The Beginner’s Guide to Worldbuilding — How to Name Characters Quickly
If you’re anything like me, then one of the earliest obstacles you’ll face when starting your next writing project is naming the characters. How do you come up with names that are interesting, meaningful, nuanced, or that tie into the world you’re building or the story you’re telling within it? More importantly: How do you do any of this without the names feeling forced?
I’m sure every writer you ask would give a different answer, so I’ve gathered here some tips, starting points, and general pieces of advice and things to remember as you embark on starting your next project or refining your current one.
NOTE: This article is based primarily on Fantasy and Sci-Fi storytelling since those are the genres I work in the most, but if you write in more grounded settings do still skim through, you may just find an interesting thought you hadn’t considered.
In This Article
- Deeper Meanings
- Corrupting Existing Words
- Lineage and Occupation
- One-Word Monikers
- Name Generators
- The TK Method
- If All Else Fails
- One Final Thought
Deeper Meanings
I feel like these types of names are seen as the “gold standard” when it comes to naming characters, and certainly they’re something to aspire to, but it’s important not to get bogged down in naming your characters when the most important thing about writing your outline or first draft should be getting the story down on paper (or in a word doc, or on stone tablets, or however you prefer to write).
Examples:
- Voldemort — Derived from the French “Vol De Mort”, translating loosely to “Flight of Death” or “Theft of Death”. Very apropos when he is a character who has essentially harnessed the dark magics granted to him by committing acts of murder.
- Dumbledore — Old-English word for Bumblebee. An animal that packs a punch when it wants to, but generally avoids conflict due to the risk to itself.
- Fortune — In one of my own current WIPs (The first chapter of which you can read here), we follow the story of a young character who throughout the course of the story will rise to a station above that of his birth. He’ll face trials and tribulations, and ultimately emerge a changed man. With that in mind, my current working name for him is Fortune, literally because he will be “Fortunate”.
Now in the first two examples above, you’ll notice that the author took inspiration from other languages. You’ll also notice that both of the names aren’t really modified in any meaningful way from the original word or phrase. Of course we could debate whether or not that implies laziness on the part of the author in question until we’re blue in the face, but the fact that both of these characters are part of one of the largest media franchises the world has ever seen just goes to show that even when searching for names with deeper meanings, you don’t have to do a lot of work.
Yes, you could take the Tolkienian route of inventing languages and thousands of years of history for your world, then deriving meaningful names from those languages and histories that will be revealed to be meaningful in page 400 of your collected appendices, but I’m sorry to say that none of us are Tolkien. Very few, if any, writers alive today will come to be regarded with the same love and respect as Tolkien, so the vast majority of us are better off calling our bad guy Drouk (the Breton word for “evil”) and calling it a day.
Tips for alternate languages:
If you’re reading this article then I feel I can safely assume that English is either your first language, or one with which you’re very familiar. With that in mind I’d recommend following the etymology of the language or adjacent languages to find some good words with interesting meanings.
Languages You Might Consider Include (But are not limited to):
- French
- German
- Latin — For that old-timey feel
- Breton
- Gaelic
Corrupting Existing Words
This is a method that sounds and feels like it should be very difficult, but actually is a very quick and easy way to get a name on paper without killing the all-important momentum of your writing. The method involves starting with a word that’s relevant to the character — be that who they are, what they do, or an important part of their character arc — and corrupting that word until you have something you like the sound of.
Examples:
- An archetypal “Rogue” character called Logue
- A Wizard called Finard
In the above two examples all I’ve done is started with the names of an archetypal “class” that you might encounter in a fantasy roleplaying setting, and changed one or two letters to come to a name that sounds like it fits within a fantasy setting without holding myself back and slowing the pace of my writing for more than a handful of seconds.
There are examples of this type of naming everywhere. I’ve not had the chance to read Brandon Sanderson’s Wind and Truth yet (I’m still working my way through the Era 2 Mistborn books before I start on The Stormlight Archive), but I recently saw a Threads post from someone who’d come to the realisation that one of the main characters, Kaladin, is apparently now a Paladin. Now I wouldn’t pretend to comment on how deliberate that choice may have been, but if it is then Sanderson may well have just spent 14 and a half years building up to a pun, which is a level of dedication I can’t help but admire. More importantly, it means he’s built one of the most well-regarded high fantasy franchises on the back of a character who’s name is barely more than the fantasy RPG class he’s based on.
Tips:
If you go down this route, there’s every chance that you’ll be “rumbled” by your readers at some point. If that’s something that bothers you, then consider changing the name up a few times, each time taking the resulting word and corrupting it a little bit further until you have something you’re happy with.
For Example:
Rogue > Logue > Loke > Lokan
Just by adjusting a letter or two each time, we’ve now ended up with a name that would sit well within your average fantasy world, and bears very little resemblance to the original word. Have you ever put a word or sentence through Google Translate a few times, switching the languages back and forth until the original phrase was completely unrecognisable? That’s all you’re doing here.
Lineage and Occupation
It may surprise you to learn this, but surnames are actually a relatively recent invention in the English language. In times long past people may have been known only by their “given” name, and it was only when cities started to grow larger and the chances of encountering someone with the same name as you became higher and higher that surnames started to be used to differentiate people.
Now the methods for choosing and developing surnames is far beyond the scope of this article, but there were two ways that surnames were chosen in the past that I think translate very well to Sci-Fi and (especially Fantasy) writing: Lineage and Occupation. Put quite simply: People being named for the job they do or the family they have.
For Example:
- Butcher
- Baker
- Candlestick Maker (Okay that one wasn’t serious but I had to finish the rhyme)
- Jameson
- Mitchellson
- Guðnadóttir
The examples above are split evenly between two different roots: Butcher and Baker are surnames taken directly from the occupation the person may hold (and I’d wager you’ve met someone with one of those surnames at some point in your life), and the second group are derived from the parentage of the person. Jameson and Mitchellson here literally being “James’ Son” or “Mitchell’s Son”, and Guðnadóttir being an Icelandic name basically meaning that the person is the daughter (dóttir) of Guðni.
We can add a layer of abstraction here as well by employing the above method of corrupting words. For example, naming someone who is the son of a Baker:
Bakerson > Bokerson > Bockson
I used the example above of Guðnadóttir partially to show that the method is present in languages other than English, but also to show that you can use these conventions within the frameworks of other languages, even ones you may have invented for your world.
For Example:
- Say the word “Spron” is a gender-neutral term loosely translating to “Child of” in our world
- A person called Lokan has a child
- Following that convention, the child’s surname would be “Lokanspron”
- We’ll shorten it by a syllable just to make it less of a mouthful, leaving us with “Lokspron” as a surname
Now we have the adult Lokan Finspron and their child Butcher Lokspron, and we’ve come up with these names using a combination of the above methods, which has let us name them quickly while maintaining our momentum. We can come back later and change these names for something more meaningful or generally a bit nicer sounding if we want, but we can just as easily decide not to do so if these are only intended to be minor characters.
One-Word Monikers
One-word monikers are arguably far more common in Fantasy and Sci-Fi than any other genre, so of all the suggestions I’ve made here I feel this will be the most niche to those specific genres. That said, the seeming simplicity of a one-word name doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t layer in much deeper meanings. In fact, I’d argue that characters with one-word names offer possibly the most opportunity to have fun with deeper or hidden meanings.
Examples:
- Voldemort
- Yoda
- Legion
- Leliana
- Heathcliff
- Chakotay
We’ve already discussed the meaning of the name Voldemort above, but did you know that the name Yoda is derived from the Hebrew word Yodea and the Sanskrit word Yoddha, which mean something along the lines of “hero”, “warrior”, or “one who knows”? Well now you do, and Sci-Fi/Fantasy fiction is awash with examples of this kind of thing.
“Legion” is another great example of a single-word name that has a deeper meaning and has the added advantage of just sounding cool. In Mass Effect 2 (and 3, if you manage to keep Them alive) Legion is a single Geth platform that contains the consciousnesses of over a thousand individual Geth units, when Shepard asks Them what Their name is, They eventually settle (with a little help from the ship’s AI) on the name “Legion”, derived from the Bible quote “My name is Legion: For we are many”. The quote in question is from Mark 5:9, in which Jesus restores a man who has been possessed by demons. This is further paralleled in the game by the fact that many Quarians (the species who created the Geth) see the AI creatures as abominations (or “demons”), and so are scared of Legion for what They represent. What I’m saying here is that Mass Effect 2 is a very good game.
Now it’s important here to note that not all one-word names need to have this type of deep meaning. Yes, Legion is a deep and meaningful name that has layers of interesting biblical reference that tie back to the narrative of the game, and yes Yoda is descendent from Sanskrit and Hebrew words that have meanings appropriate to the character, but it’s just as valid to have, say, an android called Data, or a big gorilla who skips everywhere called Skips.
So the next time you have to name a character, consider just going for one word that describes them or the part they play in the story, especially if they’re only intended to be a minor character. They’re an assassin? Reaper. They’re a mechanic? Wrench. They’re particularly athletic? Flips.
Name Generators
This is one of the quickest and easiest methods for naming a character, though it is arguably the most impersonal as you’re leaving the naming of your character up to a bunch of randomised algorithms and just picking one you like the sound of. I won’t dwell on these for too long because really there isn’t a huge amount to say about them, but below are some generators I would recommend.
- Fantasy Name Generators — Exactly what it says on the tin, this site has generators for characters from just about any fantasy race you can possibly imagine, including (but not limited to): Jotun, Kaiju, Hobbit, Dragonkin, and of course all the usual suspects you’d expect to see in your average fantasy role-playing setting. There are also generators for human names from a variety of backgrounds, as well as places, holidays, honorifics, descriptions, and *literally hundreds* of other things.
- Donjon — What TTRPG-adjacent would be complete without some form of reference to Donjon? This generator doesn’t have quite as many features as FNG, but its simple user interface has all the basic options you’ll need if you’re just trying to get a name down on paper. I keep this one in my bookmarks and ready to go during every TTRPG session I run. Y’know, just in case my players go completely off-piste and run off into the wilderness, which happens more than you’d expect.
- Chaotician Writer’s Fantasy Name Generator — It’s got male names, it’s got female names, what more do you need? They also have generators for a few other things, and the site is jam-packed with resources and advice applicable to any fantasy writer or TTRPG worldbuilder.
- Behind The Name — I stumbled upon this one relatively recently compared to all the others on this list, and it requires possibly the most legwork of all the options, but gives the opportunity for some real depth. There are generators buried away on the site (though you’re limited to humans, boring old humans), but the main selling point of it site is that you can enter in a name, and it will give you the etymology and meaning of it, as well as some other names that are similar to it in meaning and sound. This one will be invaluable to those of you who want to spend a little bit more time getting a name that has all the right meanings.
A quick piece of advice:
Just because you’re using a random generator to create a name, that doesn’t mean you can’t modify it to suit your specific needs. Mix-and-match different names and surnames, chop syllables up across multiple generated names and stick them together into a beautiful Frankenstein of a moniker, corrupt parts of the names as we discussed in section 2 until you have something completely unrecognisable from the original output. Do whatever you want/need to do to make the names you’re using feel personal. Or just take the raw output from the generator and stick that in your world, I’m not the boss of you!
The TK Method
This is something I came across very recently but that has already become an invaluable part of my writing and worldbuilding toolkit.
Say you’re trying to come up with a name. You’ve been agonising over this character’s name for days in the background, waiting for your next opportunity to sit down and write. You get to your desk (or sofa, or basement, I don’t know your living situation), sit down to write, and… Nothing. You still can’t think of anything.
In these situations it’s absolutely crucial, as I’ve implied in just about every section above, to keep up the momentum. Maybe you have a wordcount goal, maybe you have a page goal, maybe you’re just writing freely (as I usually do) and you only have 30–60 minutes to write today. In these situations you don’t want something as small as a name to ruin your entire writing session so you just bash in “FancyNameTK”.
That’s it.
Then every time you refer to this character until you’ve named them you refer to them as FancyNameTK. Then when you’ve come up with the right name, the name that perfectly encapsulates who you want them to be, you just do a search and replace for FancyNameTK, and you’re done.
Explanation:
TK here means “To Come”. We use TK as opposed to TC because it’s far less likely to come up with false positives (TC appears in watch, stretch, stitch, itch, witch, and hundreds of other words, whereas TK appears in pocketknife, wicketkeeper, and a whole bunch of other words you’re far less likely to use). Of course you don’t have to use TK, you can just as easily use TBC or ComingSoon, or whatever you want to use. The most important thing is choosing one method/acronym and keeping consistent with it’s use so you don’t end up having to go through your manuscript with a fine-tooth comb to find every abbreviation you’ve used.
Pro-Tip:
You can use the TK method for anything, then just use CTRL+H and search for “TK” when you’re ready to fill some of them out:
- Don’t want to write a 200 word description of the feast right now? FeastDescriptionTK
- Don’t want to write that chapter right now? ChapterFiveTK
- Don’t want to write your entire book right now? MotivationTK
As facetious as I’m being here, the TK method is an invaluable tool to have in your toolkit, especially for writers of prose, and especially for those with limited schedules to whom every moment is precious.
If All Else Fails
Keyboard spam. Just bash some letters down on a page and call it a day.
Protagonist name: Lopnard
Villain name: Penlot
Pet dog name: Manrold
You’ll end up with weird noises and sounds, and most of what comes out will be unusable, but I know people who’ve based their entire online personas (For better or worse) on names they came up with just by bashing letters into the “Name” field on a social media site. It’s not the method I would use personally, but who am I to judge someone else’s process?
A Final Thought
We’ve gone over a lot of different methods for coming up with character names here, but I just wanted to close with one thought that I believe to be crucial to this whole process: It’s not that deep, bro.
Ultimately, a character name is nothing but a noise that we make so people know who we’re referring to. The most important things are:
- Writing compelling and relatable characters
- Writing emotionally honest and interesting relationships between those characters
- Writing.
I’ve touched on it a few times here, but I honestly believe the most important thing for any writer, worldbuilder, TTRPG Game Master, or anybody else who has a need to create characters and use them to tell a story is simple: Keep writing. If you’re anything like me, then you’re a chronic self-editor, someone who goes back on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis to re-edit every single word you’ve written to make sure they hit just right, they read just right, that they’re saying just the right thing.
Stop that.
Momentum is everything.
The next bit of worldbuilding you do, the next chapter you write, the next scene you plot out, try just writing. Make notes as you go by all means, TK some things here and there if you don’t want to slow down, use a find and replace to change a character’s name when you realise by chapter 5 that it was a terrible name all along, the most important thing is just to keep writing.
If I can bury a piece of sage advice at the end of a 3,000+ word article that most people who start reading it likely won’t reach: The first draft of anything you write doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to exist. So get out there and name some characters.
“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story” — Terry Pratchett
