June's blogs are going to be a little different from usual. I decided to do a little more fan service for readers who have decided to subscribe to my mailing list but only received a bunch of blogs about writing that isn't related to them. For a while now, I will concentrate on providing some behind the scenes about my character creation process and inspiration since many people, including writers, are curious about my thought process and inspiration <3
If you have any blog topics you'd like to see me cover, do let me know! If I can do it, I will schedule it accordingly.
Patreons to credit: -This could be you. Join now.-
In case you did not know, this is my Ball of Nothing's entire Character Profile list. It's available for viewing for anyone with a link, so click it! Also, Ball of Nothing's Wiki still needs readers to maintain so feel free to contribute! Also, this should already be obvious but if you don't want spoilers, please don't continue reading past this point.
#1 History
Many times, we are given great names with impactful stereotypes thanks to the accomplishments of people from the past. I imagined many Mozarts and Hitlers before these famous people appeared and created the stereotype of a talented composer as well as a terrifying politician.
History is a great way for me to pick the names of my characters as they are mostly relatable. In Ball of Nothing, I used names like Merlin (although he is fiction) and Steve Jobs. It's a no brainer and honestly, I'm too lazy to recreate whole volumes of character data for side characters. For those of you who were asking, yes Hua Tuo is a historical character and not actually a fictional one.
#2 Mythology
Perhaps this is unique to only Ball of Nothing. I certainly cannot imagine using Jesus as a regular name in some other school-harem type of novel or even Zeus. However, of the 100+ characters I have written in Ball of Nothing, a lot of them come from mythology. The Gods in particular as well as the Angels and Devils. Heck, even our mascots like Jack 'o Lanterns and Unicorns have been transformed into characters such as Jack Lantern and Uni Corn.
#3 Religion
For those who bothered reading on the official site aka Webnovel, you would have seen that long-ass disclaimer and author note telling you that it is satirical and I don't give a lot of respect to religion in my work as it is a cosmic joke about the whole idea of "God created the world".
Hence, I believe my use of religions and names is justified. Don't get me wrong, I don't just borrow names from religion. I also borrowed names from existing classics in fiction. Mei Chaofeng from the Legend of the Condor Heroes is one of those names. Buddha is probably the most famous of them all in Ball of Nothing.
#4 Puns
Here comes the fun part. I'm a lame person with a dull sense of humour most times if not for my absolute adorable and never ageing real-life appearance. I'm very punny and this somehow works for children and men. I'll give you an example of how I punnated a name.
Those of you who read Ball of Nothing would be somewhat familiar with the name Reynald. It should not be a surprise that he is a Manta Ray demon. The tailor who made Zero's customised costume called Grem Lee is a pun on the word 'gremlin'. The blind mole beastfolk girl Jermine? See the 'mine' that was in Jermine? It was intentional and also a suggestion from readers when I got stuck.
#5 Memes
This is the part that got most people. I don't think many of my readers were expecting a dragon to be named "Bob" of all things and I really wanted to leave it like that. Bob is just my favourite minion and I wanted a cute dragon companion for Zero since he was from an egg. However, as I was afraid of getting stoned by angry readers, I modified it to "Bobbinskrier" just so I could keep "Bob" as a pet name.
That it's actually the only meme name I have in Ball of Nothing if you looked closely. For each arc that I create, you'd see thematic names. For instance, look at the gnomes. Apart from Thomas and Wesley, the rest of them are named after vegetables I actually hate. I wanted to name one Onion but it didn't feel right so the finalised version became Pepper, Ginger, Tumeric and Olive. I'm not entirely against pepper but that shit makes me sneeze 100%.
Conclusion...
I can't say that I'm the most creative person or original when it comes to naming my characters. However, I think I'd have no issues with never reusing the names of characters I write about in any book. Probably. I've only written ten books to date so maybe I might reuse one or two names when that number triples in the future. Only time can tell.
If you liked this, do remember to check out all my other books! I might be writing FL now but I still have not given up on Godfather World. I just need to wrap the FL and BL works before investing the rest of my life into Godfather World until it ends. I'll continue elaborating naming process and inspirations on the next blog <3