The You Name It PDFs introduce handy lists and tables useful for generating interesting NPCs, locations, plot points, and hooks of all shapes and sizes.
You Name It: Elven Names & Family Names includes 100 male elven names, 100 female elven names, and 100 elven family names. Names are listed on a percentile table for quick-and-easy generation.
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Each installment of Abandoned Art’s „You name it“-series so far is 3 pages long, with one page devoted to front cover, 1 page to SRD and 1 page of content, which provides a massive name-generator list.
Generally, the series is system-agnostic and provides just what it promises, i.e. names – 100 male ones, 100 female ones and 100 titles/clan/family etc. names, depending on the race covered, so let’s go through the first 4 pdfs, shall we?
Elven names need a tongue-twisty characteristic, something to underline their ephemeral nature and musical languages and the pdf delivers with slightly celtic-sounding names like “S’aelmyth”, “Tat’hanien”, “Gwennelyn” or “Venalthielle”. Not all names feel like they belng to the same culture, though, as almost Greco-roman-sounding names like “Apathaneon” or “Nephensian” get thrown into the mix. I would have preferred more coherence here. The family names this time around once again consist of two nouns for names like “Ravenclaw”, “Nymphsight” etc. – over all, these are superior to the dwarven clan names as they lack truly problematic entries – though “Thaneseeker” would probably have suited the dwarves better…
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting in each installment are top-notch, I didn’t notice any glitches. Layout adheres to a no-frills standard with 6 columns featuring the names in one massive table. Layout-wise, I consider this slightly sub-optimal – separating the one table into three distinct tables, one for male names, one for female names and one for the family/clan/surnames would have enhanced readability and made the page look less jumbled. The pdfs of this series have no bookmarks, but need none at this length.
So…how to rate this? Well, on its own each of the installments delivers names and solidly so, for a fair price. The thing is…Raging Swan Press has a little pdf called “So what’s the Demihuman called, anyway?” that delivers 50 male/female family name entries for elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes and haf-orcs – for 2 bucks, which, if you do the math, is simply the better deal, so the low-price factor won’t feature in my calculation of the verdict. Combined with the table-issue mentioned before, that’s a detrimental factor that costs these pdfs some ground. That being said, here is my verdict for it:
Elves get perhaps the coolest names, but suffer from a linguistically ununified nomenclature that feels at times slightly jarring. Hence, my final verdict will be 4 stars.