One of my favorite parts of starting a new story is naming all the characters.  I like to give my characters names that reflect their goals or traits, and I also try to avoid using the names of people I know well.  Luckily, there are lots of names.

One site that I used a lot today was:

            http://www.behindthename.com/

This neat site allows you to search for name by gender, origin, meaning, initial letter, popularity … all kinds of stuff (just click on a letter or type of name and then click on the yellow “Refine Results” button).  You can also look for names with a theme (intelligence, strength).

It has a related site for surnames:

            http://surnames.behindthename.com/

For name popularity in the US, I also like to look at census data:

            http://www.census.gov/genealogy/www/data/1990surnames/names_files.html

The danger, of course, is that I have so much fun looking at names that I don’t do any actual writing.  Time to get back to work!