Okay, I posted another thread about this but now that I have a little bit better idea of what I’m looking for I thought I might narrow it down a bit. The character I need named is a main character in a novel I’ve been thinking about for several years, after being inspired by a painting I saw. I tried to start the story several times but I kept hitting a dead end because I didn’t have the main character properly developed. I fixed that, but now I can’t find a name that fits her at all.
If you want to see more background on her and why I need this sort of name my other thread is titled In desperate need of main character name help and it has more detil
So here is what I need. A word name, a subtle moon connection is okay (things that mean silver or glow for example) or connections to the tides which the moon affects. But nothing that directly means moon as her life and her worth have been mapped by her connection to the moon goddess. Also word names that mean things like spirit or soul would work or eastern oriental names that have these meanings and might translate to a good word name. Hopefully that sort of narrows down what I want/need.
[name]Alina[/name]: bright and beautiful; light
[name]Briana[/name]: strong, powerful
[name]Livana[/name]: moon (I know you said you didn’t want it to mean moon, but it’s my favorite moon name)
[name]Chiara[/name]: light
[name]Lux[/name]: light
Ariene: silvery
[name]Lena[/name]: light
[name]Phoebe[/name]: shining, brilliant
[name]Naia[/name]: to flow
[name]Marinna[/name]: from the sea
[name]Genevieve[/name]: white wave
[name]Jennifer[/name]: white spirit
[name]Lilith[/name]: spirit of the night
Airlea: ethereal
[name]Anastasia[/name]: resurrection
[name]Zahira[/name]: shining, luminous
[name]Ziva[/name]: radiant, aglow
[name]Hope[/name] this helped a little. I found most of them on lunarberry.com
I appreciate the ideas but what I need is a word name (i.e. [name]Moon[/name], [name]Silver[/name], [name]Sky[/name], [name]Tide[/name], Zenith, [name]Blue[/name], Smoke etc.) or an oriental name that has a meaning connected to the moon (very subtly tho, nothing that directly means mon) the tides, or the soul and can be easily translated (from Chinese, Japanese, or Korean) to an English word name.
You might be better going with a non-word name in this particular situation. I’m a huge fan of word names, personally, but it would be hard to find a word name with the subtle connections you’re asking for. But if there is an in-plot reason for this girl to have a word name, you listed some yourself, which would be a good place to start. Here are a few more:
[name]Crescent[/name]
[name]Bright[/name]
Lustrous
[name]Pearl[/name]
[name]Sterling[/name]
[name]Heaven[/name]
[name]Ebb[/name]
Flow
Flux
Current
Apex
Eclipse
An indirect way of evoking the moon may be using the names of natural satellites of planets other than [name]Earth[/name]. Instead of [name]Luna[/name], for example, you could name your character:
Phobos (of [name]Mars[/name])
Deimos (of [name]Mars[/name])
[name]Dione[/name] (of [name]Saturn[/name])
Europa (of [name]Jupiter[/name])
[name]Io[/name] (of [name]Jupiter[/name])
[name]Callisto[/name] (of [name]Jupiter[/name])
Amalthea (of [name]Jupiter[/name])
[name]Miranda[/name] (of Uranus)
[name]Titania[/name] (of Uranus)
[name]Ariel[/name] (of Uranus)
Umbriel (of Uranus)
Nereid (of [name]Neptune[/name])
Despina (of [name]Neptune[/name])
Those are a few of the more feminine names of moons in our Solar System. Most of the lunar names in our system were from Greek and [name]Roman[/name] mythology, though the moons of Uranus were named after Shakespearean characters. Since all of these names already have stories behind them, you can weave their original tale through your story, incorporating elements of it into your tale. Personally, I’d go with [name]Miranda[/name], since I love the story of The [name]Tempest[/name].
The reason behind the word name is that everyone outside the Imperial [name]Palace[/name] speaks one common tongue. They all have word names as this strips them of their heritage. There are no longer names that origonate anywhere outside of [name]East[/name] [name]Asia[/name] and only royalty are allowed to bear these names and trace their famalies back to before the war. This leaves everyone under Imperial rule without any sense of identity outside of what they can take from the world around them. When the [name]East[/name] [name]Asian[/name] Company first took over a thousand years ago, before they became the ruling imperial family they realized that much of their strongest rebellion came from those who clung most strongly to their heritage and refused to be absorbed by the new ruling power. So they began to destory records and wipe out individual histories. Now, a thousand years later, those not tied to history by the royal family are decades removed from any knowledge of their own heritages and they can’t even begin to speculate as everyone is named in one common tongue from the world around them. They could be anybody from anywhere. It’s difficult to speculate your history if you don’t even have a name to go by.