Nathan Bransford - The Forums

I'm sure Nathan or someone posted a link to a really good one but I can't find it via these forums or google. All the ones that come up on google are SF/fantasy types and I just want some inspiration finding normal names...

Anyone have a clue what I am talking about? :)

''Normal names'' for any specific culture? (says the person whose first name is even weird in its home culture/language).
http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/gen-random-en-uk.php
This one does a good job generating Anglo names-- if you reset it to German, you can basically get some generic ''white American'' names. It's a bit iffy on other cultures, unfortunately.
Other strategies include going through a local paper from the area you're writing about, and picking surnames/forenames at random. Or looking through lists of baby names online.

Sorry, I don't know anything about this. All I know is that my "random name generator" is opening a phone book and scanning the names until I find one that feels right. I'm starting to realize, though, that phone books probably won't exist for much longer...

Seventh Sanctum is a really good generator for a lot of different styles and types of names. There's the fantasy name generator for more outlandish ones. And my go to is baby name websites.

This is my favorite: http://www.behindthename.com/random/

You know what I do? It may sound really silly, but I subscribe to "Word of the Day" from dictionary.com.

Every day I get a new word. At least twice or more a week they come up with a word I've never heard before that sounds like a name. I keep a word document set aside and paste the word and it's definition into it.

Then, when a new character pops up in my story, I pull it out. It mostly works for last names, but I have found a few good first names this way as well.

And the best part? Since they are real words... they don't get that annoying line under them telling you that you spelled the word wrong. Less words to add to your custom dictionary!

Place-names. I name most of my characters after places. Just avoid overusing 'Street' as a surname.

You might also try captchas, the anti-spam verification 'words' on website comment boxes. Those on Nathan's blog have become more word-like in spelling recently.

J. T. SHEA wrote:Place-names. I name most of my characters after places. Just avoid overusing 'Street' as a surname.

You might also try captchas, the anti-spam verification 'words' on website comment boxes. Those on Nathan's blog have become more word-like in spelling recently.

I used those in one novel for magic spells. They worked quite well.

"Behind the Name" was the one I was thinking of but I've saved the others to my bookmarks as well!

Cheers everyone!

Search this forum for keywords like "name generator" or the specific person's name you mentioned (Nathan) to try to locate the old thread. You can also try contacting that person directly if you know who they are.