Starsreader asked Lois McMaster Bujold:

I always find the names chosen for all characters so marvellous and fitting to each occasion. where do you find them or from what sources do you make them up / create them? Penric, Ingray, etc, just lovely!

Lois McMaster Bujold Names are always a burden to me. When working in a made-up universe like Chalion or the Wide Green World, I often brainstorm potential name lists in advance of the story, so that when a new character pops onstage I don't come to a dead stop for three days trying to figure out his/her/its name. I have a prefab list of dozens, and just run down it till one pops out as feeling right for that individual. This also allows me to create a more uniform sense of language/name groups and so on. (Taking a region on a map, chopping all the names into syllables, and recombining them can lend a subliminal sense of language/culture unity to a name list.) In working in the Vorkosiverse, I am very happy to now live in the age of Wikipedia, where I can pull up lists of authentic ethnic Old Earth names at a mouse-click. Beats the heck out of the days when all I had was the local telephone directory and some syllable-scrambling.

Ta, L.

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