Names

Picking the right names for my characters can bog me down.  I want my main characters to have perfect names, whatever those are.

Recently I named a character "Ken" but after two chapters decided he really wasn't a Ken but a Mark.  So I did a find&replace.  That worked well until I re-read chapter 1 to discover that my main character had not "taken a walk" but "taMark a walk."  So be careful with those name changes.

I like to use the Social Security popular baby names page, which shows me the top names for each year.  That helps me find a name appropriate to the age of my character.

And I also found a list of most common surnames, in case I can't think of those.  That list is at Mongabay.com.

In my current WIP, my main character is named Addie.  After my kids asked, "Why THAT name?" I had to admit I had no good reason.  Who knows?  We may be doing a find and replace soon.  Or not.