My character names...come from my head, full-grown. Adam and Antoine, the vampiric duo, came from cliches. I wanted a name for Antoine, and suddenly he was Antoine Degrassi, whole and complete, from perfect silky black hair to leather trenchcoat. He was an anti-cliche, and his name came from the same. I also wanted a similar, yet completely different subtextually, name for the other anti-cliche, and he was Adam. Why? It's a normal name, a name that has nothing special about it...unless you look deeper. Similarities to an Antichrist-that-wasn't in a certain book are completely subconscious.
Jackerly Arsdale, my sci-fi character, began as Jack. She also began as male, but a paragraph in I realized she was in fact a she. But she was still Jack, so her name grew up around it. Merilan Danfell is a direct contrast; a much more feminine name for a much more feminine character.
Lin Sel and Lin Rel, my NaNo protagonists, were just syllables that came into my head when I wanted something to mean 'Star Dome and Star Foam'. Phonetics are fun.
Often, my names grow up around the characters--Adam&Antoine, with their not-quite-cliche names, Jackerly with her androgynous engineering soldier self--but usually they are a collection of sounds that I find appealing, and that seemed to fit. They almost all have a meaning or story, but the one true criteria is this: Once I think of their name, they cannot be named anything else. It fits them inextricably.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2004-11-22 12:16 am (UTC)Jackerly Arsdale, my sci-fi character, began as Jack. She also began as male, but a paragraph in I realized she was in fact a she. But she was still Jack, so her name grew up around it. Merilan Danfell is a direct contrast; a much more feminine name for a much more feminine character.
Lin Sel and Lin Rel, my NaNo protagonists, were just syllables that came into my head when I wanted something to mean 'Star Dome and Star Foam'. Phonetics are fun.
Often, my names grow up around the characters--Adam&Antoine, with their not-quite-cliche names, Jackerly with her androgynous engineering soldier self--but usually they are a collection of sounds that I find appealing, and that seemed to fit. They almost all have a meaning or story, but the one true criteria is this: Once I think of their name, they cannot be named anything else. It fits them inextricably.
Odd mental process.