how to come up with good character surnames/last names?

Question

hey so i need some advice on how to come up with a good last name for my characters. I'm always having this problem, i had it with first names too because all the ones i made never seem to fit, then i stumbled across good ways to find some. But now I need to find last names. I read somewhere to used a phone book, but is there an alternative way? [especially because people WILL certainly know if you made one up, lol]

Answer 1

Ahhhhhh. As a fellow writer, I have a lot of different methods. I usually start with a letter that goes with the first name. Just some letter that fits and looks good. Then, using that as my starting point, I flip through a Latin-English and a French-English dictionary under that letter. If I find any fitting meanings, I change the letters around to form a word that fits more with the first name, or that fits with the character's nationality and background. I also have this ridiculous complicated "code" that basically takes one word and changes it into another. And there's also the situation where I just play around with letter arrangements.

Answer 2

Hey, write it how you want to. Place names are fine. The majority of medieval names were place names. A lot of modern surnames are just altered versions of place names or job titles. Just don't make it so cliche that your readers groan internally. A good principle is that Leonardo of Vinci was a real person. Sir Baron Lionheart The Good of East River Beyond Dale was not.

Answer 3

Watch the credits at the end of TV programmes.

Answer 4

the phone book!
film credits
old census records
your school yearbook!