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| Photo credit: Flickr bump |
Some of the names in the book include Eros, Kora, Dima, Jarek, Serek Asha, Roma, Anja, Iro, Daven and Zek. Of course, many names in there in our world, but a way to create and choose names that sound is cohesive to think of sounds.
The first name I started with when creating Beyond the Red 's casting was Eros. I'm obviously not the name that Eros is the Greek god of love, but what attracted me by name was the vowel sounds sweet and how the name sank. The name Kora followed shortly after, and I began to think about the similarities between their names: they are the two syllables, vowels and soft connected by a /r/.
I then started thinking about what I wanted Kora language speaks to ring. I knew I wanted to use some Spanish influence, because I know how Spanish pronunciation works fine, but I also wanted to use harsher sounds like / k /, and I knew I wanted to "j" to pronounce more as / y /, as in languages such as Swedish.
With these rules in mind I started brainstorming sounds to understand the phonemes of the language. I did it in a private room, but it probably would have sounded ridiculous to anyone listening because I'm basically jibberish blabbering while deciding what seems liked. But it worked, and as I mash together random phonemes (eg, / is / + / rek / Jarek =) I wrote those that sounded like they could be names.
The other names I had, it was more to come with those who seemed to be quite similar, but were still clearly distinguishable. I realized early on that I liked the names that ended in vowels (Kora, Dima, Asha, Roma ...) and played with the sound system that I developed until j ' had a decent size group of names that all together.
When it came to names for nomadic humans are descended from a large group of people on Earth I was thinking more about the language change and how I could change existing names. I found myself with a lot of abridged versions of the existing names as Nol (Nolan), Jessa (Jessica), Aren (Aaron), and so on. I also choose some names based on English words, like day and Gray, and quite finished with a cast whose names made sense together, but were clearly distinguishable from Sephari (alien) names like Kora and Dima.
There are many processes and different strategies, I'm sure, to create character names, but being the language nerd that I am, it's one that worked for me. And maybe it could work for you too.
Have you made character names?
Twitter bite size:
How do you make the characters names? @Ava_Jae Sharing a technique that she used while writing his debut. (Click for tweeter)
