What language to choose when picking character's names

So this is for you NU readers who have read all kinds of novels. LIke jap, korean, chinese or english. If you were to write your own novel, what kind of name and language would you name your characters?
Example: If it were chinese [ Xie Rou, Ming Xuan, Zhao Jie....]
Japanese [Ayake Katawa, ...]
Korean [ Kang Joo, Choi Min, ..]
English [John Smith, Lucy Willows]

Do you guys have a preferred language to choose when making names?

 

Isn't it dependent on what nationality the character has?

 

It depends on the character. You see a name can say a lot of thing, like where the person comes from what language he or she possibly speaks and so on. So just taking whatever kind of name and simply sticking it to the character is just stupid.

 

everything fine but not chinese
god daym they all sound so similar
korean kinda to but less

 

Depends.
Like, which country are they from? I the country fictional or not? If it is, is the country based on a real one? The culture type? I'm actually a fan of corrupted words/names.

 

I am no writer but I think they mostly choose based on the setting. Like if it is like a xianxia where you cultivate to immortality, you pick Chinese names, a western name if it's a fantasy setting, or any name of choice based on the nationality of the character if it's a modern day setting.

 

This probably happens because of common chinese surname and first names.

There are also common surnames and first names in english.

I have two first names but i mostly use my second first name since my first first name is john. In school there were atleast 3 of us(named john) in class every school year.

 

English names. I put in non-english names for first names sometimes and only if they are simple to read. Even if I were to write a chinese based novel, I would stick to names easy for people to remember or translate them to english.

Spoiler: For example, here is a decent list I randomly found

- Kyon (Chinese name would be: Kai-yan) (Gaelic and Chinese meanings)
- Kaylum (Chinese name would be: Kai-long) (Gaelic and Chinese meanings)
- Rylin (Chinese name: Rui-lin) (Old English and Chinese meanings)
- Roshan (Chinese name: Ri-shan) (Persian and Chinese meanings)
- Cullen (Chinese name: Ke-lin) (Gaelic and Chinese meanings)
- DeShawn (Chinese name: De-shan)(Gaelic, Hebrew and Chinese meanings)
- Logan (Chinese name: Lou-gen) (Gaelic and Chinese meanings)
- Dylan (Chinese name: De-lin) (Welsh and Chinese meanings)
- Kylin (Chinese name: Ke-lin) (Celtic and Chinese meanings)
- Ameen (Chinese name: Ai-ming) (Arabic and Chinese meanings)
- Clay (Chinese name: Ke-lei) (Old English and Chinese meanings)

Hard to remember names do nothing for anyone.

 

Chinese names are literally aids on steroids. And with their titles and positions and all the same sounds. They are confusing as hell.

But cough cough this is A HOSHI SECERET. So don’t go spreading this around. I’ve never told anyone this.

Spoiler: Hoshi’s Secret #12

In all of my stories, I put a little of myself in there, and my IRL name starts with an A, so since all my characters are a little bit of me. The main characters all get A names too lol.

 

Name that people will not forget.

 

Depends on the charater(background, personality, what you want to with him/her) and what kind of story you are writing, also how you want the readers to perceive your character, for example:
- Let's say you are writing a cultivation based story but you want the MC to be OP and smarter than the rest of the characters (usually in this case you will go with either CN or KR names, of course you can go for JP or IT or EN or other names but usually either CN or KR names, not to mention the kind of setting usually is found in CN novels so you would go CN name in this case) let's say for example 'Shou Xian'.
Let's say that this 'Shou Xian' is facing a young master who is after him for somereason, but seeing as you made Mc to be strong, smart and the kind to win against the other stupid, bad evil characters, you will name this young master whom you want to look and appear inferior (despite how you describe him the novel, like handsome or not, etc...) something like 'Xiao Qiu' for example.
- Another example would be, you are comical and a bit sarcastic (and perhaps a questionable sense of humor) so you will theme your characters names and personalities on food for example: her name was Peach, small, cute and quite the sight to behold (you can go on with the description), or a character with a big chest and you name her milk or (chi chi for example, look at the names of the dragonball characters and their personalities and appearences)...
- You can also go for real life names(celebrities), if you want to send the picture of someone real or give a sense of real life into the story, like: the man who appeared was someone whom none could look down upon, walking with large strides and a puffed chest as he disregarded all those around, yes that was president of the US (name him)
Well, hope that gave you a better idea and was helpful

 

kakarotto, vegeta, broly and other other names on vegatables

 

It depends on the setting. It would be completely weird if the setting is middle age Europe but everyone has Chinese names. And no, not even in China do they use Chinese names for European people in stories, except for the small few that use fantasy middle age Europe setting.

You need to know your setting. If it's set in ancient Korea during the Goguryo era, would it be logical if everyone there has English names? If you're writing a story set in Tokyo, would it make sense for everyone to have Chinese names?

In Ai-chan's stories, it also depends on the setting. Ai-chan's two traditionally published lesbian erotic novels were set in America, so the logical names would be English, Swedish, German, Chinese, Japanese and even Spanish.

Ai-chan's Felicia's Second Life story was based on English and Welsh set in a fantasy world.

One of Ai-chan earliest amateur work uses Hebrew names, as the characters are based on Jewish traditions.

Ai-chan's Age of Gods Online is an MMORPG, so it would have many crazy names, such as Spurting Titties and Fleeting Coffeepot.

Ai-chan's Seven Years of Hope is set in a completely different world, so the naming sense uses different rules and sentiments. For example, the name of the gods have their own meaning, and you can join the names together to make something that sounds like both gods blesses you. It's similar to Hercules, who was named Heracles to appease Hera, without success.

Ai-chan's The Hounds of Hell is set in Malaysia, so the logical names would be Malay, Hokkien, Cantonese, Mandarin, Indian, Javanese, Japanese (as Japanese expats families consider living in Malaysia as better than Japan) and English.

 

Latin is always best especially in picking magical spells.
Over and out!

 

Apart from wanting to write names in another language, you also need to know the rules of the culture you choose. For example, from your example, there is no such thing as Ayake Katawa. To write Japanese name (just like to write Chinese names) you need to know the rules. I am guessing that 'Ayake' is your first name and 'Katawa' is your surname, because there is no such thing as Ayake's variance being surnames.

In your example, the base word in Ayake is Aya (design/colourful). There is no suffix -ke in Japanese names. So it would be either Aya (design) by itself, Ayako (beautiful young woman), Ayaka (colourful fragrance) or Ayase (beautiful stature). If you want this person to be a boy, you would add -hiko (boy) so that it becomes Ayahiko (beautiful boy).

Katawa in Japanese means 'crippled', nobody wants to be called Mr. Crippled (Katawa-san). So in your example, your Japanese character name would be Ayase Katagawa (beautiful stature, one-side). Frankly, Ai-chan has never met someone named Katagawa, but Ai-chan has met a few Kitagawa (many delighted rivers).

So if you want to write names in those language, you must know the rules. Or if you don't want to bother, just copy paste instead of making up your own name under that culture's rules.

Also, Xie Rou means 'crab meat', Ming Xuan means 'dizziness after taking medicine', Zhao Jie means 'to receive'. Not bad names, just thought you'd like to know. No idea about the Korean names. Never learned Korean.

 

I pick names based on the location of my story.

 

Names follow certain conventions. When you create a setting you either take naming systems from already existing ones or you will have to create one from scratch.

 

Nowdays we can still use common name like John, Dave, Ethan with asian surnames

 

I would probably just use the names based on the theme of the universe I'm writing.

If it's a medieval fantasy setting then I'd use more European names for example.

 

I always use english names unless the character has a specified cultural identity in which case i will lookup baby names for that culture and pick one. So far my favourite ethnicity is middle eastern.