Writer's Resource: Advanced Character Name Tools

As a follow-up to Stacy's post about choosing character names by popularity, I wanted to share one of my favorite new tools. I've posted about the Baby Name Wizard website before, but they recently made their advanced name finder tools free (you just have to register).

My favorite is the Expert Name Finder. It lets you select a whole bunch of different parameters to narrow down your name choices.

Here's an example using my current work-in-progress. For the main character, I wanted a boy's name that was fairly common in the US, and one that suggested intelligence and youth. I also didn't want it to start with the letters S, H, or L, since I have character names starting with each of those letters already.

Here's what my search looked like:

And here are my results:

This gives me lots of names to choose from. I especially like Aaron, Quinn, and Terrence for this character.

The advanced features also include a name matchmaker, where you can enter in a name you like and it will give you similar suggestions, and a neat tool called NameVoyager that gives popularity graphs, similar to the ones Stacy mentioned in her post.

With these tools, naming characters is a snap!

Choosing Character Names -- A Nerdy Tool To Help Predict Name Popularity

Choosing character names is tricky business.  You want them to be unique, but not so unique that they sound cheesy or dump you into epic fantasy territory (unless, of course, you're writing an epic fantasy.)  You want them to feel current, but not so current that the same name pops up in fifteen other novels at the same time.

So how can you make sure that you're not writing a book with a main character named Bella the same year Twilight launches? Unfortunately, there's no full proof answer, but there is a handy tool to help.

First, you should check out Triona's handy post on baby names.  There lot's of good info there to help narrow down your options.

Once you have your options selected, check out this baby name predictor tool which uses statistics to estimate how popular your name will be across the next 25 years.

For fun, I plotted me and my fellow blogmates to see what it had to say about us.

It looks like Stacy, Jennifer and Lauren have all peaked and are on the popularity decline. So if you write YA and want a name that is common among the peer set you're writing for, all three names should be avoided since it's less and less likely they will appear in pop culture.  (Hint: look for a spike around the time your target audience would have been born.)

If you want an uncommon name, consider Stacy. Based on the chart, people born around 2000 are unlikely to have that name (which is a shame, cause it's awesome. :-P)  And if you want something really unique, give Triona a try.  In addition to being lovely, it didn't register as a name with any popularity spikes, meaning it's quite rare.

If you want even more nerdy name tools, here's a great article discussing how names can be used to predict someone's age (with the help of statistics, of course.)

Happy writing!

Writer's Resource: Character Names

I was really happy to receive a compliment recently on the character names in my WIP. I spent quite a bit of time on those names, so it was great to hear someone thought they worked well for the story.

I spent a LOT of time on the names.

It's not easy to come up with names, especially if you have a large cast of characters. Here are a few resources for character names you may not have considered:

• Random Name Generator. Sometimes you don't realize a name works perfectly until you see it written down. Try Behind the Name, which lets you specify ethnicity, gender, and number of names; the Fantasy Name Generator, which leans toward unique names and has options like "vowel heavy" names and "names with apostrophes"; and the Fake Name Generator, which not only comes up with a name--it gives your fictional character a whole identity, complete with a birthdate, blood type, and mother's maiden name!

• Baby name websites. I like Baby Name Wizards' advanced name finder, which gives you options like how common the name is and the first letter.

• The US Social Security Office's Baby Name Popularity List. You can input a year (back to the 1880s!) and it will give you a list of the most popular names in the US from that year. Don't forget, if you're naming an adult character, you'll want to look at the names that were popular during the year of his or her birth, not currently popular names.

It's worth taking the time to get your characters' names exactly right. The best names are unique and fit the characters well. Would Atticus Finch, Scarlett O'Hara, Sherlock Holmes, or Blanche DuBois be as memorable with different names?

Writer's Resource: Baby Name Websites

Naming characters can be one of the most fun parts of writing a novel, but it can also be one of the most frustrating. Choosing names requires thought--lots of thought. Your characters are part of the culture of your novel, which means their name should reflect that culture.

A good tool to use is baby name websites. I've done a roundup of a few of the more helpful ones below:

Baby Name Wizard: This site's Advanced Baby Name Finder is awesome. It allows you to select different attributes like popularity, length, and first letter to start with (useful when making sure main characters have names that start with different letters). You can also require or exclude names that are Biblical in origin, non-standardly spelled, traditional, or esoteric.

BabyNames.com: This site lets you easily search baby names by origin via the drop-down list. Bonus: they've also got a page of Tips for Writers (and they're good tips, too!).

Social Security Database: The U.S. Social Security Administration maintains a database of the 400 most popular baby names of each decade, all the way back to the 1880's (!). There's also a table of the top 10 names in each year from 1912-2011, as well as the top names per U.S. state for the last 40 years or more.

Baby Names World: Like the Baby Name Wizard above, this site has an advanced search that lets you filter by length, first letter, and popularity. It also lets you filter by origin, though, and it has some other options that are a little more subjective (heavenly names, anyone? Movie star names? How about pirate names?). Warning: this site is sponsored by Nickelodeon and thus has video ads that seem to play on every page. They're easy to turn off, but be aware!

Happy naming!