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[crumpet]

Up until now, naming characters for me has mostly involved one of three methods:
- me looking up names that represent the traits I want characters to have (eg: the name Eric means "Ruler")
- Slightly mutating the name of two existing people who most resemble the character. eg: if you based a character of Emmanuel Kant (why would you do that), you could go Kant -> Du Cantodor
- "What country is this character from?", Google names specific to that country. Pick the coolest/nicest one.

None of these strike me as particularly good methods. Anyone got any better techniques I could steal?

[oahda]

Those are fine, but perhaps more in the case of humoristic purposes.

Otherwise I don't see why you can't just pick names you like (or dislike), of course adjusting for country (or country of origin if you have foreign characters) if necessary like you said yourself.

If you're making up a fantasy world, then you can base names off of a constructed language (or several), which doesn't necessarily need to be fully fleshed out — "naming langs" is a well-known concept withing the conlanging community.

[SHOKIZM]

I like your method - especially merging the names of well known characters.

I learnt at Uni that there are hidden implications to every name - not their old meaning but images that come to mind when we hear them... for example, when you hear the name Churchill you most likely think of the great wartime leader - so a similar name, such as, Graveshill might also make you think of some strong leader. Or another example could be Hitler and Himmler the Nazi leaders, a name such as Baumler with its German sound might well trigger imagery of evil leaders and could be perfect for the bad-guy in your game.

Try to think of your target market and what their hidden triggers might be - to English and American people, Slavic (think Russian) names often sound alien or evil, however in eastern Europe, Slavic names may well sound heroic!

There are also some other simple tricks, short names with lots of consonants usually sound dumb or brutal - whereas long names, with many syllables and more vowels will usually sound softer or more intelligent.

Hope those tips help - I'm not an expert but those are the methods I've learned!

SHOKIZM

[oahda]

Try to think of your target market and what their hidden triggers might be - to English and American people, Slavic (think Russian) names often sound alien or evil

Why throw more fuel on such hurtful stereotypes?

[Sik]

- me looking up names that represent the traits I want characters to have (eg: the name Eric means "Ruler")

Basically Sol's naming scheme:

Sol: she's blonde, and "sol" happens to mean "sun" in Spanish
Ruby: she's redhead, and ruby is the name of a red gemstone
Mr. Evil: self-explanatory

[oahda]

"sol" happens to mean "sun" in Spanish

As well as its mother Latin and most of its Romance sisters, along with North Germanic languages (and cognate with 'sun' and its cognates). c:

(exact spelling might differ)

Names like these kind of make me think the in-story parents had somewhat bad imagination tho, haha.

[SHOKIZM]

Just to make it very clear - I'm not promoting any stereotypes - just giving an example of how the mind works when reading names... I could easily use many other countries/regions/areas... I lived in a Slavic country for many years so it was the first area/example I thought of...

Apologies if what I said was misunderstood as any kind of bad meaning...

[crumpet]

There are also some other simple tricks, short names with lots of consonants usually sound dumb or brutal - whereas long names, with many syllables and more vowels will usually sound softer or more intelligent.

You know while I completely love this concept in word choice, for some reason it had completely escaped me to use it for choosing names.

Also yeah, the cultural differences are a pretty big deal. Moving back to the idea of basing names of famous people, it comes down to who the most famous owner of that name is.
If you pick Joseph, for a number of people, that's associated with Joseph, husband of the Virgin Mary in the Bible. He's generally painted to be an OK dude.
Then for others, the name might be associated with the generally less OK dudes, like Joseph Stalin and Joseph Goebbels.

[oahda]

Joseph is way too common a name for me to connect it to anybody in particular at all. I'd just connect it to the character of the game. He'd need to be called something as unique as Rasputin for me to actually make a connection.

I definitely don't make weird connections for every name, or feel in any specific way about a lot of them. But I guess that also goes for me IRL — whereas I often hear people say things like "that name is old-fashioned" or "ugly", I rarely feel that way about a name. Doesn't really make sense to me that some biblical name that date back thousands of years should be considered "modern" when some names native to my Scandinavian surroundings have only had their current form for a couple of centuries but still get called "old-fashioned".

[Sik]

Late reply but:

Names like these kind of make me think the in-story parents had somewhat bad imagination tho, haha.

Didn't use this character yet, but Sol has a sister called Luna (which means "moon"). Make what you want out of that.

[oahda]

Late reply but:

Names like these kind of make me think the in-story parents had somewhat bad imagination tho, haha.

Didn't use this character yet, but Sol has a sister called Luna (which means "moon"). Make what you want out of that.

It's very... thematic. But I can actually imagine parents doing that.

[TitoOliveira]

Doesn't really make sense to me that some biblical name that date back thousands of years should be considered "modern" when some names native to my Scandinavian surroundings have only had their current form for a couple of centuries but still get called "old-fashioned".

Most likely because people don't know the origin of such names and rather base their notion on perceived trends. For instance if this generation has many grandmothers named with native scandinavian names, they may perceive it as old-fashioned.
This is something i've noticed happen. There's some names people say it's weird for a child to have, because they relate it to the old people they met who had such names.

[oahda]

Doesn't really make sense to me that some biblical name that date back thousands of years should be considered "modern" when some names native to my Scandinavian surroundings have only had their current form for a couple of centuries but still get called "old-fashioned".

Most likely because people don't know the origin of such names and rather base their notion on perceived trends. For instance if this generation has many grandmothers named with native scandinavian names, they may perceive it as old-fashioned.
This is something i've noticed happen. There's some names people say it's weird for a child to have, because they relate it to the old people they met who had such names.

Yeah, I know. I just can't feel that way myself because that's just not how I think. Names are mostly just names to me. I don't usually don't feel like novel names sound weird either. I'm just used to people having widely varied names, I guess...

[SHARKvince]

I usually first define my character’s origins. Do they come from a fictional or a real place? If from a fictional (fantasy) place, I first try and set up the culture of that place a bit and usually come up with something that suits their people. If from a real place (e. g. England, France), I choose a name from that area — unless their heritage would suggest they aren’t natively from there.

I sometimes also look at the different classes in a society. Fancy names for fancy people and so on.

[Alevice]

If the characters are not meant to be humans, I usually just borrow and alter mythological and religious character names.

Case in point, I am having a story about a retrieve mcguffin military operation that borrows motifs from the abrahamic creation myth, but uses modified zoroastrian names for their characters - Zarastria, Ohrmaz, Ahriman and Akvan.

[dany69burton]

Fear not, my friends, I have a failsafe method for coming up with cool names.
1 - pick a cool word
2 - randomly change letters so it sounds cool
3 - make sure it ends in an I(ee) sound, all good names do.

for example you could turn the word rain into Aini, and it sounds FRICKKING SWEET 

[gregkleintv]

Look at baby names website.
Find one that sounds right to you.
Use it.

[Zaeche]

There are also some other simple tricks, short names with lots of consonants usually sound dumb or brutal - whereas long names, with many syllables and more vowels will usually sound softer or more intelligent.

You know while I completely love this concept in word choice, for some reason it had completely escaped me to use it for choosing names.

If I could get a little pedantic ...

Shakespeare was great at this; a video did a neat break down on this but I can't find it at the moment. It goes something along the lines--'vowels for emotion, consonants for logic'. Just found this through the powers of Google-Fu.

Also: Latinate versus Germanic words. Basically, words that we got from the Angles and Saxons (short and concrete) versus the words we got from the Romans (long and abstract).

Look at baby names website.
Find one that sounds right to you.
Use it.

This. I always have a random name generator bookmarked.

On topic: I try to go from the overall theme and the meaning of the name itself. Once you have a name with a meaning you like (like Lestari) you can tweak it. I keep the name unchanged if it's a placeholder though.

[Necdilzor]

How about making up some names by mixing traits of the character or things they like?

Imagine the character is a cute girl that loves chocolate: Chocolate + Cute + Girl = Cuchogi

Well, it's just an example of what I mean... not a good name per se haha

[Shine Klevit]

It's not common, but I try to make names as unsymbolic and non-referential as humanly possible. I had two techniques for naming things in the past. I mean, I feel that if names themselves are given to people beyond their personal preference, then they shouldn't be a metaphor for their personalities.

1) If I wanted a real name, I'd just go to www.behindthename.com, and shuffle the "random renamer" until I got a name that just sounded cool enough for me, and not exotic beyond the context.

2) If I wanted to fantasy name, I would look at the time whenever I'm writing. Flip it upside down(which if you think in alarm clock style numbers, you can get any letter out of any number), and then fill in letters to make a compelling sounding word. I would then google search the word, and if nothing comes up, keep it.

Of course, these aren't particularly desirable methods for most people, but more of a personal preference. I'm tired of those methods, though, I might come up with something new. However, whatever I come up with, I want to keep the idea that it's partially out of my control.