When I was a kid, I had some really good names picked out for my twenty or thirty children that I’d need to use them all. Luckily, I became a writer, so I get to use them now. My main characters often tell me their names, but when it comes to secondary characters, I usually need some help. #16 in my article, Twenty things that are used over and over in Ya is: Authors showing their age by naming characters names they grew up with (i.e. Debbie, Lisa, Kimberly, Alice, Linda, etc.)

To avoid that, I go to the popular name base on the Social Security website. You can search by name and see its popularity over the years, see the most popular names for the year your character was born, and other cool stuff. It’s fun though, so don’t get caught up there too long and forget to write!