#substack writer

Juliet: What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet; So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d, Retain that dear perfection which he owes Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name, And for that name which is no part of thee Take all myself.

Romeo: I take thee at thy word: Call me but love, and I’ll be new baptized; Henceforth I never will be Romeo.

𝖆𝖓 𝖊𝖙𝖞𝖒𝖔𝖑𝖔𝖌𝖎𝖈𝖆𝖑 𝖆𝖉𝖉𝖎𝖈𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓

as many writers may tell you, choosing a name can be quite difficult. whether it be the title of your story, the names of places, the names of magic or whimsy—but especially, the names of characters. it can lead to hours upon hours of time spent on baby name sites when you aren’t even thinking about having a baby!

despite juliet’s famous line, i personally cannot buy that “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”—especially as a transgender person, i have always found names to be an extremely integral part to someone’s existence. a name can tell you a lot about someone: their race, ethnicity or nationality, and occasionally gender for one. but it can also tell you about the values that they or their parents had, or the time period they were born in. in the case of character, it can also explain what the author wants you to know about them without a mountain of exposition that fully gives away their arc.

but how do you decide your character’s name? is the cadence, meaning, or mouth-feel important at all? and what resources are out there to help? do you even need to care this much about something like this in the first place?

𝖗𝖊𝖘𝖔𝖚𝖗𝖈𝖊𝖘

i’m actually going to start this article differently than some of my previous ones and give you my favorite resources right out of the gate:

behindthename.com (along with it’s sibling surnames.behindthename.com) is hands down the best place to look for name meanings. their advanced search options are so specific, down to how many syllables you want in the name, or if you want to include some letters, not others. even names that are used in one country but are of a different ethnic origin than the region itself—which is a handy tool for any kind of historical writing.

fantasynamegenerators.com is the most useful staple for any fantasy writer. emily, the creator of the site, is an absolute godsend and you should send her a nice email if you can for all her hard work. not only does it include names for if you’re placing a character in a particular anime or television universe, but it also has a place name generator which is amazing for when you’re trying to name, say, an academy or cafe and don’t feel like trying to come up with something. obviously it includes the usual fantasy naming staples of anything from elves and dwarves, to merpeople and so on. it’s really robust and versatile and she’s always adding more names and generators!

wikipedia is an underrated source for names in my opinion, as reality tends to be stranger than anything we can come up with. some of my more unique character names can trace their roots back to some wikipedia article or another, and i frequently use it as a basis for strange fantasy names, or to just lift names off of some real life person who apparently had very interesting ancestors.

magicbabynames.com is a bit of a weird one, however, this site does something that no other site that i’ve found does: it allows you to take a specific name and find other names that are “similar” to it. the site explains it measures similarity by using real family tree data, and algorithmically sorts and finds patterns between names that usually appear together, which creates a degree of association aka similarity. for example: john often appears with the name mary in many family trees, so if you were looking for a feminine name similar to john, mary would be one of the names to come up along with others like margaret, elizabeth, and sarah. it doesn’t have every name in the world on its lists especially names that are more outside of the box, however again for writing anything historical it’s honestly a good resource to make sure that sibling or parent names don’t sound too “off” from one another. furthermore, before anyone asks, i’ve been using this site for at least 10 years so there is zero ai usage involved.

social security’s name popularity data is an incredible resource if you’re writing anything in a specific time period in american history. you can search for any year from 1879 forward and it’ll pull real census data from all the births in a year you choose based on how many children were born in that year. it’s really interesting to me personally to see what naming trends were common and how certain names phase in and out of the top ten, fifty, or one hundred over the years.

if you are looking for some feedback or help with naming then r/namenerds can be pretty useful in a pinch. i personally tend to lurk in that sub and i enjoy the games that get posted every now and again. however, as a word of caution, this sub can be very anglo-centric, so it’s not particularly useful when you’re trying to name characters of color. they can also be a bit opinionated with what names they like and dislike but that’s usually not an issue when you mention specifically that you’re talking about writing characters or pets.

the reason i decided to list some of my favorite sources first is two-fold: the first is to not hold you all hostage and give you what you may be looking for right off the bat. the second is to illustrate how thorough i tend to be whenever i begin the process of naming my characters. i often use some, if not all of these different resources, sometimes at the same time for the same character. it can sometimes even take me months to settle on the perfect name. but to understand why this process is so rigorous, i’ll need to explain to you a little bit about me, a little bit about how i outline, and a little bit of my personal theory about why character names are so important.

𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖕 𝖎: 𝖆 𝖗𝖔𝖘𝖊

when i was finally old enough (and had the money) to change my name, i went for broke and changed my first, middle, and last. the reason the entire thing was changed would be a whole story within itself, but for the purposes of this essay what you need to know is that the meaning of all three of my names combined is a promise to myself: that in my rebirth (my first name), i will love myself (middle name) and defend myself (surname).

this change encapsulated several things for me: these new names were ones that i had already begun to socially use, and when i looked in the mirror felt that they encapsulated who i was. however, these names also did the important job of giving my life both interpersonal and intrinsic meaning and subtext.

subtext is defined by wikipedia as “the underlying or implicit meaning that, while not explicitly stated, is understood by an audience.”1 you can bury little ledes, bread crumb trails, and hide in plain sight many, many things when you are writing and in a variety of different ways. in the romeo and juliet lines from the beginning of the article, i would argue that the rose itself is not just a flower, but a metaphor for the tender affection that is blossoming between our two tragic leads. roses are beautiful, pure, and carry a host of different meanings depending on their color in the language of flowers; from first love to undying devotion. however, without proper care their blooms notoriously die very quickly. this speaks to the nature of romeo and juliet’s love itself: lack of communication, outside intervention, and bad soil (circumstance) withered the bonds of trust and devotion that their love tried to forge, and led to their untimely end.

perhaps not every person will pick up that particular piece of subtext from just the usage of a rose within these lines of dialogue, but that’s where my mind goes when i read this play. the beautiful thing about subtext is that its all too important “intrinsic meaning” tends to be forged on the backs of a reader’s personal experience in conjunction with the events surrounding a particular character, scene, or metaphor. we tend to flatten this phenomena as simply “foreshadowing,” but i think the two are different and should be used differently: foreshadowing refers to the trail of hints that point to the outcome of a situation within the plot—anything from chekov’s gun, to a red herring, and so on. subtext however, furthers the understanding of the emotional weight, themes, morals, or commentary that the author is trying to communicate to the reader. while subtext can show up in plot events, it often is trying to say something deeper and more profound than just living in the events of the story itself.

for that reason, i think name meanings are a perfect tool to create a deeper and more exquisite subtext for any genre of story. names are what we call things, and naming something gives it power: therefore, the meaning of what we call something and why can often in a story be elevated to a near prophetic level when used intentionally.

𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖕 𝖎𝖎: 𝖘𝖒𝖊𝖑𝖑𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖘𝖜𝖊𝖊𝖙

the second important thing you must understand—something that i will perhaps explain in more depth if i ever do an article about outlining—is that i tend to create characters by utility first. what i mean by ‘utility’ is that often in the plotting stage, i will call a character by what part they play in the plot before i worry about what they’re actually called. a good example of this is using the twilight names as i was beginning plotting for btaf, and in a different work of mine paramour one of the character’s was simply called “butler” for six months.

this aids in my creation of subtext: if i already pretty much understand a character’s arc, then i can spend more time in the naming process finding a name that suits what i perhaps want people to know about them. i often intentionally pick names that either explain the character’s current position or general temperament, their position within the plot, or what i hope that their arc will help them gain—or lose.

returning to paramour, the main character is a nonbinary man by the name of hyacinthus shrapnel. he is named after the hyacinth flower, and he explicitly only wears white and gold whenever he has a say in the matter. he is constantly associated with yellow and gold colors. yellow hyacinths in the language of flowers, mean jealousy and that is a prominent character trait of his when concerning his “damn butler.” but more on paramour whenever i finish btaf. unless you want to learn more for yourself on my tumblr.

but naming doesn’t just have to do with meaning, it also has to do with cadence, mouth-feel. in a shallow sort of way, i tend to like names that sound good when you say them aloud and i usually use a kind of speaking test to determine which name and surname combination to use. for instance, i had a very difficult time deciding on biscella’s name and had up to 4 other possibilities of what i should name her. however, biscella ‘won’ (despite my conducting a poll and getting a wildly different response for her name) out over the others simply because i like the mouth-feel of the name ‘biscella.’ it sings from a soft b sound to a rougher c to the elegant ella suffix and that mixture of softness with a twinge of sharp clarity perfectly describe both biscella and her arc.

names also show the relationship that people have to one another, so for instance, to you all i may be vacant or fish, but to my partner and close friends i go by my first name. in btaf, biscella is that to everyone, but to sjaak she’s bisce, just like to her, he is sjaakie. meanwhile, to dalal, sjaak is ‘pup’ and to azelie he is ‘wolf’—though he is also ‘wolf’ to rosita, and ‘pup’ to gust—two characters he has a wildly less affectionate relationship with.

𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖕 𝖎𝖎𝖎: 𝖓𝖊𝖜𝖑𝖞 𝖇𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖟𝖊𝖉

when i finally transitioned from using twilight placeholder names to actually naming characters in btaf, it may seem a bit boring on the surface. some names such as biscella’s, eduard’s, and sjaak’s names in some aspects, hardly changed at all. however, there is a bit of a method to my ‘madness’:

isabella “bella” swan became biscella schwann de casavantes → both names start with a ‘b’ and are a similar number of syllables. schwann is just german for swan, and the only thing truly different is de casavantes which is the surname that she took on after marrying. because ‘edward’ in this universe is from spain, his surname would be added to his wife’s, not replace it entirely. furthermore, there is the b-c-ella cadence that i discussed before which mirrors her arc and many character’s feelings about her.

edward cullen became eduard casavantes i comas→ eduard with a ‘u’ is the more common spelling of the name ‘edward’ in spain, and both surnames start with a c. again due to spanish naming customs, his mother’s surname is attached to the end of his name instead of omitted entirely. furthermore, the ‘i’ speaks to his heritage as being from basque country.

jacob black became sjaak de witte → sjaak is the dutch form of the name jacob, though according to my dutch friend also the name used for the dutch translation of "charlie and the chocolate factory." de witte unsurprisingly means ‘the white’—which does have a bit more narrative flair: sjaak is a biracial man, being half-black and half-european. though his name speaks mostly to his european heritage and his surname even claims him as ‘white,’ he personally does not benefit or feel any solidarity with that part of himself due to how he looks, which points to the struggles he feels ethnically as human and relates to his relationship to his lycanthropy. i also just wanted more of a contrast than just calling him jacob black straight out because, well. he’s already black.

i could go on and on for the rest of the main cast, however, some elements would be spoilers. dalal, for instance, who represents leah has two names that exist in stark contrast of her temperament in present-day and the horrific backstory she endured. further still, the side characters of btaf are actually where this naming philosophy of mine comes reaches its zenith. characters like remei, dídac, and ridwan are perhaps my best work who hint at the subtext of what i am trying to say about the events they are in and their roles within the story and i hope that it’s something people will pick up on.

in conclusion: does it really matter if you pick extensively researched names for the characters in your story for the purpose of giving your readers little easter eggs to find? not at all. just as i have many characters such as these that i did think about in great depth, even within btaf’s pages i have characters who i just named something because it sounded good, such as stien or babare. i do think however, that readers love a good scavenger hunt so the more details you leave for them to find, the more enthusiastic they will be about your work.