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In my book, Rumblestar, I named a heroine after a brand of butter. In The Dreamsnatcher, I pinched a characterâs surname from a shower gel. And in Sky Song, I pilfered the name for a kingdom from a street signpost in London. I find character and place names everywhere and for Ember Spark & The Thunder of Dragons it was no different. I named a pet dog, Babaganoush, after passing the dip section in a supermarket. I named an elderly teacher, Mrs Rickety-Knees, after listening to an old lady in the doctorâs surgery complain about her dodgy knees. I named the villain of the book, Jasper Hornswoggle, after playing with random letters on a Scrabble board. And I named the Vet to Magical Beasts, Rusty Fizzbang, after trying ice-cream from a company called Fizzbang.
Put like that, it might sound like finding character and place names is entirely random. But thereâs more to it than that. In fact, I think inventing names is a bit like baking a cake. You mix several ingredients together then you wait a while until youâre sure the finished product is ready. My list of ingredients include humour, onomatopoeia and connotations. In other words, Iâm on the hunt for words that will make the reader smile, that have a dramatic effect when said aloud and that create a certain picture in the readerâs mind. Then, once Iâve struck upon what I think might be a perfect name, I turn it over in my head for several days to ensure it feels right.
The word âbabaganoushâ made me smile when I passed a tub of it in the supermarket because itâs fun to say aloud. But also, nobody ever really knows what babaganoush is â in the same way that nobody in the seaside village of Yawn, where Ember lives, really knows much about Babaganoush. Is he a Chihuahua or something else in disguiseâŠ? The character name, Mrs Rickety-Knees, holds connotations of an old lady so thatâs helpful for the reader. But itâs a playful name, too, which is what I needed for an old lady who wears unicorn leggings. When naming my villain, I wanted a word that sounded sinister when spoken aloud. Often guttural words help with this so after mixing around letters on a Scrabble board I came up âswoggleâ. I then added âhornâ as a prefix because horns are often associated with the devil. With Rusty Fizzbang, I wanted a name that would imply his character was old (hence ârustyâ) but I also wanted readers to know Rusty was lively and mischievous too â indeed he tells Ember and Arno all sorts of weird and wonderful facts about magical beasts, such as unicorn farts being so loud they sometimes register as minor earthquakes. So, I combined Rustyâs name with âFizzbangâ (a word Iâd been storing up to use as a character name after eating Fizzbang icecream years before) because the word carried connotations of further mischief and magic.
It helped my write my story's for some writing competitions I've entered so thank thank you for this.by Holly Denton - 07-06-2026 07:25I love your names it keeps me creative and happyby Leo Villiers - 23-05-2026 10:10I think good character names make a book and certainly keeps my son interested in the story by Sharon McKinnon - 13-05-2024 22:01I am not good at making up names. You are good at it!by Melanie - 10-05-2024 18:08Love this! This article made me smile. What fabulous ideas.by BKB - 10-05-2024 14:25
