Help with character names?

[akiratubo]

I'm terrible with character names.  Kitty's Kitty has three main villains, each with their own method of achieving near-immortality, which all involve killing children.  Only one has a name so far.

Elizabeth, a woman of high-breeding from Eastern Europe, bathes in the blood of children to keep herself young.

The other two still need names.  Any help would be appreciated.

Another is an Oriental man who cooks children alive and eats their flesh to gain their life force.  The goal is for the child's heart to keep beating until the last bite of flesh is eaten.

The third bonds himself to a child and feeds directly off their life force.  While they're bonded, the child does all his aging and takes any injury or sickness for him.  He is the oldest and most dangerous, possibly once a shaman of some ancient tribe.  His ethnicity is indistinguishable; he could pass for any race.

The three are working together because none of their methods grant true immortality.  The run an orphanage so they'll have plenty of children upon which to experiment and devise better methods of immortality.  It has to be kids because they have the most life force to steal.

[Mofo Rising]

Fantasy novels have always made me laugh, because they always take normal names and switch them up just enough to be fantastical.

You can't just have some guy named Edward, but if you change it up to be Eddard, fantasy gold!

If it helps, I do remember reading a criticism of Orwell's 1984 where the characters had names that would be significant for their background. Winston Smith's name was chosen because it would be very typical of a middle-class Englishman.

It seems like a good idea to me, track the characters to their background and give them a name that fits. If you want to impart a name on your character that kind of bespeaks their role in the story, take the most evil name you can think of and cover it in a respectable finish.

Whatever you do, don't name them something like Lilith or a Judas derivative. Really, if your characters are strong enough, it won't matter what their name is.

Name them Lisa if you want. If their characters are strong enough, it won't matter what you name of.

But take that Orwell advice. Where did they come from? Name them from there. Everybody has parents.

[Skull]

Intresting concept. I love the idea of false vampires!!!

It depends upon where and when.

I could picture this story taking place during the Great Depression (1930's), since familes were forced to drop children's in orphanage.

Oriental man, sounds like a henchman, he could be called Fu or Wang or David or Yaoguai.

The third guy sounds like main guy, Mr. Howard Bram (HP Lovecraft and Bram Stoker) and his original name is Strokercraft.

[Nightowl]

If all else fails, let your fingers do the walking...use the phone book.

[Menard]

If you are stumped for names, you can do an online search for name generators, like for vampire or fantasy names.

Here are two:

Vampire Name Generator

Fantasy Name Generator

[Flick James]

Menard made a good point with the generators. You can go online and find many name randomizers or generators. They're all over the place.

[Flick James]

Oooh. Oooh. Oooh. I just found this random name generator that takes names from the U.S. Census and randomly generates names. You can even set the level of commonality from common names to totally obscure. I set it to totally obscure and got some funky names like Fausto Nachazel and Broderick Blute. This is awesome. Check it out.

http://www.kleimo.com/random/name.cfm

[Criswell]

Oooh. Oooh. Oooh. I just found this random name generator that takes names from the U.S. Census and randomly generates names. You can even set the level of commonality from common names to totally obscure. I set it to totally obscure and got some funky names like Fausto Nachazel and Broderick Blute. This is awesome. Check it out.

http://www.kleimo.com/random/name.cfm

Thanks! i've been looking for a good name generator for some time.