WriYe Blog Circle Prompt #2

This week, the question is: How do you name your characters?

You would think this is an easy task for someone who mainly writes fanfic. I mean, come on, the characters are all already named for you! But what happens if I want to put in an original character (OC)? That's a whole different story. For some fandoms, name generators/name books work, like Harry Potter, Glee, or any of the RPF (Real Person Fic) I write. The only issue with say, Harry Potter, is that you have to be aware of location. Harry Potter takes place in England, therefore the name should be reflective of the area and the time. (I haven't run into a Hermione anywhere lately, have you?)

But some of the fandoms I write or contemplate writing demand more than just a name generator. Some of the fandoms I write are complete sci-fi fandoms. Now, I could go the keyboard smashing route of Keri, but that doesn't work for some of the species within the fandoms. Let me give you an example: Star Trek. In Star Trek, yeah, I could just create a race of aliens who, although humanoid in their appearance have keyboard smash names, like Hjmlo or Gdymu. Add in a few apostrophes and you get something that looks like it belongs to a race in Star Trek: H'j'mlo and G'dymu. But I don't particularly care for creating races within the Trek universe. I like to work with already created alien races. This sometimes poses a problem. For example, I am contemplating a story with the Bajorans. On Bajor, the familial name comes first followed by the individual name. (Like in China.) But the names are not like ours. Some Bajoran names for your reading pleasure:

Kira Nerys
Ro Laren
Winn Adami

These are female characters.

Brin Tusk
Daier Halb
Edon Shakaar

These are male characters.

So I'm still undecided about the story I am writing, but I have to look at names at some point and make sure they sound "Bajoran." So this is a little more difficult than just going to a random sci-fi name generator and hitting "generate." The names have to SOUND like they fit the person and the race, as well as fit in with canon. 

I bet you didn't think I would have problems creating names, huh?

Cross-Posted to: krazikrys writes!.