Regency Romance: Developing Character Names

Part of the fun of reading (and writing) Regency romance is the characters’ names. If you write Regencies, chances are that you’re always searching for names you can use.

How do you develop names for your Regency romance characters?

I use a book by Sherrilyn Kenyon, The Writer’s Digest Character Naming Sourcebook, for inspiration. It includes names from many different languages. Mine is the 1994 hardcover edition, which I’ve used for years and can recommend. If you want to learn more about the book, it’s out in both paperback and Kindle formats, in a 2010 edition.

I don’t know if the 2010 edition is an updated version; I may buy the Kindle version to find out.

If you use Scrivener, Scrivener has its own name generator, which you’ll find in the menu under writing tools.

Of course, there are many online character name generators.

The Regency Reader offers Regency character name generators

Visit the Regency Reader for the Regency Male Name Generator, which gives you names for the Regency era. The developer found the names via:

… lots of combing through Debretts, Leighs, and muster rolls) to generate names used in the Regency era. A couple are fairly unique, but I included them for diversity, because the truth is the vast majority of the populace was named Mary, John, Jane, Robert, William, or some of the other common names

Male character names it generated:

• Septimus Grey
• Colin Payne
• Luke Tierney

There’s a female character name generator too on the same website. Female character names it generated:

• Anna Lucas
• Clarissa Burvile
• Georgianna Fuller

Play around with the generators; mix and match names, and be inspired.

Other online character name generators

If you search Google, you’ll find many name generators you can use for your characters.

I enjoyed this character name generator, because it offers you a choice of character type, as well as other choices.

The Random Name Generator is fun too. When I chose the “Hippy” category, it gave me: Sunshine Sundream Rivertrance… I think I’ll have to write a story to suit this name, I love it. 🙂

Then I chose Norse Myth, and received: Loki Signý. Two excellent names.

Of course, you can use these name generators for many purposes. You can use them to get ideas for naming a baby, a new pet, a new business, or a new product.

Have fun with them.