To the Dreamers

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a while ago I read a topic on dreams and elaborate daydream worlds, something I have and always have had, but I suddenly noticed something.

in all of my dreams, day and night ones, never have I ever given any character a name.
And it's not like they lack names, it's more like giving names is something that does not exist in the worlds inside my head.

do your characters have names?

All my characters had/have names in my daydreams, but not always in my night dreams. In my night dreams I've even had children without name.

Whether or not my characters have names depend on their closeness to my "avatar" character (the character that most strongly correlates to my actual person). Those that interact most with the avatar are eventually given names (though some of these names are flexible and change; the names before stable as the characters become more consistent) ; those who do not interact with the avatar often are typically not given names (though they may if another "main" character identifies them).

In nocturnal dreaming, only dream figures who represent people I know in real life or named daydreaming characters have names.

They have names, but I don't write them down for fear that someone will ask me what I'm doing...

giving characters names is always a drag to me. its something i have to ponder thoroughly and names rarely 'feel right' due to my associative synesthesia. i only really give them names if i consider creating a proper story revolving them, and even then i might leave it blank. i cant remember practical examples of night dream characters having names either.

If a character in my dream has a name, I ask them

I usually write my day dreams down into a novel form, so my characters do have names. I usually just come up with their names from the top of my head. I like doing things that way.

In dreams I don't always know their names. I've only had one dream where I was actually another person.

What do you mean by "characters"?



My "night" dreams don't have too many people in them, most of the people that are in them are people I don't know in my "awake" life. My night dreams are mostly an exploration of different places, buildings, landscapes, forests, oceans, other planets, a sense of past lives/memories, and deep conversations with other people I find in my dreams... some of these places I've been visiting in my dreams since childhood, and every so often I'll find my self in a new place. When I am in a dream, and I'm aware I'm dreaming (lucid dreaming), I often ask these people in my dream if they know they're in my dream, or I will tell people in my dream that they're actually in my dream and what they think about that....When I ask or tell people this in my dreams, sometimes the people are totally aware that they're in my dream and these people I usually have conversation with, other times I'll not get a response from them at all or they become confused.


Day dreams are totally different from my "night" dreams. I mostly day dream in concepts about things, completely getting lost in concepts and visualizing different ideas. When I was a kid I'd often day dream about numbers and patterns, and lots of visualizing "inventions" when I was a kid too. I never day dream about people or "characters", it's always in regards to "things" or ideas. ....now that I'm a bit older my day dreams are like visualizing different dynamic systems in nature, or becoming immersed in past memories, and still lots of visualizing concepts and new ideas for "things". Hard to explain.


I'm very much into dreaming...I've been lucid dreaming since I was like 5 years old. I would also spend my entire day in class day dreaming, my body may have physically been there, but my mind and thoughts were elsewhere .

Zwapp, you've described exactly what my dreams are like.

I know some of my characters in my day dreams very well, but no one has a name. But like you said, it is not like there is a lack of names.

It's the same with my dolls and toys growing up. If they came with names then I used them, but most of the time they just didn't have names. I had maybe around 100 playmobil figures (I always just called them "people") and every single one of them had a very distinct personality and it was like I really knew them really really well as people. Yet none of them have names.

Even in real life I never, or almost never, think of people by their names. I just refer to them in my head as who they are and what they l they look like. It's like their names are not part of who they are for me. And I can never remember people's names. I sometimes forget my family members' or close friends' names!

The characters are usually characters from a novel series so they have the names given to them in the series. When I was a kid and I'd replay scenes from the playground, the kids would have the names of the real kids.I like names and I'd always chose a character whose name I liked. At some point in childhood I had an obsession with etymology of names and I asked my mum to buy me a baby names book but she wouldn't so I would look at them and memorize the meanings and origins of baby names in book stores, libraries, drug stores or anywhere I saw one of those books.Near the end of the obsession she did buy me a small one in a drug store, I was very exited. We didn't have internet at home when I was that age.