If you enjoy writing science fiction (like me) you may have found yourself stuck many evenings trying to make up character names that sound different, but not dumb. Last night I happened upon Behind the Name and it’s already helped me break through a bad case of writer’s block. I want to keep the site on hand, so what better way to remind myself than posting it on my own blog.

I was looking for variations on the name “Joseph”, so I did a quick search of the site.

Here’s the really cool part:

VARIANT: Josef (German)

DIMINUTIVES: Jo, Joe, Joey, Jojo (English), Jo, Sepp, Seppel (German)

FEMININE FORMS: Jody, Jodi, Jodie, Josepha (English), Josée, Josèphe (French), Josepha (German)

OTHER LANGUAGES: Yousef, Youssef, Yusef, Yusuf (Arabic), Hovsep (Armenian), Joseba, Josepe (Basque), Ioseph, Ioses (Biblical Greek), Yosef (Biblical Hebrew), Ioseph (Biblical Latin), Yosif (Bulgarian), Josep (Catalan), Josip, Joško, Joso, Jozo (Croatian), Josef (Czech), Jozef, Jef, Joep, Joop, Joos, Joost, Jos, Sjef, Zef (Dutch), Jozefo, Joĉjo (Esperanto), Joosep (Estonian), Jooseppi, Juuso (Finnish), Xosé (Galician), Iosif (Greek), Yosef (Hebrew), Josephus (History), József, Jóska, Józsi (Hungarian), Seosamh (Irish), Giuseppe, Beppe, Peppe, Peppi, Peppino, Pino (Italian), Iosephus (Late Roman), Jāzeps (Latvian), Juozapas, Juozas (Lithuanian), Josif (Macedonian), Hohepa (Maori), Józef (Polish), José, Zé, Zezé (Portuguese), Iosif (Romanian), Iosif, Osip (Russian), Josef (Scandinavian), Seòsaidh (Scottish), Josif (Serbian), Jozef (Slovak), Josip, Jožef, Jože (Slovene), José, Pepe, Pepito (Spanish), Yusuf (Turkish), Yosyp (Ukrainian), Yussel (Yiddish)

I felt like I’d struck gold!

I won’t bother to explain myself any further. Some of you will understand my excitement. Others won’t. Those of you who don’t…well…let’s just call me a geek and leave it at that.