Meme - Day 3

3. How do you come up with names, for characters (and for places if you're writing about fictional places)?

I used to use baby name books for character names. I have a huge library full of all kinds of name books. I'd page through and make a list of names that might suit the character I was thinking of and would decided which suited them best.

For last names, I'd go to the phone book. Sometimes I'd write out a few pages of last names I liked and pick one from there. I never really focused on things like the meanings of names. I was purely about how it sounded and weather it suited my character.

As of the last few years, I find that new characters seem to jump into my head with names ready. I don't know if it's because I have so many names in my head from reading those baby name books all these years. Characters in general seem to appear to me more fully than they did - I don't feel that I have to create them from scratch that much.

As for places, I have usually used real places in my writing, so naming towns and locations is always done for me. I have had to name streets on occasion, which is pretty easy. In an upcoming novel, I will be setting parts of it in a fictional small suburb/small town outside a big city, and I have yet to come up with a name for it. I've named the local watering hole after a place I visited as a kid quite a bit. I've also named horses in various novels, which was kind of fun.

I feel lucky that I don't have to put days in coming up with the perfect names for everything anymore, although when I was younger I loved it - it probably helped that it prolonged me having to actually write, which was a scary prospect back then. Now I tend to let things unfurl as I go, which means I get to the writing much quicker.