Naming your dolls

Personally, I really don't like common or plain names most of the time. Of course what that means by common/plain name is based on personal opinion. If I feel a doll would fit a common name I would spell it in some ridiculous way but it would still be able to be read the same nonetheless. Usually I do the stereotype thing first and search "unusual names" on google. If i'm not satisfied I then look up names of different origins and county. If i'm further displeased, i'll take a word I like, any word, smash it with another word I like.

 

I sort of get inspired by the doll sculpt and name them according to what I think they look like- if that makes sense. And to be honest, some of them have never gotten past the name of the sculpt. But sometimes a name just 'comes' to me and then that's the name of the doll.

 

Usually, every single doll that ends up in my wishlist is going to be one of my characters if I buy them, so I already have names for them. But usually, naming my characters is the hardest part, which leads to... weird situations xD

My main character's name is Hibiya, and then I discovered that Hibiya is actually a place name! I can't bring myself to change his name though, but considering that he is half-Japanese and his parents should have known they were going to give him a place name I can´t help but to laugh.

 

I like common names, but not so much in my native language xD One of my girls got an Irish name, one got a Greek name, two were named in a somewhat universal way, so that their names have equivalents in many languages and I can call them in both my local language when I speak to them (yes, I do that) and in English when I write about them. My new girl will have quite a plain English name, too.

When it comes to choosing names, I just go with whatever matches the doll's face. Most times I immediately know the name, but keep struggling to find a better option. Which hardly ever works and I stick to the first idea ^^ The only true exception is my Erin, who at first was to be named Rowan. I still think Rowan suits her, but alas - she's Erin now.

 

I currently have two bjd's my first doll is named Flora which is actually the sculpt name, but I loved the name so I've kept it. My second doll doesn't have a permanent name right now. Her sculpt name is Silf , but I don't care for the name very much so I'm coming up with ideas for names. I bought her a new wig and a new pair of eyes. It will make it easier for me to come up with a new name for her.

 

So, because I am an artist and I like creating characters (and have a whole slew of characters I want physical representations of) I pretty much just find dolls that are really close to my already existing characters and then turn that doll into that character.

At least, that's the dream anyway.
I haven't gotten to the actual turning a doll into an OC yet.

I got my eye on the Iplehouse Claude though, he looks strikingly similar to my favorite character of mine. X3

 

I have picked out the name for her, when I can buy her. I already bought the domain name for her, too, lol.

 

I usually name them after characters I like, or search for Japanese names!

 

Personally, I just look up a lot of different names and eventually one just kinda sticks to my head and that's the only name i can see fitting them. As for when I name them, it depends, when I got my first doll I had a list of names to choose from and when I saw his face only one name came to mind and that's what I named him. With my second doll I had it picked before he got home.

 

I usually go with the company name or a shortened version of it.

 

I'm still getting the hang of it. Right now I'm waiting on a ton of dolls and they all have names based off the "vibe" I get from looking at their sculpts... they haven't actually arrived though. If my OT dolls are any indication, I'd guess that they're going to name themselves when they actually get here.

For example, one of my dolls renamed herself Eugenia because while she was shipping to me she was stuck in Eugene, Oregon for like 5 days.

 

I like writing (if I can put my mind AND WILL to it) and coming up with stories, from D&D adventures to movie scripts I can never correctly format, ha. For my dolls, I chose names that I previously researched for such stories... for the most part, though, I simply go with a name I came across and liked. For a few of my resin boys I've used names of original characters of mine, but it's not as though I'm shelling such OCs: it's the other way round in fact, as I've modeled my characters after the physical appearance of my dolls bearing their names.

I should add I usually thought of a character before getting a doll, and that includes choosing a name beforehand. It's happened to me that I've gotten a doll whose aesthetics I liked, only to find myself unable to bond with it. With the exception of one doll, all BJDs I've sold over the years were unnamed and character-less for that reason.

 

Usually, i make me inspire from her, when the doll comes home ^_^

 

Sometimes I'll use a baby naming site to come up with a decent name, but I think keeping the sculpt name is alright! Other strategies I use is pulling together a bunch of syllables until they sound good together.. it is a creative way to come up with original names since you can make up pronunciation and everything!

 

Jin Bo Mi

She is a korean doll. "Jin" is my surname after korean translation.

 

I used to be very picky about naming my own dolls, mostly because I considered it a bit embarrassing not to have a name for an own doll. I used to plan the name long before the doll was even ordered, but as soon as I knew what doll would be next, the name came along with the whole style I planned. They happened to come to me naturally, but sometimes I only knew the letter it should start with... then I would go on the naming websites and look for names from different cultures untill I found something fitting.

Nowadays I am less strickt about this rule, sometimes my dolls go around without any name for a long, long time... And some work for me with their company-given one.

 

I have many dolls but only 3 have have names
My first doll is named June. Her stock photos had golden tones and reminded me of June. The second doll with a name is Joker because I modded him to be the Joker. My last doll with a name is mini Vince because he looks like my husband when we started dating. The tinies have names but those may change along with my other dolls whose names I came up with but they don’t stay with

 

I never really know a doll's name until it's sitting in front of me. I always kinda brainstormed names while waiting for them to ship, but I couldn't pick one until I actually saw the doll. I ended up picking the right name for my second doll, Belle-Marie. My boy was a different case. I was sure his name would be either Vincent or Aiden, but then when he arrived and I saw him in person, I knew his name was Denzel.

I'm waiting on my Peak's Woods Vampire Dorothy (Emerald Castle). I'm thinking her name is Edelweiss, but when I finally get to meet her it might be totally different!

 

My boy was named after the Lannister Jaime from GOT. It's weird because their personalities are nothing alike, yet they both suit the name so well.

 

I take inspiration from the things that interest me and perhaps play with the words or spelling.

 

So my first doll was kind of a feeler I suppose. She matched the criteria I was looking for (small, sweet face, durable and second hand.) so I bought her with no idea what to do with her. Her face up from her previous owner was hard for me to look past at first.. (thankfully I have a great dolly friend that helped me with re-doing her face!)
After she was re done and her personality began to come through I named her Momoko. (After the main character on Kamekaze girls) because she's a bratty lolita lol

My second doll was different. She was immediately beautiful and I loved her the moment I saw her and snatched her up! ( lol ) when she arrived I looked at her for a long time before deciding on the name Prism (after the single on my favorite SHINee cd). She is a fashionista with a love for music and culture. Momo is just a HUGE otaku.

I love my girls~ eventually I want an army of stylish sassy cutie pies :p

 

Oh how I suffer over this! I find naming my dolls extremely challenging because I feel it's so integral to their character, and I'm literally angst-ridden when I can't find the perfect name for one of them fairly quickly. When this happens I'll pull out all the stops...I'll ponder, research name websites, and get creative with combinations until I finally come up with the perfect name. I simply can't rest until I do! Their names have to match their storylines like Lord DeWinter, Second-hand Rose, Bellamorte, and even Lemon Meringue. I have some dolls with made up names too...like Euphemera and Imaginaria. Whether they're simple (like Georgie) or more elaborate and fanciful (like Barrio Luminaria) they simply must convey the true essence of that doll's character.

 

Usually, they just come to me in one of those "You look like an X" or "You feel like a Y" moments.

Some exceptions are River, who was named after my dear dog who passed away shortly before I ordered him, Pansy, whose name comes from Ophelia's line in Hamlet and is a reminder to myself to avoid impulse buying when I'm stressed, and Ylva, whose name was chosen because it means "she-wolf."

 

I create OCs, and then find doll sculpt that's closest to my design

 

I don't usually name my dolls, just keep the sculpt name.

 

You believe, I got my first 4 years ago and I gave his official name last night. I use the name based on a person who I respect and feel good with him in the personal.

 

I'm a writer and an comic book artist, which means I just use the charcters of my books and comics to name bjds. So when I get my iplehouse Amy, she will be just be the main female protagonist of my comic Der Mausritter...

 

my two dollies both have japanese names: Airashi (meaning adorable, really suits her, cuz she is a sweet lolita) and Okami (meaning wolf, cuz i want him to kinda be Moon Moon) so i would go to google translate and translate a word to japanese.

 

I am excellent at choosing unique names in the Sims games, but I always suck at naming dolls (fashion dolls etc.). I'm stuck now on my first BJD girl. I had no idea of her character or name before I ordered her. I've been pulling together her character and style, but I have no idea of her name!

I think I will have to have her in my hand before I know her name. And my last doll, my Mum named her aha.

 

I used the site Nameberry to help me name my girls. For Simone I just looked at the various lists on that site and copied names down that I liked until I had a shortlist and chose from there. Simone is a name I've always liked. Some other names I considered were Camille, Estrella, and Laurence so I decided to make the first two her middle names and the latter her surname. Simone Estrella Camille Laurence. I had her named all picked out before she arrived. For Zea, I wanted a name that started with an X or a Z so to sound alien. I had not picked a name by the time she arrived. That evening I was browsing Nameberry and the name Zea just felt right.

 

I'm horrible with names... I named my first one Jane... like jane doe because she doesn't really have a name yet.

 

Oh man, I have a hard time coming up with names. I think I come up with a name after I get the doll so I can see how I'm dressing it and what its style is. I don't actually own any dolls yet but my sister and I have a plan for BJD twins and she already has the name picked out while I had one but I keep forgetting it so it's probably not the name I'll use for the BJD once it's made.
Unless I have a name I really want for a doll, I will probably name it after I get the doll.

 

I typically create the names after I think of a character personality and/or look. The names tend to connect with an aspect about them, so if I have a character who has a fierce personality, I might look up names under sharp or fire meanings and see which connect.

 

I'm honestly give my dolls horrible pun/jokes name based for how they look or what they represent. Very corny when I think about it. For example, my Volks Renee has the cute cat smile. I named her Meoh, for Meo in meow. I plan to get another cat doll and name her Mel. Another pun for Meow.

 

It takes me a long time to come up with names, sometimes months! Normally I just think really hard about what name would suit the character the most and use name generators. Once I forgot my doll's name after I finally came up with one so I had to go through the naming process all over again...

 

I am a huge fan of Japanese names because I love Japan and the culture.
But yesterday was very funny because I showed my little 5 year old niece a picture of my 5 plapico dragons which don't have names yet. She asked me how they are called and I could only say that I still search for names because they are pretty new and need some blushing.
So she decided to give them names by her own. Now my little dragons are named after her brother and friends of her kindergarden. XDD
Paul (her older brother), Lilly (one of her best friends), Sören (her love ^.~), Laura and Justin (two other of her best friends). But don't ask me who is who now. I only remember that my grey Ashes Plapico is Paul. XDD

 

I just look at them and the first name that connects me with them or what they look like is what I end up picking. However, there are some dolls that I can never name.

 

Don’t know if I should be asking here but I’m really interested in knowing whether people name their character before your doll arrive or eventually come up with the name after receiving them?

I named my kids once but they got a character renewal and I’m giving them new names

 

Rarely do I get one of those "aha!" moments with names right away, most of the time I hem and haw over several (usually very different sounding/looking) names. My first two I came up with fairly quickly (couple weeks to a month), but my SD is still nameless... after like 2 years, whoops.

 

I try to go on what I jokingly call spirit quests. I drive to differant old small town cemeteries and browse names. It works pretty well!

 

I usually try to shell my characters that already have names. A lot of my characters were named after people I met that impressed me in some way or close friends of mine.

 

The name of my wind doll just suddenly came to me one evening in bed, Fiona suits a redhead as she is.

 

I really like going with a theme when it comes to names. Flowers, herbs, minerals, colours, constellations, fruits, foods, etc. I've always gone with very specific themes for my pokemon when I start a new game, and I've always enjoyed that aspect of playing pokemon- figuring out what flower/gem/whatever suits this and that pokemon the most based on type and appearance. So now that I've scrapped my original idea for my doll crew I kind of want to go with the same naming convention for my dolls.

(I really like flower names, so I will probably go with flower names... lol)

 

naming them is so hard!!! I've had my pukifee rin for 2 years and still have no name set for her been calling her by her sculpt name

 

i feel like the naming process of my first doll was similar to op's. i didn't write or plan out a character for him before i got my dp oz, so all of my decisions came after the fact as i was throwing different options around while defaulting to "oz" in the meantime. i think i settled on "anglade" after his look and sense of style began to come together for me!

 

When it comes to naming dolls that aren't shelled OCs, names start popping into my head once I see them fully painted. The off topic doll I have that came with a faceup from his previous owner had a bit of personality to it, and kind of inspired a couple of names that I played with until one stuck. The two I've painted came to me as I painted them and kind of "got to know" them in a way. I might have luck with that since I used to look at a LOT name books all the time back when I did roleplay, but sometimes you can just look at a person (or a doll) and they look like a certain name.

 

Do you all have a name set for your dolls? Or are you like me and need to see them and get their personality first before a name comes? Also, most dolls already have a name. Do you keep the name? I have one doll that I kept the name.

 

I like to let my dolls name themselves. I'm terrible at coming up with names. Two of my dolls are named a variation of their sculpt name (Yul is Yuli, Mei is Maeva) and at least two others took a very long time to name. Even now, one if them's name isn't fully set in stone because I can't decide what he looks like. Another I just did a pole on my instagram and the name with the most votes of the 4 I liked became his permanent name. Then there's two more dolls who were named after characters from comics I liked, one who was named by a friend, one whose name is a bad joke (Fynn likes fish and fish have fins, huehue), and a last one who I actually googled a Korean name that sounded western for.

Considering I've had 3 dogs named Missy, I probably shouldn't be naming things. ._.

 

I've never kept the sculpt name for my doll.
I usually name characters with baby name sites - magicbabynames.com is my favorite because it gives you names similar to names you already like!



I also name a lot of characters with a bit of a theme, a lot of my dolls have either old fashioned sounding names, plant based names, or old fashioned sounding plant based names!

A few of my crew include:
Ichabod, Rosalind, Marguerite, Hawthorne, and Henrietta.

 

This reminds me of a question comic artists always get about whether they come up with the character or the design first. And most of the time everyone has the same answer, myself included: you switch between characters. Sometimes you have the inspiration for a name, sometimes you have one for a personality. If you like the first part, stick to it, and the next one will arrive naturally. If you come up with a personality first, look through name meanings and symbolism if needed and find one that matches. If you come up with a name first, just think of what personality you would associate it with. Using the doll's given name tends to work as a temporary placeholder, though.

 

I’ve done some of each. At least 2 have swapped/stolen another's name (different than re-shelling)...and a couple retain their sculpt name or have kept it as part of their name. As I’m looking over our collection, one needs a name...I was not sure I’d keep him so he just got called his sculpt name for convenience...one has been re-shelled so her old sculpt is now a nameless doll with no character, and one got named but has never progressed with character development so he lingers there in dolly limbo with no story thread at all when he was intended to have one.
We have 1 full doll I received in a trade and she has no name or story at all after...hm....3 years?

 

The girl that I've got on order is specifically for a character I already have, Aeron - but when I was creating the character, her name came after.

It really depends on what your purchasing habits are - do you shell existing characters or do you buy sculpts you like and see what happens? Either way is perfectly valid.

 

I've got a bad habit of getting a name in a brilliant flash as I'm falling asleep...And since I don't wake up enough to write it down, it evaporates by morning!

 

My three minifees have been named by my best friends. Since we're all writers we tend to have a reservoir of names we like, and I felt that it was a way for them to be a little more involved in one of my favorite hobbies, even if they don't "get it." Two of them are now really interested in seeing what I'm doing with them after they named them, haha. Also knowing that they're named by my best friends makes me bond with them even better and move on to the rest of the character process, rather than having me constantly question my own naming decisions.

 

Once my Minifee arrives, well, I plan to give her the name that my boyfriend and I plan to name our future daughter. We plan to get married by the time we are in our LATE 20's and have our child once we are in our early 30's hehe I pray and hope things will be fine.

 

I'm extremely lazy with my doll's names. Usually if a word comes to my mind while creating them, I will use that word or a name that sounds like that word as their name.

If all else fails I'll just come up with a stupid pun

 

All my dolls when they arrived i have a few names in mind for them, so i will call them and see which 1 remember, but i do have dolls that had a name change cos i kept calling them wrongly.

 

What a coincidence that this pops up because I'm right in the middle of naming some dolls that are coming my way. I have different strategies, sometimes I have a set name from the beginning and some time the name takes some time to develop. Like I start with one name and then in ends like a totally different name. I do try to capture a story with the names and love to mix in some folklore references if possible. I also think it's important the sounds and pronunciation fit the chararcter. And then Chek if theirs not another hidden meaning to it. For example for my latest souldoll Junia I loved the sound of marmosa. Thought it was a random name but when I googled it it was actually an oppusum species. Since she's more of een insect/moth character I just could not give her that name anymore. However I do like the sound flow so I'll probably end up with a altered version.
I think I'll never keep the sculpt name, just because it doesn't feel natural most of the time and not personal. Also try to learn to refer to my dolls with their names and not company names, but that's quite hard sometimes in discussion

 

For the three I currently have, I thought up a list of names beforehand. One of them I ended up giving a completely unplanned name on the spot, because after looking at her all assembled, the name just fit. I highly doubt I'll ever be tempted to keep a sculpt's name. Some dolls have absolutely gorgeous sculpt names (Mindulrae, Narae, p much any of Bimong's sculpt names lol), but customizing dolls is fun, including their names.

 

I use the same system for naming my dolls as I do for my pets. I just look at them and let names come to me. The first that pops up is what it gets, and I never regret it. They all fit wonderfully. Though once, a cat was named a non-name as I suddenly had a craving for Ravioli while naming...