A problem with trying to use unique character names across my draft stories is that I have more than 600 characters.
During formatting of drafts, I began using the French name Guy as a placeholder for male names that were duplicated in other stories.
To create an inventory of potential names, I got a listing of top 10 female baby names in 2024 across various country. This gave me 80 new unique names that I had not already used. Many are variants of used names or feminine forms of male names that I have used previously. Only India and Turkey searches offered a list of names of which none had been used previously.
France: Agathe, Emilia, Louise, Mia, Romane
Germany: Ida, Lotta
Greece: Dimitra, Eirini, Katerina, Stavroula, Vasiliki
Egypt: Dina, Fatima, Laila, Mariam, Nour, Salma, Yara
India: Aadhya, Aadrika, Aaradhya, Anvika, Avni, Ishita, Kiara, Mishka, Navya, Saanvi
Ireland: Eabha
Japan: Himari, Hinata, Mei, Mio, Nana, Rin, Sana, Sui, Tsumugi
Mexico: Regina, Renata, Valentina, Valeria, Victoria
Nigeria: Ade, Adebayo, Adeniran, Adesola, Ayomide, Ifeoluwa, Kehinde, Olemide, Zara
Romania: Anastasia, Andreea, Antonia, Ioana, Maria, Stephania
Russia: Alina, Dasha, Irina, Katya, Nastya
Scotland: Millie
Turkey: Asli, Ayla, Derya, Elif, Ipek, Leyla, Nur, Selin, Yasemin, Zehra
UK: Florence, Freya, Isla, Ivy
With effort, I cleaned up character names across my draft stories.
Total named characters 685. Also create a list of 235 unassigned names from around the world that I can use to name future characters.
I also created a process to manage character names across story drafts to make sure different characters don’t share the same name.
Jaycee Woods 
Leave a comment