Names

Names can  be a hard one. Some just come easily with a character, some I have to make up/research and some things are just a pain in the arse to name.

The first ones are easy. Some Characters like my main character Wanja already 'come' with their names, if that makes sense. I just immediately know what to call them - and any attempts at trying to change the name or even the spelling are in vain. I tried to change the spelling of Wanja's name to 'Vanya', just because it's the English aquivalent to 'Wanja'. It wouldn't have made that much of a difference - they sound similar. But I absolutely hate the look of  'Vanya'. It just doesn't fit the character. It looks harsh, cold and arrogant, and Wanja isn't any of that. He is a warm and lovely person and for some reason only 'Wanja' visually represents that for me. So I had to discard my tutors proposition to change the spelling in order to keep my character the way he is.

Other characters don't come with a name exclusively ;) And because I really love dickensian telling names I usually note down a few main character traits of the nameless character and search for names that sort of have a similar meaning. For Example, I have a character who is the epitome of benignity and loves to help socially disadvantaged people. So I research old English names with an appropiate meaning and fitting sound and finally named the character Galfrid, short for Galfridus, which means sth like 'friend of men'.
Unfortunately I am a perfectionist when it comes to names. I can get really frustrated when a name sounds off or doesn't quite fit the character like it wnat it to. So it _can_ take me some time to find proper names that I like.

Other characters I just name after people I know, beacuse they share certain character traits and I like to have little bits and bobs of my own life in the novel.

Naming characters though is by far not as hard as naming places, especially if your setting is fictional and some places need fantastical names b/c they are, sort of, magical. So they have to be different to tell them apart.
But even the mundane town in which Wanja arrives was so so hard to name. First off, I didn't want to choose a name that already exists, because that would have been weird. So research like I did with character names was not an option and I had no idea how to go about it. For quite some time the town didn't have a name at all, I just called it 'ABC'. Not knowing though annoyed me more and more as the story continued and it was really frustrating because I couldn't think of anything. At all. I mean, where do you start. It was just a blank for too long.
So finally I thought, let's do it like you did with the character names and note down 'traits' of the town. In the end I had words like 'welcoming' or 'gripping'.  So I thought that the word 'hug' applies. Then I went from 'hug' to 'hugging' and made it sound town-ey with 'huggington'. But because it is a very very small town, actually on the verge to being a village, I called it 'Little'. 'Little Huggington'. And I like that. It sounds cute but also has some sort of meaning if you like.

It is even harder to name the 'fantasy places'. They have to sound different to distinguish them from the normal ones like 'Little Huggington' but I don't want them to be too fancy because I hate that. I haven't yet come up with a way to create these sort of name, because, like with all the other names, I want them to _mean_ something and not just be a funny sounding composition of letters. So, to be honest, there is a place that is only called 'MW' and it's really eating me up, because I am struggling to find something that satisfies me.