 4) and emo. So ended up with Enscion, Machenvar, and Zemoa. Fun fantasy names. And they have an 'embodyment' already. Enscion is the son of a wealthy businessman and has a rogue personality full of excesses, Machenvar is a beefy blond fighter pilot, and Zemoa is a five-foot-nothing poetry writer with lank black hair.
This is my reply:
I'm a horrible person. I steal letters off of license plates.
My car? KVD. Which translates into Kevid. My old car was was MHE, which would be Melahe, Morhed, Mohinder(<3) or Mhena or any number of things.
Also? Girl names can be boy names too. Alexis and Kim are both girl and boy names. Same with Mackenzie and George. I really dislike the romantic languages and their 'a means girl-name' convention. (My name is Rachel so I like more biblical conventions of completely random endings.) So my females are more likely to have really dirty sounding names. Like Mivin and Ura/Maggie. Remember, Nancy Drew had a chick friend named George. And in the originals, it wasn't short for anything, she was named after her Grandfather.
I also have a few favorite letters, like 'm' and 'z' and 'k' and 'v' which I throw liberally into names when I feel they need a sharper our smoother sound. Like Verrick. If he were a modern character they would name him Rick or Richard, but he's not so he's Verrick.
Another trick: I pick a word I don't mind and build a name around it. I liked the word scion, mach (like mach 4) and emo. So ended up with Enscion, Machenvar, and Zemoa. Fun fantasy names. And they have an 'embodyment' already. Enscion is the son of a wealthy businessman and has a rogue personality full of excesses, Machenvar is a beefy blond fighter pilot, and Zemoa is a five-foot-nothing poetry writer with lank black hair.