‘The serpent is helpless unless he finds an apple to work with.’
(George Ade)
For a writer, choosing names or nicknames for your characters can be quite hard sometimes. Sometimes it comes naturally.
In my stories, I like to either choose them to my own liking, hearing them from somewhere, or do some research first.
Once, I watched a video on Tik Tok where an explorer was talking about lions in another language. Throughout his interview, you could see images from their habitat with English subtitles. At some point, I heard the interviewed man saying ‘Nailah’. And it hit me! Know what I did next? I named my main female character ‘Nayla’ only to find out later on that it’s not actually something new.
Some other times, I like the meaning of the name to match the character. For example, in another story, I wanted my main male character to be named ‘Xander’ as he is someone unbeatable with a warrior-like appearance, not just skills.
As for nicknames, I love connection. In my last published story, the main male character has a little sister. He would call her ‘Trouble’ as she was always getting into troubles and she calls him ‘Doc’ as he was always the one to solve her problems.
*How do you choose the name of your characters? Use the comments section to answer the question if you want others to get inspired too. If not, I hope you were by reading this.
