Names

In The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, two characters who get married have names meaning Prince and Princess; here, obviously, their names indicate their relationship to each other. In The Fault In Our Stars by John Green, Augustus - the name of a Roman emperor - is referred to by his full name when he is strong and confident, and when he is weak and pitiful he is simply called Gus, which sounds more like the nickname of a child.

Character names needn't be as meaningful as this; any name has connotations. A name like Felicity implies that the character is quite feminine, whereas Taylor as a girls' name suggests the opposite. A plain name such as John might be given to an equally plain character.

A story I'm currently writing is about faeries (the ones with courts and queens - not the ones that like flowers and live at the bottom of your garden), so I've been using a lot of Irish names for characters. One character, a hobgoblin, is named Beagan, meaning small one, because hobgoblins are typically represented as small faeries; Eliana, whose name means sun, rules the Summer Court; a selkie - a type of water faerie - is named Muirin, meaning born of the sea. For most of my characters, I searched for a name that would suit them, but in some cases it was a name with an interesting meaning that inspired me to create a corresponding character.

So it's always a good idea to look up the meaning of a name before you use it for a character. Baby name websites are good for this, and for getting ideas for names in the first place. I spend more time on baby name websites than can be healthy.