Once you’ve created that perfect character, you have to name him or her. This can be a challenge to many writers, especially once you’ve gotten a few hundred characters on the page. How do you come up with fresh names for all of those people? Here are some tips for you.

For Main Characters:

• Choose an ethnic background – nowadays, people just name their kids any old name without caring what the name’s history might be, but characters need to have more rationale for their names. If you want a Hispanic character to tote the name Achmed around, you’d better have a good reason for it (and make sure the readers buy into it). Check out this website for some ethnic ideas.
• Choose a name by meaning – don’t just settle for something that sounds good. Pick a name that means something appropriate to the story. It took some digging to come up with Chance Knight for my roguish “hero.” It’s worth the time to get just that right name, though. There are plenty of good baby name websites that can help you out; try this one for starters. 
• Pick a sound – strong characters need strong sounds, like “K” or “P,” while softer characters need more subdued sounds. Try saying each name out loud to see if it matches your view of the character and their personality.
• Choose a nickname – does your character even have one? It’s best to go ahead and decide, then have certain people use that nickname instead of calling the character by their full name all the time.
• Pick a matching last name – again, mixing ethnicities might be all the rage today, but it might get confusing to the readers, who have been picturing Perdita as an alluring Spanish maiden, to discover that she’s actually a busty redhead from the O’Malley family. Here’s a good site with a variety of surnames to get you started.
• Choose an appropriate name – when writing a historical novel, you need to pick names that would have been common for that era. You also need to research the most popular names of each generation. If your book is set in the current day, for example, you wouldn’t be likely to find a heroine named Hester or Ethel. This is a good website for your search.
• Say the names out loud – sometimes a name that looks great on paper will provoke a laugh when pronounced, for all the wrong reasons. I’m sure you’ve met some real-life people who wished their parents had taken this step before writing their names on that birth certificate.

The Acid Test: once you have a list of possible names, find a friend who has no idea what your characters are like. Ask them to read the names and make some guesses about each character based on those. If their answers are way off base, you need to rethink the names.

Secondary Characters: if a character is important enough to merit a name, but not important enough to spend a lot of time researching, have a few good name websites bookmarked, and just pop over there to mix and match. Be sure to keep good notes, though – you don’t want a second George Rumpel showing up suddenly in a later novel, after killing him off in your first mystery.

Here are some good places I’ve searched over the years:

• Census data for a particular year and region
• Old telephone books, school yearbooks, and any other similar list of names
• Credits on movies and TV shows
• Newspapers and magazines
• Genealogy websites (if they offer free trials)

This website is another good reference to start you on the road to naming your characters.

What’s your best tip for naming characters?

Every author faces this hurdle: how to create lifelike characters who catch the reader’s interest. Here are a few tricks and tips you might be able to use:

• Pay attention! Great characters are great because they’re people you recognize. Great writers are the nosiest people you’ll ever meet, forever watching and listening to what other people are doing and saying. And it all goes into the story.
• Use your contacts. Characters are people too, and they’re going to act and speak like people you know. Model your favorite characters after your friends or enemies, your family and neighbors. Just change the names before you publish!
• Avoid Mary Sue (and Marty Stu)! People have faults. Nobody is super-special, and real people can’t bend the natural laws. Keep your characters realistic for your universe, and avoid the dreaded Mary Sue or her male counterpart. (If you’re one of the few people who has no idea what I’m talking about, just use your search engine and you’ll find more than you ever wanted to know)
• Torture them. Great characters have great conflicts. Keep your character from getting complacent (and boring) by giving them some sort of conflict to keep the tension ramped up in the story. This can be external (like an enemy or job stress) or internal (like low self-esteem or worries), but you need to give them something to make them more interesting.
• Pay attention again! Keep a character notebook and actually write down all those great conversations you “overhear” (while eavesdropping), all those interesting people you spot, and all those ideas that pop up while you’re out nosing around.

How do you come up with character ideas? Do you invent your characters first, or your plot?