-FOREWORD-

I've found in my years of fanfic-reading for THG that many of the names chosen by authors for their tributes are pretty shameful. I often see people who name 10 of their characters things that would be considered completely normal to us, and that's simply not how things roll in Panem. I've seen enough 21st century names to send me into a rage strong enough to type up this fucking document to help you give your characters more fitting names, and maybe even more. To put it simply, so many of you guys are making your tributes like kids that you'd see on the streets in 2017, with names like Sarah, Ally, Karen, Damian, Andrew, John, and the like. Oh, the Johns. I've seen too many, at least 12, which is outrageous.

Now, of course, some of this is fine in tiny doses. After all, we have Annie Cresta and Johanna Mason as canon names in the books. But these kinds of names definitely aren't the majority in canon, and they shouldn't be in your fanfictions either, at least when they're about THG. I'll admit, I have a few characters like this, but it's VERY purposeful. My rule isn't to resort to a 2017 name if you can't think of anything else, resort to them if it's the name that simply best fits the character.

For example, when I was naming Alex (shameless self promotion alert, I might use references from my own writing to provide examples), nothing else sounded right. I thought about it for weeks and nothing fit him except Alexander, but I was reluctant to give him a non-Panem sounding name, especially considering that I have 2 out of my 6 friends are named Alexander and both go to my high school, which has 300 people. But, however, it fit his character. Alexander means defender, and it just sounded right for him, especially considering his place in the story. His name, along with Gee's (aka Genevieve, which means white wave), are very intentional and if they were just names on the street that I liked, I would have searched harder and found something different.

Obviously no one has to take my advice, but if you pick your names this way, it makes them much more fitting to your setting, story, and characters, and I've found that if a story has loads of characters with 2017 names, I take it less seriously and might not even read it, as opposed to one with Panem names. Happy Hunger Games, and may the odds be ever in your favor!