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satanfemme · 3 years

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pre-made killjoy name generators r good and fun but personally I think the best way to come up with killjoy names isn’t to (completely) rely on any kind of fill-in-the blank with generic words. so if you’re struggling with coming up with names, here’s some things I do/keep in mind when coming up with good killjoy names quickly:

(though ofc these r just what work for me personally, I’m not saying there’s a right/wrong way to writing killjoy names!)

(under a cut cause it’s long and just a whole lotta nothing for my followers who aren’t writing killjoys lol)

there’s 3 main “categories” of killjoy names in canon:

first name, last name (ex: party poison; jet star; val velocity)

three names / a title + two names (ex: dj hot chimp; dr. death defying; agent cherri cola)

single name (ex: vaya; volume; newsagogo)

note that when there’s more than one name these are sometimes (+ more often than irl) alliterative, reminiscent of early comic book superhero names (ex: lois lane, bruce banner, ect)

names can be made up of real words (ex: fun ghoul), real* names (ex: tommy (chow mein) ), or they can be newly invented from existing words/phrases (ex: neonfuck). and, obviously, a name could be any combination of those, as is the case for tommy

*your “real names” don’t actually have to actually exist irl! korse has a “real” name from the city, but “korse” still isn’t actually a name. coming up with words that sound like they could be names (especially in a sci-fi future setting) but don’t really mean anything at all irl, would also work for this!

sometime, killjoy names are preluded with “the”, most obvious examples of this are “the kobra kid” or “the girl”.

All of that established, where I usually start with a new name, if I have nothing to base it off of already, is fantasynamegenerators.com and randomwordgenerator.com. the former has a wide variety of real and fantasy names (including categories from pop culture) so there’s a lot of choices depending on what specific style you’re looking for, and the latter lets you generate words by syllable count, first letter, or what part of speech it is. I also use thesaurus.com too if there’s a specific meaning I want, and when trying to find a real name that starts with a specific letter I usually google “names that start with...” (sorry I don’t have a website for that lol).

however I don’t one-and-done the generators. I generate words/names to establish a starting point but then build from there.

for example, if I’m looking for a killjoy with three names, I might start with fantasy name generators and use a few of the generators until I get a single name I like. then I might switch to the random word generator and find a noun and an adjective, one of which alliterates with the real name I already decided upon. then after that I’ll still fine tune the name as a whole if the rhythm** is off or if I don’t like how one of the words fits when it’s all put together.

actually doing the above for a minute or two, the names I first generated were robin rotten and tongue, but by keeping the parts of it that I liked and trashing the parts I didn’t, I adjusted it to be “Ruby Rotten Throat”. if I were actually using that name in a story I might further edit it as I want, for example hyphenating the last two names or shortening it to “the rotten throat” depending on what characterization I were giving this character themself (are they genuinely intimidating as a person? or just picking out a name that “sounds cool”?)

** wrt rhythm, tbh I’m not smart enough to offer concrete advice other than “say it out loud and make sure it ‘sounds right’”, but finding a catchy rhythm is pretty important. in canon, killjoy names can be any combination of syllables (ex: 2+1+3; 1+4; or ofc just 1) and with the longer names I wouldn’t even say they have to alternate between stressed and unstressed syllables necessarily (though cherri and dr. d’s names definitively do, so if you’re struggling with rhythm that’s an easy way to make something sound better!), literally just edit it until is sounds good and is easy to say.

as with all writing, you want to think about what the name actually says about the character and their characterization. but unlike most writing, most killjoys picked out their own names. this is something to keep in mind, asking yourself what words/names they themselves would be inspired by (killjoys they idolize? things found in nature? sci-fi tech?), what kind of name they themselves would like (fancy names? snappy names?), and what kinds of words/names would be realistic for the character to know or not. (a killjoy in the zones probably wouldn’t be able to name themselves “new york”... unless they collect books and discovered the name in one of those!)

most killjoys are very young. 40 is seen as very old and most of the canonical joys we see are teens/young adults regardless of timeline or interpretation. this doesn’t necessarily have to influence the names you choose for them, but it can.

specifically, don’t worry about a name being too “cringey” or anything like that. if someone had the freedom to name themselves literally anything at 14 years old, it’d make sense for the name to be kinda dumb (and it’d make sense for them to still keep it years later, considering they live in a society where names like that are the norm)

in fact, if you’re struggling, I suggest trying to get into the mindset of ur character given the freedom to name themselves anything with no limits, at whatever age they’d have been when naming themselves!

ok yeah that’s about everything I can think of off the top of my head, I just know killjoy names r hard for a lot of people to come up with, but I find them easy when I follow the above advice, so! hopefully some of that can help some of u too? love and light

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