What's In a Name?

Authors: How do you come up with character names?

The character pictured at the left is from An Involuntary King: A Tale of Anglo Saxon England. It is Rory McGuinness, and I put him up to answer my own question above. I stole the name Rory McGuinness whole cloth from the novel by Elizabeth Linington, The Proud Man, pictured below, which I read when I was about 14. He is one of the only two entirely fictional characters. I created both Rory and Shannon as a result of reading it.

Of course many of you write about historical figures. I know where Susan Higginbotham got the name Hugh le Despenser.. all of them. I know where Brandy Purdy got the name Piers Gaveston. I know where Morgan Llywelyn got the names Finn MacCool and Brian Boru. And I know where Sharon Kay Penm an got the name Richard, Duke of Gloucester.

I generally prefer to write about purely fictional characters. In a much earlier post on this blog I explained where the names of my central characters in AIK came from. The only original -- meaning coming from the early years of "The Story" -- character whose name I change is the king's cousin Gaylord, whose new name came from a web site called "Proseography" that listed Anglo Saxon names drawn from legal documents and other contemporary sources. (Greta Marlow said the name Gaylord wasn't evil; enough.) Most of the rest of the characters also came from that site or other sites listing names in Brythonic, Breton, and so forth.

I have had to come up with a few names of entriely fictional characters from the Napoleonic era of late, and I have to say they just occur to me. I might go through several names before I hit on the one I think fits the character.

So, authors of the world, how do you come up with the names for your characters? Please answer in Comments below.