Writing Stack Exchange
Writing Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [naming]

Questions about creating and using names. Note that questions asking people to come up with names for you are off-topic.

Questions about creating and using names. How to come up with appropriate names. How to come up with unusual names. Whether to reveal names. When to use first/last/nicknames.

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Choosing character names is a constant difficulty

I find it hard to name my characters. Every normal name sounds funny if applied to a product of my fantasy. If I take a common name, I may get the image of someone I know into my head. And that may influence my vision of the character in a way I…
Mnementh
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Do hard to pronounce names break immersion?

I have a character in my book named Jiolluav (with the correct accent, Zholl-you-of or /ʒōl-'yoo-äv/), and I've written my entire "novel" (it's a work in progress) using this name. When I asked a friend to read it, he gave me a couple pointers with…
Anoplexian
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What are the Pros and Cons of long names?

Background: I'm developing names for places/characters/races/etc. in my world. One example are a particular political sect. The sect are a group within a different species that are named (the species in general) "Sun's children" (lit. translation.)…
FoxElemental
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Would it be cheating to change the main character's "name" partway through the story?

I'm writing a story written in third-person limited, and the main character has no real name. They simply go by the nickname they're given by the people they hang around at the time, resulting in many different nicknames depending on where they are.…
AkkaVer
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Avoiding repetition when there are two unidentified individuals

The tall figure was overwhelmingly tall. It stood in the corner of the room. The skinny figure right beside him sat on a chair. It wasn't moving at all. The tall figure moved to the opposite side of the room and started palpating the wall as…
user36239
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Is there a more modern version of "Acme", as a common, generic company name?

Yes, Acme is an actual company name used by many real companies - bricks, bikes, food, real estate, etc. But more relevant to this point, it has also been used for ages for fictional purposes - not just as a company making all kinds of dangerous…
Jim
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Any Technique to See if Your Idea is Original?

I usually get quite a lot of ideas for stories, but every time I want to develop them into a full fledged story, I get paranoid about how it might not be an original idea, and how it might be dismissed by people as a copy and not worth spending time…
JFW
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What should I do when I am stuck on names during freewriting?

If I get hung up choosing a name for a character, should I come back to it later? Or should I try to figure one out? I feel like sometimes I have some momentum going forward and taking too much time to select a name stops said momentum.
Luke Snell
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Referring to different instances of the same character in time travel

I am writing a story that involves time travel, and I have a chapter where a character from the future interacts with his present-day self. This chapter is written from the present-day self's POV. Early feedback on the chapter indicates that I'm not…
Tempo Mental
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Can I use the name Valerian in my sci-fi novel?

I have an Ancient Roman theme with the names of my characters, however someone pointed out to me Valerian is already a scifi character's name. Are the french comics (which spell it with an accent over the e) and the movie THAT popular that I would…
S. N. Walker
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Are Names of Characters Copyrighted by Authors?

Are names of characters copyrighted by authors? For example, the character "Eragon" from the Inheritance Cycle series, or a name that you've generated using an online name generator that you'd like to use (Which, could be copyrighted if names of…
JFW
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How to deal with common Earth references in a non-Earth setting?

Until now, I have mostly written in settings similar enough to Earth, mostly with human beings. For the first time, I am writing a short story set on a different planet, where the protagonists are not human and will have no interaction at all with…
Cristol.GdM
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Character is called by their first initial. How do I write it?

A character's name starts with a hard G, as in Gary. Another character (dismissively) calls him by his first initial "G", said with a soft G, as in gee whiz. I've been using the letter G, but it's giving me the willies in formatted text. I don't…
wetcircuit
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How should one refer to knights (& dames) in academic writing?

In ordinary English usage, one would refer to a knight called 'Forename Surname' as Sir Forename, not Surname, e.g. Sir Forename is distinguished in ... But in academic writing, one would typically refer to someone as Surname, e.g. Surname (2019)…
Matthew McClure
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Every character has a name - does this lead to too many named characters?

My tendency when writing is to give every character a name. Even the most minor ones. It says something about a nobleman when he knows every guard and stablehand by name, and it's something I want. So it's never "a guard" - it's always "Sergeant…
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