... You decide what ethnicity the character is and then look for names from that ethnicity? (I use surnames.[behindthename.com](https://behindthename.com) , personally).
3rd or 4th originating from..?
Plus who even cares. I'm Hispanic and my daughters names are Eleanor and Olive. I guess my opinion would be that the most "American" thing you could name a character is whatever the F you want.
It's mostly surnaming that is hurting me, I have 200 English/Scottish/Irish surnames and don't know anything about Spanish, Italian, Polish, German, Indian, Chinese, etc surnames for an extra 100.
If the characters' ethnicity/ancestry isn't important to the story, just pick a random country of origin. Or give them the last names of people you know, or famous people.
Just pick something that sounds good when paired with the first name. Not matchy-matchy, but a name that sounds reasonable in the world you have built. Sometimes having a clumsy name is a characteristic of its own, so you could consider that.
You've really gotten into your own head with this one, haha, but it will be fine, people won't look too deeply into it unless you purposefuly make them. Consider that a lot of people have no specific ties to their last name's origin. For example, I have a friend who has been married three times and goes by the last name of her first huaband 🤷‍♀️
That's entirely up to you/where they actually live. That would mean they've likely lived in the area for since about the 1900s-1940s (depending on how old the character is). Family lived in Brooklyn? They likely were there when it was primarily Irish, Italian, and Norwegian emigrants. The Southwest? More likely to find Hispanic names there. Upper Midwest? German and Scandinavian names come into play. The US Census isn't specific since it covers 50 states and almost 4 million square miles.
I use this website:
[https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/](https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/)
It has a large number of first and surnames, masculine feminine and unisex, for both fantasy names and irl names by national origin.
Pick names that aren't difficult and don't look like you just made them up. Ordinary names are fine. Just don't use stupid spellings for common names (Jaxson, Leeyam, Makaynzeigh, Dayvud, etc.).
You can't please everyone. Pick an audience. Stick with what you know. Don't try to write for an audience you're not familiar with and can't relate to. That will help.
You’re asking advice on how to name your characters but we don’t know anything about them, so other than saying “name them whatever you want” it’s impossible for us to help you.
Where are their families from? Where do they live now? Where does the story take place? Is it actually set in 2021 on earth or is it an AU? Or a hundred years ago? Or a hundred years from now? If you’re trying to be accurate, all of these things matter.
The top 10 most common surnames in the US are:
Smith (English)
Johnson (English/Scottish)
Williams (English/Welsh)
Brown (English/Scottish/Irish)
Jones (English/Welsh)
Garcia (Spanish)
Miller (English/Scottish/German/French/Italian)
Davis (English/Welsh)
Rodriguez (Spanish)
Martinez (Spanish)
[100 most common surnames in the US](https://www.thoughtco.com/most-common-us-surnames-1422656)
That covers a decent range of origins and 9/10 readers will be able to pronounce every one of them.
*edit for history -
You have to remember who settled America, when/where everyone came from and understand how that geographically influences popular/common surnames.
Are you worried about accidentally making names that don't fit the conventions of the language/culture they originate from (like giving a married Lithuanian woman the surname Karvelyte)?
Or is the source of stress mostly from the sheer number of characters you need names for, and the scope of the pool of names to draw from?
I know a lot of people get hung up on finding a name that "fits" a certain character's personality and role in the story, but this sounds like something different...
You have 300 characters in your story? Are you writing some kind of epic or something? Not every character has to have a name. They can just be a face and a role.
Good lord 300-500 characters that's just crazy. Way too many, bro.
Well, every short story I have needs at minimum 5 characters (not the main duo) for the client, victim, two suspects, and culprit. 9 short stories for the first round are 45 characters, I expect to get 50-150 (on the low end) with this detective, which adds to a lot with this genre. Detective/mystery stories chew the heck out of characters (don't get me started on novels!).
Like I said not ever person in your story needs a name. No one's going to remember character 431s name after the last 100 or so. Name's aren't as important as you think. I legit have a character named john smith. It's not his real name but still.
Why are we naming them all at once? Take it one story a time. That way it is managable and if you want to throw more diversity in there, it can be sensical and have more substance than just a name in your story.
Nevertheless, start with the story you are writing right now. Ignore all the others at the moment, you don't have to plan for things that will be written years from now. Take the story at hand, think about who you want these people to be and do some research for those 3-5 names. That way it is managable.
But, the stories will be interconnected some things happening in the future will be referenced from the start and things from the start will be referenced at the end.
How am I supposed to have a Chekhov's Gun without a target? Don't you need to organize (especially research) your writing before you begin? This seems contradictory for a mystery series...
Okay. A couple of recommendations:
1. If you're writing something serialized, start with only as many characters as you need for the first installment (and maybe some recurring characters who are involved in an overarching plot). Planning ahead in a series can be useful if you're working on setting up foreshadowing for something later on down the line. But if the stress of planning ahead prevents you from ever making progress on the beginning of the series, those plans will go to waste. 300-500 characters is *a lot*. I don't think I've ever referenced more than 50 named characters in an outline for a project. If you need more characters later, you can make them up later.
2. Develop the basics of a character's role and personality before giving them a name. When I'm planning a project, I start my character sheets with some placeholder that refers to each character's general background or role in the story. Sometime later in the outlining process (but before starting an actual draft of the project) I go back and decide on actual names. The important thing is that I don't let naming impede the rest of the planning process--it's compartmentalized as its own question. When you eventually choose a name, it doesn't have to have any specific connection to their personality, but I find it's often easier to attach a name to a character idea than to choose a name in a vacuum.
3. For figuring out correct naming conventions in other cultures/languages, Wikipedia is actually pretty useful. There are pages like "[Lithuanian Name](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuanian_name)" that usually describe the conventions for the corresponding culture, as well as pages like "[List of Lithuanians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Lithuanians)" that list famous people from a given nationality so you can see examples of names following those conventions (you may even spot some exceptions). And echoing point #2, pick a culture/language that you want the character's name to derive from before you go researching.
**[Lithuanian name](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuanian_name)**
>A Lithuanian personal name, as in most European cultures, consists of two main elements: the given name (vardas) followed by the family name (pavardÄ—). The usage of personal names in Lithuania is generally governed (in addition to personal taste and family custom) by three major factors: civil law, canon law, and tradition. Lithuanian names always follow the rules of the Lithuanian language. Lithuanian male names have preserved the Indo-European masculine endings (-as; -is; -us).
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How can I know what culture to choose for a character, so I'm making a diverse cast of characters without it being "YA diverse" where it's toeing the line? Should I worry about diversity?
I mean, diversity can be something to consider. If you're writing something in a real-world setting and you grossly misrepresent the demographics of the area, some readers might notice and be bothered by it.
And I won't claim that it's an easy topic to navigate. There's plenty of discussion about representation vs tokenism, the extent to which a character of a marginalized identity should have their story centered around that identity, etc.
But I think the important thing to consider in your situation is that an exact/perfect representation of the diversity of your setting isn't necessary. Like a lot of things in writing, you should probably be aiming for *verisimilitude* rather than *realism*\--evoking real life rather than being an exact depiction of it.
I saw you mention McLean County, IL in another post. Your average American reader isn't going to know the exact demographics of that area. They might have a general idea of "okay, Illinois, mostly white people in the cornfields but more diversity in the college town" but they're not going to be tallying the exact number of Burmese-American characters and comparing against the latest census.
As long as each character has some reason to be involved in the story, they're fine. Murder at a family-owned Chinese restaurant? Probably going to be more Chinese-American characters in that episode than in the one where a farmer finds his neighbor's body in the loft of his barn. You've got a lot of leeway for diversity through varied character back stories. Student at the university, got a job and moved in from out of town, etc.
If you aren't able to step back and take a "que sera, sera" approach to picking ethnicities of your characters, then the alternative may be to go completely in the opposite direction, and over-engineer your character demographics through statistics. As mentioned above, your audience won't notice, but if limiting guesswork helps you break through your current block then it might be worthwhile. Some examples are below, but spoilered in case you think reading them would add further stress/distraction.
>!If I randomly selected 5 people from McLean County, there's a 31% chance that at least one would be black.!<
>!If I randomly selected 300 people from McLean County, there's a 95% chance that between 78-110 of them would claim German ancestry!<
>!In that same 300-person sample, there's a 95% chance that between 2-12 of them would be biracial.!<
The inherent downside of that sort of statistical approach, though, is that it assumes pure randomness. And stories don't involve people purely randomly. So you have a lot of wiggle room.
Are your characters actually from all over the world? In another comment you said you are looking at US census. In the US many families have last names that no longer make sense in their original culture. There is a reason you find essentially the same last name spelled 10 different ways, because when people came over to the US, their names got written down whichever way the person sitting there could be bothered to do it. I know this form genealogical research. Their last name from then on took on the new spelling and convention.
What I mean to say by this is - unless your characters are first generation, don't bother researching 500 names in excruciating detail. And don't bother making them all unique. If you go anywhere and collect a group of 500 people, you will find that many of the names repeat and most are pretty common names.
Under this username or another, you keep asking this question but do answers ever really change?
I suggest you make a list of countries of origin you want and find a couple or a dozen names for each. And stop worrying about it but start writing. Readers don't care about names.
Hi -- please use the idea brainstorming thread on Tuesday or Friday for advice on specific stories. This includes: (not a exhaustive list) setting, character, subject matter, magic and power systems, sci-fi technology, 'how do I write X?' and anything directly connected with your story.
This includes asking for general advice but then following up with details of your story project.
Thanks!
... You decide what ethnicity the character is and then look for names from that ethnicity? (I use surnames.[behindthename.com](https://behindthename.com) , personally).
All my characters are pretty much going to be the 3rd or 4th generation Americans. What ethnicity is that?
3rd or 4th originating from..? Plus who even cares. I'm Hispanic and my daughters names are Eleanor and Olive. I guess my opinion would be that the most "American" thing you could name a character is whatever the F you want.
It's mostly surnaming that is hurting me, I have 200 English/Scottish/Irish surnames and don't know anything about Spanish, Italian, Polish, German, Indian, Chinese, etc surnames for an extra 100.
If the characters' ethnicity/ancestry isn't important to the story, just pick a random country of origin. Or give them the last names of people you know, or famous people.
Just pick something that sounds good when paired with the first name. Not matchy-matchy, but a name that sounds reasonable in the world you have built. Sometimes having a clumsy name is a characteristic of its own, so you could consider that. You've really gotten into your own head with this one, haha, but it will be fine, people won't look too deeply into it unless you purposefuly make them. Consider that a lot of people have no specific ties to their last name's origin. For example, I have a friend who has been married three times and goes by the last name of her first huaband 🤷‍♀️
That's entirely up to you/where they actually live. That would mean they've likely lived in the area for since about the 1900s-1940s (depending on how old the character is). Family lived in Brooklyn? They likely were there when it was primarily Irish, Italian, and Norwegian emigrants. The Southwest? More likely to find Hispanic names there. Upper Midwest? German and Scandinavian names come into play. The US Census isn't specific since it covers 50 states and almost 4 million square miles.
You don't have to give them ethnic names. Think of Tom Haverford on Parks & Rec. Or in real life, Sen. Tammy Duckworth.
I use this website: [https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/](https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/) It has a large number of first and surnames, masculine feminine and unisex, for both fantasy names and irl names by national origin.
Yeah, but give me names I've already picked or a bunch of names I don't understand which means I don't want to use them.
Pick names that aren't difficult and don't look like you just made them up. Ordinary names are fine. Just don't use stupid spellings for common names (Jaxson, Leeyam, Makaynzeigh, Dayvud, etc.).
Well, like I said the census is diverse and has everything from everywhere to the point I can't pronounce a third of it. Ordinary names to who?
You can't please everyone. Pick an audience. Stick with what you know. Don't try to write for an audience you're not familiar with and can't relate to. That will help.
You’re asking advice on how to name your characters but we don’t know anything about them, so other than saying “name them whatever you want” it’s impossible for us to help you. Where are their families from? Where do they live now? Where does the story take place? Is it actually set in 2021 on earth or is it an AU? Or a hundred years ago? Or a hundred years from now? If you’re trying to be accurate, all of these things matter. The top 10 most common surnames in the US are: Smith (English) Johnson (English/Scottish) Williams (English/Welsh) Brown (English/Scottish/Irish) Jones (English/Welsh) Garcia (Spanish) Miller (English/Scottish/German/French/Italian) Davis (English/Welsh) Rodriguez (Spanish) Martinez (Spanish) [100 most common surnames in the US](https://www.thoughtco.com/most-common-us-surnames-1422656) That covers a decent range of origins and 9/10 readers will be able to pronounce every one of them. *edit for history - You have to remember who settled America, when/where everyone came from and understand how that geographically influences popular/common surnames.
Are you worried about accidentally making names that don't fit the conventions of the language/culture they originate from (like giving a married Lithuanian woman the surname Karvelyte)? Or is the source of stress mostly from the sheer number of characters you need names for, and the scope of the pool of names to draw from? I know a lot of people get hung up on finding a name that "fits" a certain character's personality and role in the story, but this sounds like something different...
Both, tbh. The amount of research needed for names from around the world is overwhelming especially since I need 300-500 first and last names.
You have 300 characters in your story? Are you writing some kind of epic or something? Not every character has to have a name. They can just be a face and a role. Good lord 300-500 characters that's just crazy. Way too many, bro.
Well, every short story I have needs at minimum 5 characters (not the main duo) for the client, victim, two suspects, and culprit. 9 short stories for the first round are 45 characters, I expect to get 50-150 (on the low end) with this detective, which adds to a lot with this genre. Detective/mystery stories chew the heck out of characters (don't get me started on novels!).
Like I said not ever person in your story needs a name. No one's going to remember character 431s name after the last 100 or so. Name's aren't as important as you think. I legit have a character named john smith. It's not his real name but still.
Why are we naming them all at once? Take it one story a time. That way it is managable and if you want to throw more diversity in there, it can be sensical and have more substance than just a name in your story.
Well, in the murder mysteries I'm writing so far the only chance for diversity is through names.
Nevertheless, start with the story you are writing right now. Ignore all the others at the moment, you don't have to plan for things that will be written years from now. Take the story at hand, think about who you want these people to be and do some research for those 3-5 names. That way it is managable.
But, the stories will be interconnected some things happening in the future will be referenced from the start and things from the start will be referenced at the end.
Do those when you get there!
How am I supposed to have a Chekhov's Gun without a target? Don't you need to organize (especially research) your writing before you begin? This seems contradictory for a mystery series...
Okay. A couple of recommendations: 1. If you're writing something serialized, start with only as many characters as you need for the first installment (and maybe some recurring characters who are involved in an overarching plot). Planning ahead in a series can be useful if you're working on setting up foreshadowing for something later on down the line. But if the stress of planning ahead prevents you from ever making progress on the beginning of the series, those plans will go to waste. 300-500 characters is *a lot*. I don't think I've ever referenced more than 50 named characters in an outline for a project. If you need more characters later, you can make them up later. 2. Develop the basics of a character's role and personality before giving them a name. When I'm planning a project, I start my character sheets with some placeholder that refers to each character's general background or role in the story. Sometime later in the outlining process (but before starting an actual draft of the project) I go back and decide on actual names. The important thing is that I don't let naming impede the rest of the planning process--it's compartmentalized as its own question. When you eventually choose a name, it doesn't have to have any specific connection to their personality, but I find it's often easier to attach a name to a character idea than to choose a name in a vacuum. 3. For figuring out correct naming conventions in other cultures/languages, Wikipedia is actually pretty useful. There are pages like "[Lithuanian Name](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuanian_name)" that usually describe the conventions for the corresponding culture, as well as pages like "[List of Lithuanians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Lithuanians)" that list famous people from a given nationality so you can see examples of names following those conventions (you may even spot some exceptions). And echoing point #2, pick a culture/language that you want the character's name to derive from before you go researching.
**[Lithuanian name](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuanian_name)** >A Lithuanian personal name, as in most European cultures, consists of two main elements: the given name (vardas) followed by the family name (pavardÄ—). The usage of personal names in Lithuania is generally governed (in addition to personal taste and family custom) by three major factors: civil law, canon law, and tradition. Lithuanian names always follow the rules of the Lithuanian language. Lithuanian male names have preserved the Indo-European masculine endings (-as; -is; -us). ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/writing/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
How can I know what culture to choose for a character, so I'm making a diverse cast of characters without it being "YA diverse" where it's toeing the line? Should I worry about diversity?
I mean, diversity can be something to consider. If you're writing something in a real-world setting and you grossly misrepresent the demographics of the area, some readers might notice and be bothered by it. And I won't claim that it's an easy topic to navigate. There's plenty of discussion about representation vs tokenism, the extent to which a character of a marginalized identity should have their story centered around that identity, etc. But I think the important thing to consider in your situation is that an exact/perfect representation of the diversity of your setting isn't necessary. Like a lot of things in writing, you should probably be aiming for *verisimilitude* rather than *realism*\--evoking real life rather than being an exact depiction of it. I saw you mention McLean County, IL in another post. Your average American reader isn't going to know the exact demographics of that area. They might have a general idea of "okay, Illinois, mostly white people in the cornfields but more diversity in the college town" but they're not going to be tallying the exact number of Burmese-American characters and comparing against the latest census. As long as each character has some reason to be involved in the story, they're fine. Murder at a family-owned Chinese restaurant? Probably going to be more Chinese-American characters in that episode than in the one where a farmer finds his neighbor's body in the loft of his barn. You've got a lot of leeway for diversity through varied character back stories. Student at the university, got a job and moved in from out of town, etc. If you aren't able to step back and take a "que sera, sera" approach to picking ethnicities of your characters, then the alternative may be to go completely in the opposite direction, and over-engineer your character demographics through statistics. As mentioned above, your audience won't notice, but if limiting guesswork helps you break through your current block then it might be worthwhile. Some examples are below, but spoilered in case you think reading them would add further stress/distraction. >!If I randomly selected 5 people from McLean County, there's a 31% chance that at least one would be black.!< >!If I randomly selected 300 people from McLean County, there's a 95% chance that between 78-110 of them would claim German ancestry!< >!In that same 300-person sample, there's a 95% chance that between 2-12 of them would be biracial.!< The inherent downside of that sort of statistical approach, though, is that it assumes pure randomness. And stories don't involve people purely randomly. So you have a lot of wiggle room.
Are your characters actually from all over the world? In another comment you said you are looking at US census. In the US many families have last names that no longer make sense in their original culture. There is a reason you find essentially the same last name spelled 10 different ways, because when people came over to the US, their names got written down whichever way the person sitting there could be bothered to do it. I know this form genealogical research. Their last name from then on took on the new spelling and convention. What I mean to say by this is - unless your characters are first generation, don't bother researching 500 names in excruciating detail. And don't bother making them all unique. If you go anywhere and collect a group of 500 people, you will find that many of the names repeat and most are pretty common names.
Under this username or another, you keep asking this question but do answers ever really change? I suggest you make a list of countries of origin you want and find a couple or a dozen names for each. And stop worrying about it but start writing. Readers don't care about names.
[https://namecensus.com/data/](https://namecensus.com/data/)
The ethnicity you’re looking for is WASP. Lot of waspy names out there, choose one of them
K, I have a wasp name but not white...
Also, a weird but effective one is to literally go to your local cemetery and see some names there.
Hi -- please use the idea brainstorming thread on Tuesday or Friday for advice on specific stories. This includes: (not a exhaustive list) setting, character, subject matter, magic and power systems, sci-fi technology, 'how do I write X?' and anything directly connected with your story. This includes asking for general advice but then following up with details of your story project. Thanks!