Rec-Your-Favourites post for July 2022: Favourite Reads

Oops, I nearly forgot to put up this one! Let's do it a bit differently this time; I'll invite you all to rec one or more of your favourite comfort reads, or other media you like to revisit just to have fun and enjoy fandom, get comfort, escape, have that good cry you're after or whatever rocks your boat. Please share them with us in the comments to this post. (Ysilme)

A few simple considerations:

It might be helpful to give your comment a suitable subject, like for a specific fandom, and also to do separate comments when reccing places in different fandoms. We're going to put in suitable tags so people can find it later as well.

Age restrictions and content warnings:  Please keep in mind this journal is public and has no content warning. For your convenience, we've put in an age restriction to this post only, so you can also post everything which is not explicit or NSFW. If your post contains the latter, please put it behind a text-link with a suitable warning, to keep this journal a safe place to visit for everybody.

Comment size, images and headers: As cuts don't work on comments, please try to keep your comment to not longer than roughly the size of an average notebook screen after posting. If you want to put in images, please size them to not more than 600 pix on the longest side.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them here or to drop a note to sylvanwitch and/or ysilme .

We’re looking forward to seeing what you like to share!

WED Character Naming Resources

An embarrasingly long time ago, WED participants talked about and collected Character Naming Resources. carenejeans and garonne  had been so kind to compile a list of all those links and sent it to me for posting. I'm afraid it got lost in my overful inbox, and I rediscovered it only now. I'm very sorry for the delay, but here it is finally! Thank you again so much for the list, carenejeans and garonne , and everybody for your contributions to it! ♥

I'm putting the list up with a new tag, WED resources, and will add the tag in the journal's link list for your convenience. If you like to add more resources or update those already given, please do so in the comments to this thread. [Ysilme]

---

Strategies and Ideas

• When I need to name characters for fiction in contemporary settings, I often mix and match first and last names of people I've actually known who are from the right background and generation. (Of course, having lived in a very multiethnic city helps a lot with this.) [pauraque]


• I like to collect names from the wall of names in the end credits of movies. [teaotter]


• I'm not sure I have a strategy, precisely, but I do collect fun surnames (and sometimes first names) from tombstones at cemeteries, and I've also been known to pull names for characters from roads, streets, towns, rivers, etc., that I've seen on highway signs. I'm definitely a scavenger where naming is concerned. [sylvanwitch]


• As for finding names, I sometimes steal them from the history books I read as research. [luzula]


• Fannishly, I'm more or less only writing Tolkienverse, where I resort to the most common naming generator to help me get a suitable name for the character that fits the in-verse naming conventions. As I'm otherwise also often writing fantasy, I've tried a few random name generators with various success. For anything else, I'm usually going through sites of prenames, often historic ones, and let myself be inspired from these. For important characters the name really needs to sound right, and usually I know already the first letter it needs to have, or a variation it could have. So I go through names on those lists, and take parts of names or syllables and transform them to something that fits my narrative or mood; often also using names from the opposite gender or putting fragments together. Another resource is watching the/going through closing credits of movies, and noting down any interesting name that tickles my fancy. I've also always collected names that felt right for story characters, real names, historic names, names that came into my head, and keep a list.
  Update: More recently, Realelvish.net has become another very useful naming resource for Tolkien names in Sindarin and Quenya and might also be useful for fantasy names in general. [ysilme]


• All my writing in the last 12 years has been in non-anglophone fandoms, so... for Japanese names, lists of babynames for particular years and sometimes just cast lists of dramas where I mix it up... Not much ethnic diversity in Japan. For the Chinese fandom I'm currently writing in I only have one OC who need a name, and I've just grabbed something off the internet for now, which may get search/replaced on edit when I check a bit more into timelines and anachronisms. [solo]


• Most of the time my original characters seem to name themselves. I'll be writing something, need a name, and one will pop into my head. I think I must have a very strange brain. Of course, most of the names I need are for aliens / alien species / alien planets, so... Alien names are easier than human names. The main problem with making up alien names is that I then have to remember how to spell them *grins* [badly_knitted]


• Most of the things I'm writing have names already established, but often times, I'll just go with a name that I've seen recently and then make sure that it's not a name with a meaning that runs counter to what I want from their personality. Or there's a specific person I know that I have in mind for the naming and that fits the character. [silveradept]


• For modern and sci-fi stuff, if I don't have a particular background in mind, sometimes I try picking a random country from a site like random.country and then looking up common names for people from that place. [ursula]


• For side characters' names, I often borrow the names of actors, singers, etc that I like. If I want not to do that (like if it's for a child or a villain or something) I sometimes just pick one I like, but sometimes I'll do it based on kanji, like, I want this kanji in the name, and then I google the character and relevant search terms to find names. [phrenk]

Lists and Random Name Generators

• Wikipedia's lists of English surnames in conjunction with a random number generator. Not great for ethnic diversity, so I try to use it judiciously. [sanguinity]


• Mapping London's map of common London surnames,, which does accurately reflect the ethnic diversity of contemporary London, at least in broad strokes. I especially like the sliders that let you view the sixth- or twentieth-most common names for an area. [sanguinity]


• Behind the Name lets you choose from a variety of backgrounds. [teaotter and [cornerofmadness]


• Fantasy Name Generators also has lots of real name generators these days. (I can vouch for the fact that Oh Boy are the "Mormon" names accurate!) [bladespark]


• Star Wars Planet Name Generator (on the Fantasy Name Generators Page) Can be used for both for Star Wars and Doctor Who stories. Sometimes the names suggested will prompt an idea or I'll modify them slightly, always checking Wookieepedia or the TARDIS Data Core to make sure I'm not accidentally using a word/name that already means something in universe or was used previously. [marvelouscity]


• https://www.nordicnames.de gives Nordic names including all their various Icelandic, Swedish, Norwegian, etc. variations, AND their meaning, AND the Old Norse name elements that form them [starfishstar]


• The Medieval Names Archive or the Dictionary of Medieval Names from European Sources for historical and fantasy settings. [ursula]

Websites that plot changes in the popularity of names over time:

• National Records of Scotland Baby Names Page


• UK Office of National Statistics Baby Name Page


• Notre Famile Baby Names Page [garonne]


• Baby Name Wizard (That one's US only, as far as I know) [starfishstar]


• Wolfram Alpha (US Data) [sanguinity]

Other Tools:

• Scrivener has a super cool name generator, which gives you either completely random and really unique names, or from a list you can configure in a quite detailed manner. What I really find cool is that you can choose the cultural/historical provenience of the name, separated for for- and family name (or get two names in the same process). I've used the generator for name finding on my fantasy novel project I started last year for real, and got some really great results for it. [ysilme]

Write every day! - July 2022 - Day 31

Here we are at the last day of this month's round. August will be hosted by the_siobhan, we hope we'll see you all there!
Thank you all for participating at this round and keeping our merry wandering circus alive and going! :o)  If you like, let us know how this month went for you, and if you reached your goals or not, or whatever else you like to share about your writing journey.

I'm afraid I've forgotten to include the current Rec-Your-Work post in my tally list; it's here now. There is one entry so far, perhaps more will join it?

[Ysilme]

"I’m terrible about titles; I don’t know how to come up with them.  They’re the one thing in the story I’m really uncertain about."  Eudora Welty


Tally:
Welcome post
Rec-Your-Work post for July 2022
Rec-Your-Favourites post for July 2022: Favourite Reads

( Days 1-20 )

Day 21: badly_knitted, chanter1944, china_shop, cornerofmadness, garonne, lferion, ljm, luzula, marvelouscity, regshoe, sanguinity, shadaras, silveradept, sylvanwitch, trobadora, yasaman, ysilme

Day 22: badly_knitted, chanter1944, china_shop, cornerofmadness, garonne, lferion, ljm, luzula, regshoe, sanguinity, shadaras, silveradept, sylvanwitch, the_siobhan, trobadora, yasaman, ysilme

Day 23: badly_knitted, chanter1944, china_shop, cornerofmadness, garonne, ljm, lferion, luzula, marvelouscity, regshoe, sanguinity, shadaras, silveradept, sylvanwitch, the_siobhan, trobadora, yasaman, ysilme

Day 24: badly_knitted, chanter1944, china_shop, cornerofmadness, garonne, lferion, ljm, luzula, marvelouscity, regshoe, sakana17, sanguinity, shadaras, silveradept, sylvanwitch, the_siobhan, trobadora, yasaman, ysilme

Day 25: chanter1944, china_shop, cornerofmadness, garonne, lferion, ljm, luzula, marvelouscity, regshoe, sanguinity, shadaras, silveradept, sylvanwitch, trobadora, yasaman, ysilme

Day 26: badly_knitted, chanter1944, china_shop, cornerofmadness, garonne, lferion, ljm, luzula, marvelouscity, regshoe, sanguinity, shadaras, silveradept, sylvanwitch, yasaman, ysilme

Day 27: chanter1944, china_shop, cornerofmadness, garonne, lferion, luzula, marvelouscity, regshoe, sanguinity, shadaras, silveradept, sylvanwitch, yasaman, ysilme

Day 28: badly_knitted, chanter1944, china_shop, cornerofmadness, garonne, lferion, ljm, luzula, marvelouscity, regshoe, sanguinity, shadaras, silveradept, sylvanwitch, yasaman, ysilme

Day 29: badly_knitted, chanter1944, china_shop, cornerofmadness, garonne, lferion, ljm, luzula, marvelouscity, regshoe, sanguinity, shadaras, silveradept, sylvanwitch, yasaman, ysilme

Day 30: badly_knitted, china_shop, cornerofmadness, luzula, marvelouscity, regshoe, sanguinity, shadaras, >user name="sylvanwitch">, yasaman, ysilme

Day 31:

Let us know if we missed you or if you didn't check in for a while, so we can add you. Of course joining the fun is possible at any point.

~ ~ ~

ysilme here: Today's image and choice of quote are by slyvanwitch.
Day 30 brought nearly 1k of nonfic for me, and some pondering of my large WIP. I was partly successful with my goals for this month: I didn't finish the current WIP after all - I got done what I intened, but then the story demanded an epilogue which I'm still fiddling with. ;op I created five moodboards for Scribbles & Drabbles, have tons of plotbunnes for the artworks in the gallery, and can't wait for the claiming to open next week. Getting back into regular fic writing didn't happen in the way intended but at least better than before, but OTOH I got a huge motivation boost out of signing up to hurt/comfort bingo which I count as a major win for this month.

sylvanwitch here: I added 458 words to the most recent short story I've been working on, which is currently titled by the first line, "Laci Waxwing hated her mother." I have to be honest: I can't remember what I said I was going to do this month. I think I'd planned to finish the three original short stories I had in progress, and I believe I did finish one, but I also ended up writing a whole other story AND just started on a different one. I didn't used to be a WiP sort of writer, but this summer has had a host of personal challenges, so I'm just glad I'm still writing at all! Lol! Anyway, it's been wonderful interacting with all of you, and I wish you luck in the coming month!