This weekend I began working on a made-to-order story that I plan to give to my newsletter subscribers in December. At the start of any story one of the challenges is naming characters, titles, and places. For historical romance they should be authentic, attractive, and, especially in the case of titles, wholly fictional.
Christian names are relatively easy. I try to find ones I haven’t used before to avoid repetition, too keep my stories straight, and to avoid filling my stories with John, James, Sarah or Elizabeth, which were common in the 19th century and still are. I’m inclined to save Jane, Ann and Sal for servants. A search for “Regency names” or “Victorian Names” helps, but you have to take care to use ones with historical intent. Baby names list slip modern names—Tiffany or Brooklyn for example. On the other hand, few of the 2024 top baby names would be out of place in a Regency novel. I may use a few.
Surnames are a bit harder. A similar search “common surnames in the UK 1800-1820” works. I sometimes use Google Books. I try to find city or shire directories for the location I plan to use. There are an abundance of authentic surnames for main characters, secondary characters and servants. Sometimes I can even nail a particular profession.
AI, of course is everywhere, and occasionally useful. A fun and easy way to do it is to use a Regency Name Generator. There are a couple of them.
Naming places is fun. Maps help. Pennsylvania and New Jersey were settled primarily by English settlers and both town and street names reflect that. (We have native people names too, but that isn’t helpful for this exercise.) Small towns are sometimes useful, and street names work well. Ashmead is a street near me that you may recall appeared as a village in one of my series. Another technique is to use place name elements and create an entirely new name that sounds feasible. The village in The Angel’s Announcement is situated in a village called Astburn. Ast means east and Burn means stream or small river.
Titles are a bit more tricky, if only because you have to be even more careful not to use an existing one. I use some of the same techniques I use for places. Eastern states are full of places named for existing noble titles, so local maps don’t always help. It is tempting to use an existing place on the map of the UK and create a previously non-existing title for it. Sometimes US towns do work, though. The Earl of Clarion in the Ashmead books is named for a town in Pennsylvania. I always search my proposed title to make absolutely certain it does not already exist in any forms. If I propose Earl of Whatnot but I find a Baron Whatnot, I still don’t use it. It turns out that AI name generator can come up with them too.
Enough fun! Back to editing Book 2 for the Honor at Heart series. But first, coffee.