Top 7 Quick and Easy Ways To Name Fictional Characters

I don't know if any of you people are writing a novel right now, in fact, I don't know if people still do that... but I do know that whenever you take a trip to Fiction Land, you have to have neat names for all your players or else no one will read your stuff. (Unless you're José Saramago...) Well, once again, I decided to act in your best interests and give you a blueprint!

7. shm-reduplication

Lookit. The fact of the matter is, all the good names are already out there. There's nothing new under the sun, only redesigned packaging. Time to corner the packaging market with a little shm-reduplication. (By the way, thanks Rob, for the wiki-link.) It really simple. Hey, here's a great character name: Humbert Humbert. Multiply that by a little shm, and you've got Shmumbert Shmumbert. No one will a) know what hit them, and b) not love your new-and-improved character name! (For you mathematicians at home, that equation was: Humbert Humbert x shm-constant = AWESOME.) Man, at this rate, you can knock out a whole cast list in no time... full of colorful characters like Shmay Smatsby, Shmolden Shmaulfield, and of course, Shmurtz. (Although, except for ol' Shmurtzy, it looks like all your characters have the initials S.S.! This is maybe inappropriate?)

6. character frequencies and random.org

So I don't know if you caught it, but I did a little sweet math back there in the shm-blurb. Well, the math-hits just keep on comin', because I decided to ratchet that shit up a notch, math-style. I made a totally random name. Lemme break it down. First, I decided my name should be 24 characters long. Then, I checked on a table of character frequencies to figure out which letters to use and how many times to use each one. After that, I put those letters in Column A of an excel sheet, entered a random ordering of the numbers 1 through 24 (courtesy of random.org) in Column B, and sorted by Column B. That's how I came up with "Omlnus N. Atocas-Wetrferdhte". A) Could I be more of a nerd? B) How sweet is that name? He is like some sort of Indian brave whose feminist mama married a German officer. I can't wait to write the story of his life!

5. use the names of people from your childhood, especially if you are writing about your childhood, specifically about grudges that you refuse to give up on, even though it has been, what, fifteen years?

Yeah, this actually might not be the best strategy…

4. incredibly blatant names

I guess these are more properly considered aptronyms, like Mrs. Malaprop of The Rivals or Worldy Wiseman of The Pilgrim's Progress. I think you can go further than Misters Sheridan and Bunyan and have a little fun with it. Maybe you’ve got a policeman in your novel… a grizzled veteran who sometimes has to play by his own rules. Consider naming him Detective Maverick Grizzle. Or, if you want to be a bit more on the nose, try Officer Handgun. Perhaps your protagonist is a young mayor with big ambitions. Mayor Freshface McIdealism. If he’s more sinister than that, go with Mayor Top-hat. Finally, you can always use a name to denote physical traits of your characters… attractive young quarterback? Johnny B. Musclyarms. Loveable goof? Warren P. Gangly. Cheerleader with dreams of leaving this small town and making something of her life? Suzie Q. Ingénue, obviously. And that, my friends, is the makings of a beautiful love triangle.

PS: There’s a pretty great mini-debate regarding aptronyms vs. nominative determinism on, where else, Wikipedia.

3. deity from antiquity plus common surname

Hey! It's time for a little props-giving! You may notice that there's been an addition to our list of links you should click on--in fact, the list has swelled from 12 to 13 items to include My Unpacked Library, a lovely literary offering from Matt Schratz, one of the all-time best guys. (Note: I have yet to begin work on my list of the top 261 all-time best guys, but don't think I don't have extensive notes.) Matt hails from the Western New York area (like me!) and once upon a time, at his house in Lockport, he divulged a fantastic theory of character naming to me. You take the name of a preferably ancient god or goddess (Greek, Norse, Hindu, etc.), put it in front of a common surname (Jones, Smith, Brown, etc.) and you are golden. You can gussy up the godly given name, if you want--shorten it to make a nickname, for instance.

Fun examples: Odin Jones, Persephone “Persy” Brown, Arjuna Smith, Siegfried “Siggy” Stevens, Jupiter Cooper.

PS: Juno MacGuff does NOT count. Eff that ess.

2. porn star names

First off, I should say… these aren’t real porn star names. Because I obviously don’t know any real porn star names. Ron Jameson? Is that one? (Oh great, now we’re going to get all that porn traffic. Awesome.) So, you’ve all heard this old chestnut. You take your middle name for the given name (or first pet, there are variations…) and the name of the street you grew up on, and that’s your porn star name. Mine is Emmanuel Winspear. My roommate’s is Roddy Lancaster. I’m just going to stop right there and say that even though I’ve never seen a “porn-o”, the pairing of Winspear and Lancaster would surely a Boogie Nightsworthy team.

By the way, just because you have named a character using this technique does not mean they have to be a porn star in your novel. They could be a fireman. Or a nurse. Or a physics grad student who needs to make a little extra cash because her grant is criminally underfunded. …Or a nurse.

1. army callsigns

If it worked for Wilco, it can make you into a great novelist! There's this neat thing called the NATO Phonetic Alphabet, in which each letter of the alphabet is assigned a code word. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, for instance, the 2001 Wilco album, stands for YHF and... I don't know the significance of that. Anyway, maybe you could take your initials and translate them into code words! Let's try it with my name! Okay, so... PMS becomes Papa Mike Sierra. Oh snap! That is a baller name, fo' sho'. Papa Mike Sierra is probably the leader of some mountain enclave... he's got like, 4 wives and 5 guns and 6 different words for kickass. With the help of his trusty sidekick, Tango Kilo (who is totally some sort of native-warrior-turned-guide), he's got to defend his fortress, Hotel November, against the forces of Uniform Charlie, a totalitarian dictator who wants to throw Papa Mike's ass in the hole. But on the eve of battle, Papa Mike's one true love (aka: not one of his four wives) Juliet Whiskey reveals... she's pregnant! Who will reign supreme over the mountain enclave? Will Tango Kilo remain loyal? Will Papa Mike get to shoot all of his five guns? Will the baby be named Oscar? (Hint: Uh huh!)

Ohmygosh, someone please write that. I basically did all the work for you.

Top 12 Variations on Chick-Lit

12. prick-lit

This is when you are big ol' jerk of a guy and decide that the best use of your freetime is sitting around and casting your opinions off into the universe for people to stumble upon, even though a) nobody asked for them in the first place and b) no one cares. Also known as blogging. SELF-ZING!

11. Thicke-lit

This is when you are Alan or Robin Thicke and you have decided that you are going to write your autobiography. If you are the former, do not plan on making a lot of money. If you are the latter, you might want to wait, oh, twenty years or so.

10. tick-lit

This is when a book is actually a bomb about to go off.

9. sick-lit

This is when you throw up in a book but keep reading, because it was so engrossing. (That was a sweet joke, you guys. Do you get it? Hint: engrossing. Gross.)

8. Rick-lit

This is when you write a book about 80s pop sensation Rick Astley, and the fact that he was never going to give you up, let you down, run around, hurt you, etc... Incidentally, I bet if you click this link, you will totally not be redirected to a video of Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up."

7. hick-lit

This is when you are a backwoods yokel and you write a book about swimming in a waterhole and cow-tipping. Most likely, your book is full of typographical errors and structural problems.

6. lick-lit

This is when your book is printed on paper that has been coated in various tasty flavors.

5. crick-lit

This is when you are the kind of person who pronounces "creek" as though it rhymes with "chick" and you write a book about it. Very closely related to hick-lit.

4. Mick-lit

This is when a) your book is full of derogatory descriptions of Ireland and Irish people, or b) you are Irish and you decided to write a book about it.

3. trick-lit

This is when you are a magician and you write a book revealing all the secrets behind your tricks. This will probably get you black-balled from the Magician's Alliance.

2. Bic-lit

This is when you write a book with a ballpoint pen. It doesn't really matter what kind of book it is, you just have to make sure that you write the whole thing with a pen. Those "medium is the message" people go crazy for this shit.

1. "Brick"-lit

This is when you write novelizations of the song "Brick" by Ben Folds. And people read your novelization at proms during the last dance, because they don't really get the message. And then afterwards, in the limo, people spend like an hour explaining to them the true meaning of your novelization. And then they get teen-pregnant?

The Top 10 Literary Devices of All Time

When you are writing a work of literature, it is important to use "devices" to your best advantage. For you history buffs out there, the literary device was accidentally invented by Linus Pauling in 1894. Though he had initially been attempting to develop a crude prototype of the Brain-to-Machine Interface, Pauling left his test brains out overnight next to a leaky Erlenmeyer flask containing some spare cations and in the morning, he was thrilled to find literary devices all over his laboratory! Today, writers have developed at least 1,704 individual literary devices, although they are sometimes combined for greater effect. These devices are seen the condiments of the novel--bringing out the flavor ("themes") of the meat ("the plot") and pretty much telling the reader what he/she really needs to know for the quiz. We have performed an exhaustive meta-analysis to bring you the top ten literary devices...

10. It was ultimately about the journey, and not the destination.

Technically a literary technique and not a literary device, this is our Tropical Storm on a list chock-full of Cat 5 Hurricanes. Frankly, I think this is a bullshit number 10, but meta-analyses don't lie, so whatever. This technique works best when the destination has been blown up or washed away by a flood. That way, your heroes have no chance to go to an awesome party in the destination and reconsider their conclusions.

9. We are part of a secret experiment run by the government!

Usually, this only works if your setting is an island or space station, although it is rumored that the original ending of the beloved television series Cheers was an all-out deployment of this literary device.

8. Love conquered all, however, the main characters died.

The desired effect here is to confuse the reader. You want the reader to say, "Hey! John and Mary both died... this was a sad book and therefore I am unhappy!" However, they will also be struck by thoughts of, "But wait, through John and Mary's deaths, the supporting characters gained a better understanding of their own existences... and so have I?" The average reader will then most likely descend into a spiral of self-torment and deep, existential anxiety. If you are friends with a licensed therapist, you can put their phone number at the end of the book and work out some sort of deal for a portion of the profits!

7. We offer high-quality boxsprings at competitive prices!

Note: This is usually only used in home furnishing catalogues and the plays of Anton Chekov.

6. The President, it turns out, was a robot! But you are somehow his son?

If you can work in lasers and a monologue about the illusory nature of human consciousness, you are fucking golden.

5. Through good times and bad, the band kept rocking in the free world. Later, in 1988, they would reach their ultimate goal of putting out a moderately successful greatest hits album.

Congratulations! You have written a novel about the band Journey. Excellent titles for your novel would be "Any Way You Want It", "Neal and Steve's Crazy Idea That Just So Happened to Work", or "It Was All About the Journey". If you choose option three, you have successfully combined two literary devices/techniques!

4. While attempting suicide, the protagonist realized that he remembered where the money was. He wouldn't be going to prison after all!

The success of this device is totally dependent on the awesomeness of your protagonist's suicide-method-of-choice. No one wants to read a book that ends, "'Oh, duh,' thought Eugene, 'it's totally in my sock drawer!' And with that, he put the gun down and led a happy, full life." However, if Eugene has rigged himself up to some sort of highspeed train-bomb or--even better--if he has hurled himself into the cougar enclosure at the zoo, then you have a real pressure-cooker of a finale! Do that!

3. All of the main characters are actually cats.

Note: Do NOT under any circumstances disclose or make references to this fact prior to deploying the literary device. If on page 250 of "Cat Party: The Party That Was For Cats" you throw in a line like, "By the way, Ernst, Gabby, and Martinique are all shorthair tabbies," no one will care. But imagine how much better Crime and Punishment could have been!!!

2. You have chosen the wrong option and your Choose-Your-Own-Adventure novel has ended in a fiery disaster.

It is very important that you don't rig the book to explode when your reader chooses the wrong option, however, no matter how much sense that might make to you. PS: If that makes sense to you, I'm totally with you! It's like, fuck you, dude--you make choices and you have to live with them. Sometimes, in a place called REAL LIFE, you can't just close the book when you have stumbled into the cave of an angry yeti. You are just screwed... yeti-style.

1. The secret/treasure/artifact was inside us all along.

Definitely the best literary device you can use. It makes the reader feel good, because maybe they can be a hero too, although, in all likelihood, they won't be. But it's like, hey... maybe you can just not work on self-betterment at all, and still, someday, the key to saving the universe will magically pop out of you. This works doubly well when your main character's love interest actually IS the artifact AND she has to be DESTROYED for the universe to be saved. WHOA! Conflict! But we'll save "conflict" for another list entirely...