I’m sure all writers have their own methodology when it comes to this particular part of the creative process. They can either pay homage to someone they know or their name means something in another language, which in turn says something about the character themselves or what to expect from their story arc.
For me, 9 times out of 10- I have zero intention behind the names I pick. I just start writing and a name comes to mind that feels good enough to keep.
Phil Collins had been asked in interviews about who Sussido is and his answer was along the lines of “it was a filler word just to complete the phrase until finding something better and nothing came along”.
Sometimes I’ve done the same thing… I start thinking of a character and use a placeholder name until it sticks.
The most recent thing I wrote happens to be one of those rare times I chose the names with intention.
Except for Natalia, all the names of the sirens connected back in some way to something else.
My favorite name of all the ones I picked for the story hands down is Alejandro. Maybe in my top 10 Lady Gaga songs but now it makes me think of a character who went through a lot of changes in the creative process, from a potential villain to an unspoken hero.
The funniest part of this whole process to me— I randomly pick a name because it sounds good and I sort of realize after the fact I might have subconsciously picked it up from somewhere else in pop culture…
One of which i discovered recently and honestly have no explanation for, haha.
My original romantasy story that I wrote in high school- I chose two names intentionally because they reference two of my favorite characters at that time.
Jonas was the main character in The Giver. But I didn’t come up with the name right away. I had someone with dark hair and pale blue eyes- the eyes were inspired by my high school crush at the time. And since the character in the book had those things in common, it felt like a natural fit. Personality wise, both are studious and have to carry a burden on their shoulders but the similarities end there.
Mai, the gossip queen who later becomes a close friend- Mai Valentine from Yu-Gi-Oh! will always come to mind when I write about her. I’ve played around with other names to erase that connection but I don’t know if I ever will.
Nina, Jonas’s future love interest- like with Natalia afterwards, just a name I’ve always liked.
Then there’s their other friends.
Corey and Eric vie to be Mai’s boyfriend and this comes between their friendship… I don’t think I was watching boy meets world at the time but I might have picked those names up from seeing commercials. Their personalities couldn’t be any more different.
Recently I realized with Mai’s friend group- I have Rachel Monica and Bonnie… I might have been watching Friends at the time but I swear I didn’t do it intentionally. This hit me last week and I was like “I can’t believe I did that”… again don’t know if I’ll change the names going forward or not. Their personalities are starting to come together but so far they have nothing in common with Rachel green or Monica geller.
Bonnie is another name I’ve always liked- I have a cousin with that name but I don’t know for sure if I’d met her or not. I also named my second rabbit Bonnie and I had her for 7 years.
(Peter, Jonas’s guardian- another name I’ve liked forever but also I named my first rabbit Peter after the Beatrix potter character… nothing but coincidence there)
So you can kinda see how my mind works… just a series of happy coincidences, but as is the case with all the trivia shows I watch, I can sometimes draw knowledge from the most random places. I'll remember where I got it from a lot of the time, but how I retained it... that'll remain one of life's great mysteries, haha
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