On Writing: Naming Characters

Perhaps one of the most frustrating aspects of writing is choosing a name for a character, especially for people like me. And I think it only gets worse when attempting to write within a canonized, pre-established universe. I'll give you an example that has plaguing me for the last four days straight. 

Not everyone is a huge Trekkie around here, but I've come up with a rather interesting idea for a story about Data's creator - Noonien Soong - and his ancestors. In the canon universe, Noonien's great-grandfather is Arik Soong, a man who lived approximately 125 years before Noonien. This leaves two empty non-canon generations for me to fill in. Now, me being the anal writer I am, I want the names to make sense both lineage-wise as well as what the names themselves actually mean.

After a bit of research I discovered that the name Noonien is a romanticized version of the Chinese name Nunian, meaning "diligently remembering". Arik is Norse for "great leader". So, two generations for me to fill, and basically I'm now left with no way to narrow down my choices into one lineage because one name is Oriental, and the other is European. This leaves me with trying to make the meanings of the names make sense for the actual characters.

Time to add another factor. When figuring out how many years passed between the two canon relatives, I encountered a problem with the length of time, and basically I ended up being backed into a corner so that the only choice to make was that Arik Soong had to die at an extremely old age and clone himself just before he died. Not the solution that I wanted, but changing the canon dates would have pissed me off even more. The clone would be implanted with all of Arik Soong's current knowledge, thus leading to my choice of Kaeto Soong. Kaeto is a romanticized version of Cato, Latin for "all-knowing". I thought this name was particularly fitting since the character would be born with all of his "father's" knowledge already. I changed the spelling for aesthetic purposes; it just looked better to me.

Since I have decided very little about the character of Kaeto Soong's son, I haven't had much to go off of personality or history-wise. For now I have settled on Alem, Arabic for "wise man". Should Alem turn out to be a fool as I write, I may choose to change it to better suit my own anal tendencies, or maybe just leave it as is for ironic purposes.

But just that, just those two names, were the result of four days of research and decisions on my part. I have an entire piece of paper filled with name after name after name, all with various ways of spelling them and lists of descriptive traits from the two canon Soongs as platforms to beginning searches. 

Four days, two names. 

Sometimes being an anal writer really sucks. But then again, it may pay off in the long run. I guess I'll just have to wait and see.