Tomorrow evening, I'll be speaking at the North Suburban Network Meeting of SCBWI-Illinois on the topic of character names. Rather than print out a handout, I'd like to offer some links related to the topic here in this blog post. In 2008, I wrote a four-part series on this topic for my craft column in the SCBWI-Illinois newsletter, the Prairie Wind. You can still read some of those columns, but you have to go to the SCBWI-Illinois page at scbwi.org to get to them now. Start on this page. Then scroll down to the "Spring 2008" link to open the pdf of the newsletter. Then scroll to page 11, where you'll find my "Writing Tips" column, labeled "What's In A Name? (Part Two)".
* The Writing-World website has a list of links to all sorts of online character naming sites here. The links include a wide range of sites, from basic baby-naming sites to archives of medieval names. A number of the sites have names used within specific ethnic groups, such as Chinese, Indian and Sikh.
* Michelle Hoppe Prima talks a bit about the influence of sounds in character names in “Naming Your Characters,” which you can find here.
* If you’re writing a story set in the United States, a great resource for both contemporary and historical names is the Social Security Administration website. There, you can see lists of the names most often given babies born in any year dating back to 1880. You can get to that site here.
* The Writer’s Digest Character Naming Sourcebook by Sherrilyn Kenyon. Second edition includes tips for how to research names online and ten guidelines for naming characters. The name lists are organized by ethnic group and include information about corresponding surnames. The name meaning lists themselves are briefer than those in typical baby-naming book.
* The Language of Names: What We Call Ourselves and Why it Matters, by Justin Kaplan and Anne Bernays. A biographer and a novelist discuss American naming practices and their implications. Includes a chapter on literary names.
* 2010 Children's Writer's & Illustrator's Market, edited by Alice Pope, contains my article, "What's in a Name? Maybe More Than You Think."