I'm struggling with coming up a name for my female character! I need medieval, unusual sort of name... any have any ideas of where I could find some good ones or how to go about making some?

Jossie

Close your eyes and type letters at random. Open your eyes and you'll find something amongst the apparent nonsense.

Sk.

Try finding a name you like then rearranging the letters of that name or thing. I have done that in my book by rearanging the letters like from caramel I got Melacar. Try it you might find it intresting way of working it.

Jossie

Ooh, the most fun part - naming your characters! I love it!!! I have a file full of male and female names as I think of them. That way when looking for a character nae there is a huge untapped well just waiting for me.

We talked about this before where sometimes you try to force a name on someone and it just doesn't fit. In my book I had one name for both my hero and heroine but found myself typing another name for each about a thiurd of the way through the book. They didn't like their names and managed to tell me their real ones pretty fervently!

I also typed 'medieval names' into yahoo and came up with lots of sites. eg:

http://www.panix.com/~mittle/names/english.shtml

Baby name sites are good for unusual ones as well but you have to wade through the Andromeda's and Thadine's to find anything you might like. Though of course if you write fantasy then these would be A OK!!!

http://www.babynames.com/V5/index.php

I keep the good sites bookmarked for the next time I need them.