In The Man Who Invented Christmas, there is a specific scene where Charles Dickens is running through a ton of names for his character, Scrooge. He comes up with a fair number before he lands on the name and suddenly the character appears before him.

His idea was that once he got the name down for his characters, who they were, what they were, and their entire person would follow. I've got maybe one name for a character in my entire story, and this is something I've been bandying around in my head for years. I've just thrown placeholder names at the rest and collected odd-sounding street names because of "uniqueness" *jazz hands*

There are only two names I've got.

Caicugen. It's a very poor English translation of how you phonetically say "In-Between" in Chinese, at least from Google Translate. I've just taken to calling it the Middle Kingdom (yes, I know that's literally what China is called) because of what it is.

Aria is the name of the first main character in the book. She's of a purer blood-line that effectively traces their lineage back to a specific "God". Because of that, she has an affinity to study Mysteries and Orders that align themselves specifically with this god. I picked Aria a long, long time ago because of what her character arc was going to be.

How did you come up with your names?

I pick character names based on their sound and meaning. I use a baby names app to find names, and I can look up a definition and it’ll give me names that mean that. Or I can go to the origins and find names from a specific origin. For instance, I use Celtic origin names for my fantasy books because they sound good for fantasy, but I also choose names that mean something that makes sense for that character.

When I'm stuck on naming, I usually look at one of two things--meaning and ethnicity. If I know something about the character--who they are, what they will become, their status, their occupation, etc.--I can look for names with meanings that match those criteria. Another way I do it is to look up ethnic names. If I know the character is of a certain descent, or I'm getting inspiration for my fantasy place from a real-world culture, I usually use names that are derived from that language/country/region.

Often-times for me the character and name form simultaneously. I need a new character, say for Lensebearers. I just randomly formed names that fit the mood. There are three people talking, and when I get to when I need a name one usually comes that fits the character. Runyic, Elanna, Gwythnolg. That last one was constructed because I knew I wanted to use Welsh phonetics in their culture. Sometimes the names that come are very common, like James or Benjamin. And sometimes I do need to toil over a name. For instance, when I was little I named a character Cyrus McCormick. It's a nice sounding name, but I stole it from my history book... But I had toyed with the character so long that changing names was hard. I believe that for him I used "Behindthename" (a website I really like) to search names with similar letter combinations and from the same culture.

Like others have said, sometimes the culture comes into it. Sometimes the name just comes. Occasionally I need to change a name after the fact (which is always hard.), or come up with a nameless character and need to put a little work into the naming process. I would say test which methods work best for you.

So, do you have the characters and their personalities worked out, but need to choose names? Or are the story characters themselves too nebulous to really be characters yet?

A little bit of both. More latter, because I am unable to picture them yet.

I bet if I threw money at an illustrator and got what they look like, it would be easier. Or that’s just me thinking of a distraction.

Something else I’ve done before is just search for a character image. For me, I have boards on Pinterest of character pictures that I scroll through until I find one that feels right, and then pick a name and such that fits. Normally the picture is what I find last, but on occasion its the first thing I have to do

Me, too! I struggle with only having a nebulous idea of my characters ' appearances, so I probably need to do that more. I've only found three so far for projects I've actually started.. Sometimes I come across an image online, or in a magazine or add, that just seems "right," and then I have a much more solid image in my head, and sometimes the pictures look like a character that has yet to be created.