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Since writing this comic I've resorted to online name generators, looking up random names on Facebook, and even this wacky WeightedLetter Name Generator. I still suck at coming up with names.
How do the rest of you guys do it? Any tips for a struggling fantasist?
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Take the name of two characters or real people that you like and mix them together. Like a cool last name mixed with another person's unique first name...
Alastair MacDirk + Rhogarr Stormblood= Alastair Stormblood or Dirk Bloodstorm.
Another thing I've used is spelling a name backwards and then modifying that to make it sound more exotic...
Amber=Rebam: Rebam, Rehbam, Areh-bam-iri, Serebam, etc.
David=Divad: Divad, Divadas, Radivad, etc.
I use an online translator to translate words into obscure languages
Any good examples? Link to translator? What's the best language to use?
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Have you heard of Gary Gygax's Extraordinary Book of Names, edited by The Creator himself?
I use an online translator to translate words into obscure languagesAny good examples? Link to translator? What's the best language to use?
Just use Google Translate. Use a word that has a semblance to the character and then keep changing the language until a word that sounds cool pops up.
Hunter
Armenian= Vorsord
Croatian= Lovac
Hungarian= Hadasz
German= Jager
Latvian= Mednieks
Norwegian Translations
Bear= Bjorn
Dragon= Drage
Warrior= Kriger
Have you heard of Gary Gygax's Extraordinary Book of Names, edited by The Creator himself?
With that $700 price tag, I'm afraid it's above my APL. :(
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I use a book of Celtic baby names. Some of them are pretty ancient sounding. Although my current character is named after a child I used to babysit plus the name of a historical figure I admire.
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Have you heard of Gary Gygax's Extraordinary Book of Names, edited by The Creator himself?With that $700 price tag, I'm afraid it's above my APL. :(
Is that what they want for it? I missed that. The price was entirely normal when I bought mine (then again, it wasn't from Amazon, and maybe it matters that it was before Gygax died).
I use a random name generator myself, and hit next until I find something I like.
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Emily's Fantasy Name Generators is one of the most comprehensive resources out there.
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I use Behindthename.com for a lot of my character and NPC names. Often I'll get ideas from there and then change a letter or two so that it's not an exact replica of a real-world name.
I use a combination of things.
First get a start with a name generator or from a book or where ever that is close to what you're looking for. Then try rearranging some letters or groups of letters for a similar sound. Adding or removing letters might help as well.
I go here a lot, as well as using Gygax's book of names mentioned ealier.
Though I just take a familiar name and throw in (or take out) some letters to change the look and sound of the name.
There is also the Name Generator from PCGen.
I used some Oxford Dictionary etymologies combined with some Celtic/Welsh/Gaelic words from the On Names afterword from the back of C.J. Cherryh's the Dreaming Tree.
For example, my white-blond-bearded dwarf cleric with 8 beard braids is called Cobban, meaning White Spider in Drowish, his former enslavers. Cob means spider (like cobweb) and Ban means white (like banshee = white faerie).
I'm also a big fan of just combining two words together, like Graydawn Stormwarden, Rawscar Moonthorn, or Tigerlily Fireforge.
I often try to have the name of the character and its class begin with the same letter, so it's easy for the other players to remember what kind of character I'm playing.
I try to avoid a ridiculous amount of apostrophes and other punctuation in my fake words, as they're hard to pronounce and remember. Unless it's for a half-orc/half-Klingon.
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I like the names of Gods and characters from media I enjoy.
Ie. Hanuman is an Indian monkey God, and Son Wukong is an oriental monkey God. So my Vanara is Hanuman Wukong.
I loved the show Taboo, so my Hunter in the Exchange is Deylani and his Roc is Nootka. Doesn't always need to be Clever or spelled right.
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Take a real name, change one letter:
Examples:
John: Kohn, Jahn,Jogn,Johm
Or take two esoteric words or onomatopoeias:
Hollow Graves (Necromancer)
Wink Wonk (Gnome Prankster Bard)
Ash Q'Asheem (Human Summoner)
Fwash Kakoom (Alchemist)
Sching Bastardsword (Fighter)
Look in the index of any book on ancient Greek history.
Alexander the Great's officers' names are a great start.
Place names work as well.
Play around with alternate spellings til you have something you like.
German names as a basis for alternate spellings works well too.
Street signs, or last name as first name. I don't know how many character I've named this way. Wheel of time books or science fiction are good for names, character form book or movies. I have a friend and all his Half- Elves are named the same thing after their elf father how sleeping around with humans. Play on word also work well. replacing letter with certin letter work s for z, or K for T ( Zam instead of Sam or Tevin instead of Kevin).
Bob is a good name.
I think you should call all your characters Bob.
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I have 28 PCs in Pathfinder Society. Here's how I named them. (Wall of text ahead)
1. The Brightsword siblings: "Brightsword" just sounds like a fantasy knight-in-shining-armor type of last name, doesn't it? Kind of like "Brightblade" or "Greenhilt". This is a family descended from 6 generations of paladins, so that fits. Then I gave them stereotypical European "snobby noble" sounding first and middle names like Reginald, Isabella, and Catherine. Of course, Reginald Bartholomew Brightsword VII is the dark horse of the family: He rebelled and became a barbarian under the nickname Mash, which comes from his battle cry: "MASH CRUSH KILL DESTROY!!!"
2. My gnomes: Long, silly nonsense words are best for gnome names, if you're doing typical silly Pathfinder gnomes. Mine are Yzarctihstab Garblenarf, Wizzlefarb, and Salagadoola Menchikaboola. That last one comes from a song. Read the first name on the first one backwards. You get the idea.
3. Meaningful Asian names: For two of my PCs from Tian Xia, I gave them Japanese names. Norowareta Nagagorjo is a nagaji oracle. I got "Nagagorjo" from the list of typical nagaji names (forget if it's in the Advanced Race Guide or Dragon Empires Primer), and "Norowareta" is Japanese for "cursed", which fits well for an oracle. So he's literally "Nagagorjo the Cursed". The other Japanese name is Misaki Hamamoto, which comes from literally googling common Japanese women's names.
4. Qassir: He's a halfling dervish swordsman from Qadira. Given the Middle Eastern theme, I used an online translator to look up the Arabic words for various relevant terms. I ended up going with the Arabic word for "short".
5. Green Beard the Pirate: Because what else would you call a green skinned half-orc pirate?
6. Fictional characters: I have several PCs that are based on fictional characters. Usually relatively obscure TV or comic books. For those, I took their names and much of physical descriptions almost directly from their fictional sources, and adapted their personalities to be similar, though never exactly the same. These are Azkadellia (tattooed sorceress), Celia the sylph, Zoë Saugin (and her familiar, Aleph), Boon Sai Hong (and Po Po the monkey), Utu Noranti Pralatong, Groosalugg, and Ophelia. Ophelia's the most well known and least directly related to her source material, and I gave her the elven sounding last name of Feshal, since mine is a half-elf. You know, until listing them out this way, I hadn't realized how often I do this. 7 out of 28 PCs. I actually thought it was only 3 or 4, before I sat down and listed them.
7. D&D Fantasy trope: Well established in sources such as Dragonlance and Order of the Stick, the concept of last names that combine two short words that are stereotypical for a race is kind of a trope already. See "Brightsword", above. I've used that on a few other PC's, as well, giving them first names that just seem to fit the PC in other ways. These are Julian Lightfoot (halfling), Seamus Luckleaf (halfling, but he's my leprechaun wannabe cleric of Desna who spreads the luck around and speaks with an Irish accent), Molos Pinktusk (tiefling with pink skin like humans, but big tusks like orcs), and Dundar Hammerhelm (dwarf fighter who always uses hammers in battle).
8. Tolkein's orc language: I have a half-orc named Adrianna Dobatsmagru, with an animal companion named Sma Katala. Her human half is Varisian, and Adrianna just sounds right for that. The last name combines the words for "weak", "little", and "woman" from orcish. As a half-orc, she was seen as a runt among the orcs who originally raised her, despite growing up to have 18 str and 14 con. The animal's name literally means "little monster" in orcish.
9. Corin LaDrock: I have no friggin clue where I got this name from.
10. Varg Shelynson: Not sure where I got "Varg" from, but I was looking for something short and simple. The last name comes from his back story of being abandoned by his family, falling in with a bad crowd, and finding religion and new meaning in jail as a priest of Shelyn.
11. Gripplis: Maybe it's just me, but I think these frog guys should have names that sound like they're croaking, not speaking. I have two of them, named Grrprr and Kubbup.
12. Typical racial names from the Advanced Race Guide: See Nagagorjo in #3 above. I also used this with minor modifications to come up with an elf name Erevel Heldanlissil and a ratfolk named Skivrik. I don't remember if those names are actually on Paizo's lists, or if I modified them slightly to come up with something similar enough to fit the theme. But it's a decent place for anyone to start.
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Street signs,
That reminds me. Being in Chicago, every time I ride the red line of the CTA trains, I keep thinking that most of the stop names at the north end of the red line would make good PC names. Except for the Granville and Thorndale stops, which make me think those should be the names of hobbit shires. But don't Jarvis, Morse, Bryn Mawr, Berwyn, and Argyle just sound like they'd be good PC names in Pathfinder/D&D? Those are 7 of the 9 northernmost stops on that line that make me think of fantasy names.
11. Gripplis: Maybe it's just me, but I think these frog guys should have names that sound like they're croaking, not speaking. I have two of them, named Grrprr and Kubbup.
Funny, my preference for Grippli names is that they're basically gentlemanly-sounding names. But I realise I'm an outlier, and throaty names do sound more Grippli-like. I just love my Grippli named Bartleby. Similarly, Halflings usually get Victorian elite-sounding names.
A friend was moving and put all of his stuff in storage. There was a sign at the storage site that said: All pedestrians please use the man door.
My friend decided to play a dwarf named Mandoor Thundersnow (thundersnow being a snow + thunderstorm). Wanting to join in the naming convention, I used two other single syllable words to name the brother: Trollbear. We eventually had a cousin, named Snakechest. Eventually, I'm thinking of making a dwarf barbarian named Bloodmeat Thundersnow.
In general I like simple names, evocative of the character directly. A halfling warlock with a demon patron was named Ash... and he liked to fireball things when given the chance. I had named his familiar Ember, which was an owl, but eventually it got replaced by a smoke dragon (magic item in a written adventure) that he continued to call Ember.
I often don't bother with family names. Unless they're particularly important, they rarely get used during a game. For example a paladin in a recent game, his clan was important and involved in the story, so I named them. If they weren't actually going to show up in the story I wouldn't have bothered though (I literally took the first clan name in the 5E player's handbook).
Other times I just use random generators.
I usually look up Greek, German or Sumerian names, use Google Translate to find a descriptive term that looks good in Welsh, or "borrow" obscure character names from history of fiction.
The Everchanging Book of Names (EBON) is a little program by a guy named Pyorre that is very useful, and you can download the type of fantasy names you want generated (Wheel of Time, Tolkien, Forgotten Realms, etc.).
Behindthename.com is also very useful, if you want names that have meaning behind them.
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For my halfling, I looked up "Halfling Names" and there is a great website with specific names for specific races, if the website is too difficult to search or whatever, look up [your race] names and that website will pop up with the link to the generator for your race. http://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/
I also use the Egyptian and Mesopotamian sections of Pantheon.org.
I also use the translation method, though I normally use a language close to the characters supposed origin. Varisian get a word in Romanian, a Jadwiga get a name in Russian, A Mwangi gets Swahili or Etheopian, etc.
All of my WoW characters were in Welsh, which I don't advise if you want people to be able to pronounce your name, but is great if your backstory includes a vowel killing your parents.
Found an interesting one myself recently. You know how many races have example names? Plug 'em into this:
http://www.nolithius.com/articles/procedural-generation/weightedletter-name -generator