Naming your dolls

As a rule find when naming things that it's best for me not to deliberate too long on the name or I'll never decide. Though as of late I've found that I keep gravitating towards similar sorts of names so I've been looking through 'baby names' in order to get further inspiration.

 

If a doll comes with a set character, I'll tend to keep it unless I'm changing the doll past recognition--my American Girl Samantha will always be Samantha, my Girl for All Time Matilda will always be Matilda. Otherwise, the names I come up with rarely come from a set place. I have noticed that I trend towards plant names. Out of all the dolls I have personally named, 3/5 are plants of some kind: Linden, Cherry, Hyacinth (versus Lauren and Jesse).

 

I have dolls ordered with no names yet and I am having the worst time coming up with names for them. I have read that alot of people wait for the resin to speak to them so I am hoping that will happen if I can't think of names before they arrive. My head just jumbles up names and all I can think of are names from characters for rp stories I have made in the past.

 

I make the characters first, so I think of the time period and personality and search, popular names of that time or names that mean " x ". I do sometimes changed their names after they arrive because it doesn't match their physical form.

 

I'm still in the process of buying my first BJD but all of my other dolls are named after historical European royalty. I have Elizabeth after Elizabeth I, Annie after Marie Antoinette, Mary after Mary Queen of Scots, and Jane after Lady Jane Grey.

I'm thinking of naming my first BJD after Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa (Marie Antoinette's mother). I want to move away from British and French names for a bit.

 

As a few people have mentioned in the thread already (some of them more than a year ago...it's kind of astounding to me how long some threads go on here), behindthename.com is a great resource; you can search names by meaning, by ethnic origin, by gender, et cetera.

 

I've had my girl for over a year now and still haven't come up with a name for her. I think a big thing holding me back is that, I'm not 100% sure if I want to keep her or not.

 

I think I've mentioned this on the forums before, actually! Technically, my first named was Vit, who is (currently) not a BJD. I bought him in Prague and wanted to give him a Czech name. Vit ("life") was one I found on Behind The Names that was pronounceable for me, plus it's related to the name of one of the churches we visited there. So of course his boyfriend also had to be Czech. I went with Otakar, a variant of Odovacar and meaning "wealthy and vigilant," because it sounded pretty and was easy to pronounce and spell by everyone. Their surnames were stolen from wikipedia, and were chosen because they apparently mean "He wanted anyway" (Přecechtěl) and "Won't tell" (Nepovím.) They are vaguely plot relevant. So they were chosen for accessibility and setting, which is also how most of my future dolls will be named.

Valli's name was originally Veralidane, since she was a character doll, but when I changed it I wanted to keep the "v" sound. I messed around with "Vallie," a nickname for another book character I found cute, until I got this name. I still kinda want to change it again to match her new (... third) character, but eh. Her surname, Snohetta, is from a Norwegian mountain.

Winterberry was originally named Eclair, since she was part of a larger plot where all the anthros worked at a cafe and were named after deserts. When I took her out of it, I wanted to keep the food name. So I went with a berry that was uncommon, cute, and found in one of my potential locations (Norway, Iceland, Labrador, or Newfoundland.)

So my naming system is a mix of "it was cute" and "it was available"...

 

I love reading about names!

All my dolls have plant-based names. My first doll, a Doll Love Yoyo, started the pattern. For reasons I can't entirely remember, I names her Anise, which is a type of herb. When I ordered my second doll, I decided that she'd have a leafy name too. I spent all summer looking for a name for her an finally found it while on vacation: Sitka, a type of pine. Then I was hooked! Next came Fearn, the ye olde English way of spelling fern.

Sometimes I pick names purely based on how much like the word, but my two most recent dolls have names that are based on their appearance. George is named after the genus of catnip - she's an Island Doll AnAn, which is their car anthem bjd. And Yanagi has an aesthetic based on historic Japan - yanagi is the Japanese word for willow.

 

I always think of the personality of the character and then go deep into the baby name websites and see what fits.

 

I also keep a mega-list of names! sometimes it's real names, sometimes it's things I mis-read or mis-hear, or mis-spell sometimes it's just sounds I like together

When I actually go to name my dolls, I generally think of they're background. For example, Umi, I wanted to be American, so I decided her mother was Japanese and her father American, which led to a cute Japanese first name and very simple English surname (Summers) For my wizard fellow, I knew I wanted a "fantasy" name- meaning made up, so I just rolled some sounds around until I got a cool looking name that I could make a neat nickname from. (Kajadreem aka. Jader)

Right now I'm saving up for a girl for a naga I have in mind, and I want her name to be something fitting a snake-like race, and I got the name Zenobia from a book and I really like it, but it's just not been sticking, so I've been going round and round with some of the other names on my list. Names with a prominent "s" or "z" and no hard consonants like "t" ... (side tracked...)

I actually try not to use names that have too literal of a meaning for the doll's character, because, I know it's kind of silly, but I like the idea that the dolls are not "destined" to live up to their name (like Sirius Black, named after the dog star, who turns into a black dog...) but I do use naming sites sometimes, if the character in question comes from a "real world" instead of a "fantasy world"

 

My dolls have basically chosen their own names! It doesn't seem to matter how much I think about what to name them before they arrive; once I see them and hold them in my own hands, they figure out their names for me! As soon as I had Alice home, all I had to do was look at her face to know that was her name!

 

I am terrible with names. I even have trouble naming my written characters. My usual method is to just roll names off the tongue and hope one sticks. And if I have trouble, I give them a "temporary" name, which often sticks and turns into a real name. I also see what sorts of nicknames might result. For example, my girl definitely wants her nickname to be Ollie, but I had a bit of trouble decided whether her name should be Olive or Olivia. I decided Olive fit her better, but sometimes it flips to Olivia anyway. Also annoying is the fact that though I finally decided to name my boy Elliot, he sometimes tries to take the name Oliver, which I decided against because they are so similar (maybe he doesn't like being an Ell named Elliot?).

I don't look much at name meanings (who perfectly suits the meaning of their name anyway?), but I often look at name origins, especially if the name is particular to a country. For example, I almost named my other boy Bichun, only to find that I couldn't really find much about the name and what little I did find didn't suit him. So I changed it to Ji-han, which I got from a character and tweaked to different, though still possible spelling. It's a name that is also having a bit of trouble sticking. Maybe when I have them all complete, things will work out.

TL;DR: Just read the first sentence.

 

I generally have two methods I use for naming which are either
1. Sometimes it just comes for me. I'll just look at him/her and think 'They're definitely a ____', and it sticks. Honestly this happens more often than I realize. I have named dolls names I don't even like very much purely because it just suits them so darn well.
2. I'll name them a variation of their product name, or in rare cases use the actual product name

 

So I'm currently picking names for characters, one for a new head I just got and one for a head I'm planning on getting. I'm just using fantasy name generators (both elves) and picking out ones I like but some of them have meanings which actually fit with my characters. I was wondering if you picked your names cuz you liked them like me or if you specifically looked for ones with a certain meaning?

 

I didn’t pick my doll’s name for its meaning. I just liked the way it sounded and thought it fit his character well. That’s generally how I name all of my OCs

 

My first (off-topic) doll ended up getting her name be a variation of her sculpt name. I generally don't like just calling them by their sculpts, but for her it took me too long to pick a proper name so I found I just couldn't call her something else but her sculpt.

After that I've been more adamant about coming up with names before I doom myself to repeat what happened with my first doll.
I'm dreadful at picking names, but thankfully the setting I've given my dolls gives me some nice leeway now.

As for meanings I'd say they do have some, but often it's very convoluted so I don't expect other people to pick up on them.

 

I've only shelled my existing characters so far, so they already had names. But for my characters I mainly look for names whose meaning represents the characters most important traits and the sound of the name matches their look/asthetics.

For example one character is a shapeshifting crow merchant who travels the desert but despises the heat so he is only active at night. Because of his clothing style and his origin I looked for arabic names and ended up with "Zill Sara" which means something like the "shadow which travels at night".

 

Welp, how much changes in half a year.

I changed Valli's name to Dagny - it means "new day," and I had decided that she needed a proper Norse name, to go with the fact that I revamped her character into more of a Viking-type. Her full name is Dagný Vígþorndóttir.. because it "sounded Norse" I guess. Winterberry also got her plot changed, so that she's now a Japanese spirit. Her name is Fuyu, because I liked the winter imagery.

As for my new kids... Hideyasu was named because I hecked up, many years ago, trying to say the name Ieyasu (as in, Tokugawa) and merged it with Hideyoshi (Toyotomi)... So, Hideyasu. That might also be the in-universe explanation, as well. Soujoubou's name is from mythology, since he's the Soujoubou. Vissarion's name was chosen years ago, because it's pretty and a little strange for a Russian name, and all the names in that verse are weird and Russian. (I only discovered that it's the nickname of a creepy cult leader recently (woops.)) Nadezhda and Boris' names, by contrast, were chosen because they're pretty normal Russian names. Boris's patronymic, Aristanovich, was chosen because I wanted to show off a fantasy Kazakh background, and it can mean "lion," along with Boris meaning "snow leopard"...

 

I really like cute food names....I plan on getting a doll that has really chubby cheeks and I'm going to name her mochi because her cheeks look so soft and chewy ^ 0^ I'm having trouble thinking of a name for my other doll though, luckily she wont come for another month so I have time to think haha....it should be something that will go with mochi since they will be cute little sisters~~