Characters' Names

[erastes]

I know i've complained about this before but gah!  NAMES! Sometimes I'm sooo tempted to go bananas and leap down the "implausible name route" like Deymien Aztec de Chandon or something.  I've actually started writing today and there i go, tap tap tap - I have the name of the butler and I stick "Mrs XXXX" for the housekeeper because she's not vital - and then I hit the first major male character and GRIND TO A BLOODY HALT.

I go and search for Parish records - and am bombarded with Charles and Edward and George and John -sheesh- all so DULL! Names just drive me bonkers.

Does anyone have any great links?  And no, I don't want baby names sites, I want parish records, or sites with real names!  help help help. Or you may be responsible for me having a Deymien Chandon.  (although that's SO bloody tempting...) I'd like unusual but plausible if you know what I mean.

Comments

[sleveen.livejournal.com]

Personally, I adore the fake name generator (http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/index.php?c=uk&gen=random&n=en) myself. ^__^

[erastes.livejournal.com]

*BOOKMARKS*

Thank you - it's certainly useful - I can find the words and then check their authenticity afterwards!

[cbpotts.livejournal.com]

You mean you don't do OH (our hero) and LI (love interest) and EV (evil villian, which I guess is redundant)?

Sometimes what works for me is googling old family-tree/geneaology sites (sorry, cannot spell today)

You'd love it up here: the older generation has such great names. The man we bought our house from? Ovid. His brother? Horace. The man who works at the convenience station (where you bring the trash if you don't have it collected) Eldon. There's Augusts and Goliaths and Samsons and more...

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what you mean by the formula you mention. Ohliev?

I've been trying for geneology sites but they all seem to be pay-per view - do you have any links?

The trouble with England is that most names were biblical (so the ones you mention would be applicable) and vicars would refuse to baptise children if they weren't biblical names . Hmmm. perhaps I need to investigate the bible more thoroughly....

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

Well, they WERE all Charles, William, Edward, Robert and John.
Every Tom, Dick and Harry was, you know.

Those 8 names made up 90% of English names.

Damian would not be out of the question. If he needs something odd, go to your Bible. Plenty of odd ones there. Even among the Apostles you get the less common Andrew, Simon, Nathaniel/Bartholemew and Matthew.

Shitrai is one Bible name I'm saving for a very special character. (His folks claim it's "Shuh-Tray" He knows it's "Sheeeeit, Ray")

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Heh yes, and I really like to identify with my characters and don't want to look back and think "oh that was the Charles with the lisp" or whatever.

I think the Bible is a good place to start, thank you!

[ggymeta.wordpress.com (from livejournal.com)]

I've always found that the best way to get names [especially when writing foreign characters] is to just check news sites of different countries, cities, etc.

Everyday normal people with everyday normal surnames and first names are in those articles and news items all the time. :)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/

Just now in that first dismal story, I came up with

Jason Gorrie
Alan Santry
Robert Meehan
Victoria Cook

None of them are real people-- just mix and matches.

Names haven't changed that much.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Thanks hun - I could go with news and then check the etymology I suppose, I'm doing 18th century, more fool me...

[melora98.livejournal.com]

I have come to love
http://www.seventhsanctum.com/index-name.php

for all its wonderful random generators - and it's got a "normal name" generator, too. :)

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

I think that this is the one that most people use--the Regency Name Generator:

http://www.ugoi.net/nonsense/name.html

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

For the housekeeper--how about Mrs. Charity Moffat?

For the male lead:

Nicholas Lyons
Leonard Ingham
Stephen Allington
Adam Cade
Julius Kirby
Theodore Mason
Hector Warren
Martin Amberley

[adventurat.livejournal.com]

That's awesome! I'm so glad I popped in!

[adventurat.livejournal.com]

I have a 1,952-row, 11-column excel spreadsheet that some boffin put together from Regency-era Burke's peerage, regimental lists, correspondences, etc., and put on the internet. I don't know where I found it, but I'm happy to email it to you. It's got amazing treasures. Like 'Wendelina Elizabeth Van Brienem' and 'Adolphus Frederick Charles William Vane-Tempest'. Vane-Tempest! What a sobriquet!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I'd be incredibly grateful! Thank you!

[busaikko]

Try geneology sites: pick a fairly common family name and then see who the ancestors were who were alive at that time. Ah, like:

Clicking links at this site http://www.genuki.org.uk/ gave me a period (1807) voting resister (http://www.thedorsetpage.com/Genealogy/info/dorset1.txt), which has a lot of Johns but also Elias and Bento (Bento? in Japanese, that's a box lunch!) and Abel and Ambrose and Barruch?

My American geneology is full of wacky names....

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Thank you! *bookmarks*

[leni-jess.livejournal.com]

Jubal? You don't need a Dinah or a Rahab or a Judith, I suppose.

A quick-look kind of place in the Bible might be the genealogy of Jesus, which is given at least once, and I'm pretty sure there's a whole lot of begats in Genesis with interesting names. There's also lots of furriners (Assyrians, Persians...) in the Bible whose names might have been acceptable for baptism, from Nebuchadnezzar to Haman.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

It was odd but the more outrageous Biblical names were often found in the working classes!

[alex-beecroft.livejournal.com]

I use the list of casualties from the Peninsular war a lot: http://www.napoleonguide.com/medical_ukofficers1.htm
but they are mainly James, William, Thomas, George and Charles, and I think I've had one each of all of those already.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Damn them for all being so dull!

:)

Thank you!

[penelopefriday.livejournal.com]

I have a different sort of problem. I name my characters just as they appear, and then realise I've got stuck with people with names that I totally wouldn't have given them if I'd known they'd turn out to be important! I now have a Miss Smyth who turns out to be going to play a major role in my novel. At the time she was first mentioned, she was just a minor character, but she seems to want to take over. Sadly, I now think of her as Miss Smyth, so she will have to stay with that name.

Have you read your way through the classics of the era? That's always a good way to come up with names, although if it's a major character in the book it can be disconcerting to have a hero with the same first name. I've avoided calling any of my regency girls Elizabeth, because it has too many overtones of Bennet.

(Speaking of which, how about Edmund? Not Edward, but not so unusual that your readers sit around going "he's called WHAT???" instead of reading the story.)

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I like the name Smyth - it's nice and pretty unusual, you so often see Smythe after all.

*laughs* yes, my reading existed until recent times, almost exclusively of classics - the only non-dead author I read until a few years ago was Pratchett, it's taken me a while to come into the 2oth century, let alone the 21st. My editors are always complaining that this shows in my writing, because I slide into omniescent pov very easily, that being the style of many of the classics I love.

I couldn't use Edmund as a main character, I'd be forever seeing the stupid man in Sense and Sensibility - he deserved a great wet fish slap imho!!

[liriaen.livejournal.com]

I was about to say, King James Bible, too, which has already been suggested (for lo, what name could be better than Malachi? Dang, wait, that's already in use in "Angela's Ashes"-).
Dickens, Collected Works. ('Sketches by Boz', for instance?)
My fave, though not particularly Regency: spam senders' names. Brilliant, the majority of them.
And to harp again on my current book squeeze, the herculean "Against the Day"... have a look at those names and go "gakh!". :D

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Thanks hun! I admit that I don't find many of the Biblical names very romantic - probably because Hardy used many of them for his working class characters in his Wessex novels, but I'll find something!

Goodness, I hadn't heard of that book - looks interesting.

[crawling-angel.livejournal.com]

Names get me too. I searched for 1970s popular names and yes dull dullness of a sellection. I eventually settled on James for one character. He's eventually beginning to inspire me. Mind now there's only Brian who hasn't turned out as a biblical name, lol. Maybe I should fix that? o.O

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I couldn't love a Brian....

:)

[suryaofvulcan.livejournal.com]

Can I make a pitch for my great uncle's name: Ephraim Higginbottom. I've always thought it was deliciously old-fashined. He was the first child of my great-grandmother's second marriage, her eleventh child out of a total of twelve. I think she went a bit mad with the new surname. And if you're looking for an unusual female name, his wife was a Faroese woman named Brynhild.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I may have to name the gravedigger that, I love it! I don't think Higginbottom is a Dartmoor name, but I'm sure Ephraim was nationwide.

Thanks!

[berseker.livejournal.com]

Do you know this one: http://heraldry.sca.org/heraldry/laurel/names.html? Some of the names ARE boring, but, oh, well. You never know.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Thank you! It's so lovely to see some serious delurking in this thread! *bookmarks*

[mylodon.livejournal.com]

I have a never failing source of names. BBC sport website, link to any old team (posh name cricket, rough names footie, odd names rugby and cycling). For froeign names ditto, just access foreign saite. EPLS.

[gavinatlas.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I don't know if it would help you, but I have a book by Sherrilyn Kenyon which I think is called Character-Naming Source Book. It has knights names like Tristan and Bertram and Arthurian names and a lot of names that sound like Ethelred and Meldryk. I don't think it would say "these names were popular in X period of English history" though. (Actually, I take that back. To a small degree it will tell you if a name is from the ninth centry or fifteenth century, etc, but again I don't really see eighteenth or nineteenth century.) It does have a section on Welsh names, Irish names, Scottish names, Gaelic names, Teutonic names, etc. It does not have Portuguese names, and I needed one last month.

[lee-rowan.livejournal.com]

I collect baby-name books, and one of the older ones has great old-fashioned names like Aylmer and Millicent. But I don't think anybody's equalled Patrick O'Brian for sheer quantity of weird period monikers, starting with Preserved Killick and galloping off in all directions.