Quest Post: How My Characters Get Their Names by Saruuh Kelsey

I'm really glad to host Saruuh Kelsey, and so thankful that she agreed to do a quest post! You can find her on various places such as her blog, Syntax Reviews, her website, Twitter, and Goodreads. Saruuh's Lux Guardian series is free, and first two books (The Forgotten, The Wandering) has been released. She has also published fairy tale anthalogy, Love In The Gilded Age, and first book of the The Legend Mirror series, The Beast of Callaire.

Now, let's hear what she has to say about naming characters!

How My Characters Get Their Names
by Saruuh Kelsey
 

First, many thanks to Henna for featuring me on her blog. I’m delighted to write a post for Howling For Books.
 

Naming characters is one of the most important elements of building a novel. Without the right name, a book can fall short. When we remember books, or certainly when I do, I recall the characters before anything else. There have been times when remembering a book that I can’t for the life of me think of a character’s name. Because I don’t want my readers to forget the characters of my books, I aim to make their names memorable and unique—and as important to the book as its own title.
 

I’m drawn to things that are uncommon, unused and obsolete, be that a name or the meaning of a name. I like names that are a little different because they allow a reader to imagine someone entirely new, without associations to friends or family or sworn mortal enemies. Because of this I find the majority of my names on the internet, where my desired weird names exist on a bunch of different websites, just waiting for me to find them.
 

That being said, unusual names only work for a certain kind of story. High fantasy and uncommon names go hand in hand—Celaena Sardothien of Throne of Glass for example—and dystopias tend to have unique names too. My own dystopian series, The Lux Guardians, follows that trend, with names like Honour and Alba and Yosiah (a name that doesn’t even exist outside of my books, as far as I’m aware). But having too many unusual names can sometimes overload a book or its readers with alien words and names, which is why the books are also peppered with ordinary names—Miya (Mia), Timofei (Timothy), Hele (Hayley). It’s a curious balance, and one I struggle to find, between the normal and extraordinary. Too much normal and your characters aren’t memorable, too much unusual and your characters are too difficult to recall.
 

My process is not terribly exciting—just a naming website and a little common sense—but I hope you enjoyed this little insight into how my characters got their names.