might look a bit weird in your search history, but it’s the most helpful and informative site i’ve found for naming characters. search by letters, meaning, nationality, and syllables, among other things. has intriguing name lists — from harry potter names to oscar winners.
helpful especially for characters in specific era’s, or in specific demographics. holds archives of the united states’ names dating back to the late nineteenth century. also charts the popularity, and other statistics, of names.
very, very helpful for last-minute surnames. wouldn’t recommend for any important, significant, or completely solidified characters, simply because there’s no telling the nationality or origin of the name that comes up.
tracks family names as well as given names through nationality, ethnicity, origin, and popularity, shedding light on the subject of why. huge insight on the origin of naming and what it really means for the individual
some more helpful links
On of the things I find tends to be poorly researched on this is that not everyone has a surname, particularly not a perminant one that gets passed down (and too a lesser extent not every culture does middle names) and people from certain cultures assume that other cultures are like theres so people must have family surnames.
most surnames that aren’t perminant family names tend to be of the son/daughter of father’s/mother’s name format, and if you go back far enough virtually everyone will have a name done in this way (or alternatively descriptors or titles or of [place] in the place of a last name) and in cultures that have switched over to family names these have turned into surnames like english ending in -son, scottish starting with mac-, spanish -ez ending, russian -vich is also this i believe. (we also get last names from the descriptors or titles or ‘of place’ names that came before in a lot of languages)
lots of cultures have switched over to a family name system (sometimes not exactly volentarily), but for some thats more recent than others so its deffinitly worth checking when that happened and when your story is set (for example in wales son of (ap or ab) and daughter of (verch or merch) style names were the norm until the unification act in 1536 – and maybe thats later than you’d think it’d be).
and then the arabic ibn or bint are still standard in parts of the arab world (saudi arabia mostly nowadays i think). You will also see arabic names (and in places influenced by arabic naming customs) that are fathers name then grandfathers name. Iceland still uses the traditional [father/mothers name]sson/sdottir naming system. hebrew names (ben/bat) are still used within jewish comunities even if perminant family names have been imposed outside of that at some point in history (which took more force some places than others and happened at different times in various places)
its also worth finding out in what situations different names should be used, for example what the formality difference between just fathers name or father and grandfathers name being used in arabic/arab influenced names, or when this kind of name is said along with the family name (russian names i think do this?), or when in a hebrew name you end with mothers name and when with fathers etc
fearlessstateofmind backup 