Animation Source Forums

I have noticed that a lot of people have had a hard time figuring out what name to set as there character. I am now going to give out how I work my names out for my characters in time.

Now what I originally started out with for name giving was putting random characters together. I'll give you an example. When I started to work on my very first wolf-dog, (Phali) who was Balto's Brother on my first day here, It took me at least 20 minutes to figure a good name, but in that 20 minutes I worked out a few characters to go together. What his original names was Fali, witch sounds like Kalle but with a F instead, so I wanted to change a bit of a mix I know -ali- was going to be in it some how so I changed the f to a -Ph- and there you go, -Phali- Not even a word, random characters put together.

Here is another example, this goes with my most popular, and my most developed character so far. Koak, How did I get the name -Koak-? A lot of people asked me where that name came from. Well one day while trying to type with my chin on a forum game I accidentally spelled Kodiak wrong. My original name at the time was Balto-Kodiak, and I believed I spelled it as Balto-koak, and there you have it, a accident that was lead to a good future for one of my characters, I have a name before that if you didn't know, I was called Baltofluteplayer before I was really good on this site and good at the characters.

On the my other way of thinking of names, I have band and reading class (Most people do) and we have a lot of cool words that we find out, and usually those words get put in to some of my characters. like Fortissimo, Though he was never really released to the site only a Idea that was never released.

And there is my little guide for people needing help with names on Animation Source. I hoped this helped out and if you do really need some name help send me a pm to my account and I will get to it as soon as I can.

Well, it's an interesting way to pick names, and a heck of a lot better than using a name website everyone uses just to pick one that's hardly in the same ballpark as say, the times, the country, etc.

As a matter of fact, a few of my characters have made up names too. Jij, which is basically her own little pet-name for Janine, even tho realistically it's not.

Jeck is another, because his name was "Jack" but previous owners were Russian and pronounced it "Jeck".

Dappy, who's entire family is compiled of made up names, but what runs in his family is that they're a combination of both parents' names (Scandal + Tappy = Dappy).

Kaleboo, which is just a funny way to say "caribou" and her parents happened to be a part of Aleu's pack, who rely on caribou to live. Life > Caribou > Kaleboo > Life

Another way is actually do research on how people or animals were named in a particular era. Like what Jerseycaptain brings up is that many dogs in, say the Balto world, commonly had European names and occasionally Russian, and were hardly ever if at all named Native American or Inuit names.

Alot of my characters are wolves (animal-like but still have their human-like traits) and I think it's a pretty good reason to use Native American or Inuit names.

Some of my characters even have word-names. Like Moor, Lion, and Seeker, because they're from Africa. Not in a sense that makes them seem less advanced, but because their names in African are difficult to spell and pronounce, so their names are the meaning of the name.

I've discovered recently that animal-like characters, who wouldn't normally "speak" would use certain sounds as names. For instance, a character, who's a dog, was known as Rugaru, and the name kind of sounds like it'd be easily pronounced by a dog, or it sounds like a growling noise a dog makes.

If one wanted to be historically-accurate in one's character creation (granted, that's a pretty rare thing on this site anyway), the fanciful, science-fiction-y/fantastical names based upon things like teen love vampire stories, anime cartoons and LARPing would end up right out the door. In the real world, most dogs (sled dogs or otherwise) were named usually using names of European foundations and/or English-language descriptors. A few quick real-world examples from Alaskan history (and there are countless others):

• Fritz -- German origin, a contraction of the name "Frederick" meaning "peaceful ruler"
  
  
• Balto -- a common surname (last name) among the nomadic Sami (Laplander) people of Scandinavia and Russia.
  
  
• Billy -- German origin, from the name "William" (English version of "Wilhelm") meaning "protector"
  
  
• Tillie -- German origin (female name), meaning "might" or "power"
  
  
• Scotty -- Scottish origin, meaning "from Scotland" (dog named for famous Alaskan racing musher A.A. "Scotty" Allan)
  
  
• Jack -- English origin, meaning "God is gracious"
  
  
• Fox -- English origin, meaning "fox"
  
  
• Sigrid -- Norwegian origin (female name), meaning "a beautiful victory"

Common name selections reflect groups of immigrants that traveled to Alaska back in the late 1800s and through the early 1900s...especially Scandinavians, English, Irish, Scottish, French, Germans and Russians. The Russians, of course, had settled in (and aggressively conquered parts of) Alaska during the 1800s. So many names would reflect those origins. One could also occasionally see Native Alaskan names used, but this was not as common as many people on this site believe it was...or as it is nowadays in naming Siberian Huskies and Alaskan Malamutes.

I'm actually the same way with some of my names - using the name meanings, I mean.

I'm just like you two [Cat & JC] when it comes to wolves and dogs. I like them to have some sort of meaning to them. For example, my version of Balto's parents, Anyu and Tulugaq, both have names that reflect the natives of Alaska [since they are both characters in Alaska] and their appearance. Anyu's actually has two meanings - one is the Inuit meaning, "snow meant for a specific purpose" and the fated truth that she's Aniu's reincarnation [hence why they sound and nearly appear alike] - and Tulu is about the same - tulugaq means "raven" in Inuit, he's called "the Black Raven" by nickname, and he eventually is seen as a raven once he and Anyu die [pffft, spoiler? Naw, it's more of a shout-out to WQ.].

To be honest, I have no problem with more fanciful, fantasy-esque names in wolf packs, loners and other animals. It really does help them seem more exotic and strange compared to the world of the tame names... but don't get too carried away with it! Meanings still play a big part in my eyes, so don't forget that either! To give another example: the pack from WQ that Aleu becomes the leader of is named the "Kawa" in my fics; Kawa means "river" in Japanese. It actually references the line in the WQ song, "The Grand Design" where the clan sings that they "were born beside this river..." and I thought it sounded important enough to have them name their clan after that fact.

So, yeah... Thought I'd add my two cents to the topic.

- Juuchan17

That's usually what I do when naming a character, but I'll get my inspiration from just about everywhere. Also, I don't stop thinking of a name until it fits the character.

Has anyone else here had it happen where a randomly-chosen name unintentionally has something to do with the character's personality? That's happened to me several times.

Ara - who was killed off to develop the plot - means "altar" in Latin.
Alphyr - who was jealous of another character - comes from an ancient Greek word meaning "wont of power.
Paena - who was a spy - is a combination of the Latin words "poena" (punishment) and "paene" (almost).
Sango - who was Balto's father in my version of the storyline and saved Aniu from bleeding to death - is a combination of the Latin words "sanguis" (blood) and "sanat" (healing).

All four of those were entirely coincidental (or were they?). Any thoughts?