Behind the Scenes: How author Aaron DeMott names his characters

I’m bad with names. Bad at remembering them, and bad at naming things. When I wrote A New Threat, one of the characters was Australian. (I knew this because he spoke with an Australian accent. 😉 ) What he didn’t come with, was a name. So, I Googled “Most common Australian names”, and picked “Jack”.

That was all well and good, until I edited the book, and found a little over half the times I mentioned this character, I’d typed “Jake”… uh, okay, I guess his name is Jake…

Every once in a while, I’ll get lucky and a character will come with a name… sadly, that doesn’t happen often. Only one character in A New Threat came with a name, Ambassador Fluke. Why him? Well the whole character is an in-joke that only my brother would get. (It was a name stolen from a stuffed dolphin… only said dolphin was General Fluke, but that didn’t fit this story. But I digress…)

I kinda cheated a little with the Psygen names. I thought as soon as people read the book, they’d get the Psygen naming convention and say either “that’s neat”, or “that’s lame”. Neither has happened yet. Let’s just say all the Psygens are named for someone. Well, that’s not quite true. Two of the minor character Psygens have generic names… yet they still fit the naming convention.

If you’ve read A New Threat, can you guess the naming convention in the comments section?

For all the other names in the book, I go to the most used book on my shelf of writing-related books… 100,000 Baby Names.

So, what’s your favorite name in science-fiction, and why?

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Aaron DeMott has had a few different jobs, ranging from computer tech support, to real-estate, to lawn and farm sales and service. He also enjoys photography and reading, and has been a Star Trek and Star Wars fan for as long as he can remember. The Psygen Chronicles, Book 1: A New Threat is Aaron’s first novel. You can keep up what he’s writing and reading at www.aarondemott.com