Re: Naming Characters
I use my own program to generate names.
About seventeen years ago I wrote a random-name generator using Delphi (Object Pascal in a Rapid Application Development environment, sort of like Visual Basic was back in the day, only better than VB was).
This was before the Internet became what it is today. Now I can go onto the Internet and find various name lists, like the ones that Social Security maintains. But I had to find my own names for my generator. I used the Nashville metropolitan telephone book to gather most of my names, but I also added names that I heard and saw. I tried to choose names that ranged from common to unusual and even a little bizarre. I set up the interface to let me choose only a female name, a male name, a first + last name, or only a last name.
I never got all the names into the database that I wanted to before I had to cease working on it. The program still works (it may not under Windows 10; I have not found out yet), and I still use it. The original Delphi language was a Borland product that ran, first, under Windows 3.1, and then under Windows 95.
By the time that Microsoft came out with XP, my older version of Delphi would not work anymore. New versions of it were hideously expensive, and I did not continue with the project. In the meantime, Borland sold Delphi. It changed owners several times, and each owner tried to outdo the previous one in committing screw-ups and in keeping the price of the program so high that ordinary hobbyist programmers could not afford it.
However, a free clone, known as Lazarus, has been available for a few years and is now really excellent. I have recently gotten back into my original project by using Lazarus.
Recently I checked out some of the name generators that are now available on line. I think that they could be very useful. They are much more sophisticated than what I created, though I have thought about adding some of the same features.
The generators on line let you select common or unusual names, and some may let you select specific ethnicities. The greatest problem in creating these specialized databases is that the programmer who creates them needs to have some knowledge of the names (or someone else will need to develop them). I would have no idea what is a common name in Poland or Israel or Jordan or Iran or India. I could look up a list, but I would have no idea whether I was dealing with something that sounded nice or stupid. Just imagine some non-English speaker trying to come up with an American name and, in all ignorance, chooses Cletus or Gomer. So I have stayed away from the specialized stuff.
For now I will continue to use my old homegrown program. If I click it twelve times in a row for a "complete" name set, I get the following names, combined into random combinations of Male + Last Name, Female + Last Name. These are unedited, and some are weird. All of these were real names, almost certainly taken from the phone book.
Eustis MEECE
Anetta MEECE
Wilbur OCKERMAN
Emma OCKERMAN
Howell KOULAKOV
Dolores KOULAKOV
Cyd BOCHETTE
Poppy BOCHETTE
Walker BALTIMORE
Taryn BALTIMORE
Joe KELSEY
Merrilee KELSEY
Daniel LILLARD
Eugenia LILLARD
Blaise HELLMAN
Pippa HELLMAN
Neal MULKEY
Vittoria MULKEY
Tadeo HOUSE
Alexa HOUSE
Gilroy KENNON
Gail KENNON
Terry BAGFORD
Ottilie BAGFORD
The interesting thing is that the names themselves can suggest characters. They are not just names. For example:
Cyd BOCHETTE
Poppy BOCHETTE
The female name 'Poppy' triggers some associations in my mind. I could already have the beginnings of a character, just from the name. If I wanted to use Bochette as her last name, and give her a husband, I would change the name 'Cyd' to something else, because I do not like it as a male name (I think of Cyd Charisse, definitely not a male). Maybe I would look at my list above and choose 'Walker' as a male first name. Or I might click my program a few times, as I am doing now, and come up with:
Aric
Miles
Benny
Lenny
Mike
Nestor
Latimer
Cleve
Case
Brand
Gunther
Klaus
Jamil
Armand
Ned
Floyd
I would certainly throw out the weird 'Aric' - no idea about that one. 'Lenny' ("Tell me about the rabbits, George." BANG!) is definitely out, too. I could go with something traditional and comfortable like 'Mike' or 'Floyd' or something a little old-fashioned but solid like 'Ned'. The more Germanic 'Gunther' or 'Klaus' might set up an interesting conflict between a staid type and a flower child - or a reversal, in which Gunther is the zany one and Poppy is very straight-laced.
Anyhow, names matter, I think. At least they can get you to thinking about your characters.
The other night I saw part of an old film from the early 1960s (I had seen the whole thing before) that was based on a Gore Vidal play about a political convention. The villainous candidate was named 'Cantwell'. The name had meaning, because the noun/verb 'cant' refers to a recitation of what today are known as 'talking points', done in a hypocritical way. In other words, phony political crap meant to gather the rubes in. Unfortunately, the word is not a useful word in America, because in American English the contraction of 'cannot' (can't) is pronounced the same way - and 'cant' just sounds confusing.
But the name Cantwell, as a combinatin of 'cant+well' is supposed to be a commentary on the character. This kind of thing can be distracting in drama (as opposed to comedy, where it can be effective). But it was subtle enough in this film to be a little joke.
I use my own program to generate names.
About seventeen years ago I wrote a random-name generator using Delphi (Object Pascal in a Rapid Application Development environment, sort of like Visual Basic was back in the day, only better than VB was).
This was before the Internet became what it is today. Now I can go onto the Internet and find various name lists, like the ones that Social Security maintains. But I had to find my own names for my generator. I used the Nashville metropolitan telephone book to gather most of my names, but I also added names that I heard and saw. I tried to choose names that ranged from common to unusual and even a little bizarre. I set up the interface to let me choose only a female name, a male name, a first + last name, or only a last name.
I never got all the names into the database that I wanted to before I had to cease working on it. The program still works (it may not under Windows 10; I have not found out yet), and I still use it. The original Delphi language was a Borland product that ran, first, under Windows 3.1, and then under Windows 95.
By the time that Microsoft came out with XP, my older version of Delphi would not work anymore. New versions of it were hideously expensive, and I did not continue with the project. In the meantime, Borland sold Delphi. It changed owners several times, and each owner tried to outdo the previous one in committing screw-ups and in keeping the price of the program so high that ordinary hobbyist programmers could not afford it.
However, a free clone, known as Lazarus, has been available for a few years and is now really excellent. I have recently gotten back into my original project by using Lazarus.
Recently I checked out some of the name generators that are now available on line. I think that they could be very useful. They are much more sophisticated than what I created, though I have thought about adding some of the same features.
The generators on line let you select common or unusual names, and some may let you select specific ethnicities. The greatest problem in creating these specialized databases is that the programmer who creates them needs to have some knowledge of the names (or someone else will need to develop them). I would have no idea what is a common name in Poland or Israel or Jordan or Iran or India. I could look up a list, but I would have no idea whether I was dealing with something that sounded nice or stupid. Just imagine some non-English speaker trying to come up with an American name and, in all ignorance, chooses Cletus or Gomer. So I have stayed away from the specialized stuff.
For now I will continue to use my old homegrown program. If I click it twelve times in a row for a "complete" name set, I get the following names, combined into random combinations of Male + Last Name, Female + Last Name. These are unedited, and some are weird. All of these were real names, almost certainly taken from the phone book.
Eustis MEECE
Anetta MEECE
Wilbur OCKERMAN
Emma OCKERMAN
Howell KOULAKOV
Dolores KOULAKOV
Cyd BOCHETTE
Poppy BOCHETTE
Walker BALTIMORE
Taryn BALTIMORE
Joe KELSEY
Merrilee KELSEY
Daniel LILLARD
Eugenia LILLARD
Blaise HELLMAN
Pippa HELLMAN
Neal MULKEY
Vittoria MULKEY
Tadeo HOUSE
Alexa HOUSE
Gilroy KENNON
Gail KENNON
Terry BAGFORD
Ottilie BAGFORD
The interesting thing is that the names themselves can suggest characters. They are not just names. For example:
Cyd BOCHETTE
Poppy BOCHETTE
The female name 'Poppy' triggers some associations in my mind. I could already have the beginnings of a character, just from the name. If I wanted to use Bochette as her last name, and give her a husband, I would change the name 'Cyd' to something else, because I do not like it as a male name (I think of Cyd Charisse, definitely not a male). Maybe I would look at my list above and choose 'Walker' as a male first name. Or I might click my program a few times, as I am doing now, and come up with:
Aric
Miles
Benny
Lenny
Mike
Nestor
Latimer
Cleve
Case
Brand
Gunther
Klaus
Jamil
Armand
Ned
Floyd
I would certainly throw out the weird 'Aric' - no idea about that one. 'Lenny' ("Tell me about the rabbits, George." BANG!) is definitely out, too. I could go with something traditional and comfortable like 'Mike' or 'Floyd' or something a little old-fashioned but solid like 'Ned'. The more Germanic 'Gunther' or 'Klaus' might set up an interesting conflict between a staid type and a flower child - or a reversal, in which Gunther is the zany one and Poppy is very straight-laced.
Anyhow, names matter, I think. At least they can get you to thinking about your characters.
The other night I saw part of an old film from the early 1960s (I had seen the whole thing before) that was based on a Gore Vidal play about a political convention. The villainous candidate was named 'Cantwell'. The name had meaning, because the noun/verb 'cant' refers to a recitation of what today are known as 'talking points', done in a hypocritical way. In other words, phony political crap meant to gather the rubes in. Unfortunately, the word is not a useful word in America, because in American English the contraction of 'cannot' (can't) is pronounced the same way - and 'cant' just sounds confusing.
But the name Cantwell, as a combinatin of 'cant+well' is supposed to be a commentary on the character. This kind of thing can be distracting in drama (as opposed to comedy, where it can be effective). But it was subtle enough in this film to be a little joke.
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