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AgentPaper
2012-06-22, 11:08 PM
I'm having some trouble coming up with names for my characters. I've tried using various baby name sites, which work great, but all of the ones I've found have turned out to be unreliable in the meaning or origin of their names, or simply don't have all that many names to begin with. If anyone knows of a good, reliable site with lots of good names, that would be great.

In addition, another thing I'm having trouble with is a good method for coming up with names for cities, regions, nations, and so on. Obviously a baby name site wouldn't work here, and the other methods I've tried have mostly come up with modern city names that don't sound quite right most of the time. For nation names specifically, it's difficult because I really can't use an existing name for fairly obvious reasons.

Milo v3
2012-06-22, 11:15 PM
I use Behind the Name (http://www.behindthename.com/random/). It has a random name generator with region choice, meanings, etc.

JonRG
2012-06-22, 11:24 PM
Awesome! Let's see what I've got going, name-wise.

Decent First Name Generator (http://fantasyrole.org/names_fantasy.asp) (Surnames are kinda iffy)
A compilation (http://eberronunlimited.wikidot.com/eberron-names) of Khorvaire monikers from the ECS
Rinkworks Name Generator (http://www.rinkworks.com/namegen/)

You can also use fantasy language translators and just input terms until they produce cool words.

NWN language convertor (http://www.tilansia.com/langconvert.php)
Just elven and drow (http://fantasyrole.org/translate.asp)


Finally, for towns/countries, I use this (http://www.rdinn.com/town_generator.php).

Hope some of that linkstorm helps! :smallbiggrin:

AgentPaper
2012-06-22, 11:32 PM
Random name generators aren't really what I'm looking for. For the names of my main characters, especially, I want the names to mean something. For cities and nations, I'm more ok with making up names that sound about right for the culture, but I'd much rather have something that means something for that as well.

Lord.Sorasen
2012-06-22, 11:36 PM
Random name generators aren't really what I'm looking for. For the names of my main characters, especially, I want the names to mean something. For cities and nations, I'm more ok with making up names that sound about right for the culture, but I'd much rather have something that means something for that as well.

Is there a particular reason for this? The reality is, at least in some languages, the meaning of a particular name is all but lost. With fantasy races, at least in say, D&D, there is no such thing as latin roots. Way I see it, you could really pick any name you want, and just make up what it means as well. "What's in a Name" etc etc.

That said, the link given, "Behind the Name" may generate randomly, but it also provides meanings as well as points of origin. It seems exactly like what you are looking for.

lotusblossom13
2012-06-22, 11:41 PM
When creating names for fantasy characters, it is often helpful to name them: Name Noun-Verb-Er/Name Adjective-Noun

For Name Noun-Verb-Er examples: I had a character named Alara Loreweaver.

Other examples include Luke Skywalker

Some name ideas just made up: Patrick Icerider, Marta Bearslayer,

In the other category Name Adjective-Noun

Oots has Roy Greenhilt, and Belkar Bitterleaf

Other examples include Buzz Lightyear,

Names just made up: Phillip Redgate, Anne Whitesteel

Also 20,000names.com isn't a bad resource. It has names from around the world, with a translation of their meaning. However, many of the names sound quite strange when pronounced, so from a storytelling standpoint this may prove detrimental if the name sounds too silly or is too hard to remember. Maybe you could use the names as first names and use the above rule for easy to remember last names.

Edit: Reading your above post it seems that 20,000names.com may be a good resource for you as you can search for names based on meaning (for example when making a fighter character I searched for names meaning fighter)

AgentPaper
2012-06-23, 12:42 AM
Perhaps I should have mentioned this earlier, but the names I need specifically are for a computer RPG I'm in the process of making. There are 12 major (playable) characters, which I want to give good names. Random made-up names would probably suffice, but I want to do better than that for these characters at the very least. It may not matter, but little things like this add up, and it really helps sell the world and it's characters.

Milo v3
2012-06-23, 12:57 AM
Perhaps I should have mentioned this earlier, but the names I need specifically are for a computer RPG I'm in the process of making. There are 12 major (playable) characters, which I want to give good names. Random made-up names would probably suffice, but I want to do better than that for these characters at the very least. It may not matter, but little things like this add up, and it really helps sell the world and it's characters.

Behind the name has a feature where you write in the meaning for a name, and then it says all the names in its database which means that word.

For example if you use Luck in the meanings search bar you get this list. (http://www.behindthename.com/php/search.php?nmd=mdu&terms=Luck)

Also you can go be random, namesakes, meaning, etc.

If you do decide to use the random name generator, you can choose which culture you want the name to come from, Arabic, African, Breton, Chinese, Danish, English, Esperanto, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hawaiian, Indian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Latvian, Maori, Native American, Polish, Russian, Slovak, Thai, greek myth, hindu myth, Ancient Celtic, History, Theology, and around thirty more.

So if you want it to have a certain feel, Behind the Name works.

Slipperychicken
2012-06-23, 01:44 AM
What kind of setting are the characters in? What culture (real or otherwise) do you think is closest to each characters' backgrounds? That will help a lot in determining appropriate names for both characters and cities.

Place names generally have to do with some distinctive terrain feature, historical event, or important figure (founder, owner, religious figure, former head of state, etc). They also tend to be easy to remember, and easier to say, or else the populace abbreviated it long ago into such a form, perhaps with an acronym if no good abbreviated version exists, like how "George Washington Bridge" is referred to as "GWB", or "GW Bridge".

Averis Vol
2012-06-23, 02:00 AM
most of my names from google translate, I just type in some words, hit the finnish/norweigen/swedish choices and see what comes up. but this usually comes out to weird sounding names. The only other source I use is this DnD dm's app i got for my phone, randomly generates names and surnames.

Examples:
male-
Mes' ard Sed
Naphates Efari
Kellan Kaziah
female-
Veseere Quiverjump
Nachaloa Ficadon
Prysala Jack
Any-
Flint Justalyne
Ikine Ria
Pharysene Usara

DeIdeal
2012-06-23, 04:16 AM
I usually use Serendipity's (http://nine.frenchboys.net/) name generators. The names aren't too weird-sounding (Except maybe the Fantasy names), and the site has several different generators.

NikitaDarkstar
2012-06-23, 04:24 AM
Lets see, using google translator and switching round a few letters until you get something you like isn't a bad idea. I especially like this for place names.

Google maps is another choice. Move over to a region of the world that has words sounding sort of like what you had in mind, then zoom in on a city or small town or something similar. Find a small, out of the way street with a name you like, use it. (Might want to drop whatever it has at the end that makes it mean "street" or "road" though.)

For names I like to use 7th Sanctums generators as inspiration at least. It's not good for all races, but it works for some stuff. http://www.seventhsanctum.com/

And if you're in a position where you have a first name you like but not a family name I've found this generator. It's not perfect but it works well if you want to avoid the noun-verb constructions. http://www.namegenerator.biz/last-name-generator.php

genderlich
2012-06-23, 05:13 PM
I name all my characters and NPCs after astronomical bodies. I've had Siarnaq and Janus (moons of Saturn), Orion and Lyra (constellations), Regulus, Alberio, Rigel, Antares, and Deneb (stars).

This page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_proper_names_of_stars) is helpful.

Connington
2012-06-23, 09:08 PM
Random name generators aren't really what I'm looking for. For the names of my main characters, especially, I want the names to mean something. For cities and nations, I'm more ok with making up names that sound about right for the culture, but I'd much rather have something that means something for that as well.

I confess to having a habit of checking listed meanings when I'm thinking up names, but I'm trying to wean myself off of that. Really, the odds that someone would get given a name at birth with a meaning that just happened to match with their adult life is pretty slim, and that goes double for a family name.

Mostly, I play names by ear, looking for sound combinations that "sound right". Simple names for people quiet types, longer winded ones for nobility and brainiacs, trendy, cool sounding names for the social butterflies (and a hint that it's not the one they were born with). I play a lot of games in modernish settings, and I'm fond of combining common first names with slightly exotic surnames (for flavor).

The key thing is keeping it easy for everyone to remember. That means no weird pronunciations, and absolutely no punc'tuation. Even if you know how to say it properly, nobody else will.

begooler
2012-06-24, 01:01 AM
I think I may have posted this suggestion before:
I usually start with a wikipedia search of ANYTHING related to the character/town/etcetera. Keep clicking on links as you read until you hit something that's not such an obvious reference that it will be a distraction. You can also rearrange syllables or spell words differently.
Really, looking at any source where you've got words for you brain to play with will be helpful.

Here's an example, how I got the name for a character I was playing in a game tonight. The character is a gnome oracle, focused on prophecy and divination, with a quirky but scientific outlook on the world. I did a few searches on astrology, medeival alchemy, and astronomy. Eventually, I stumbled on some names of astronomers and physcisists; and named the character Marin Fritzwicky.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandru_Marin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Zwicky

Inglenook
2012-07-02, 04:06 PM
Something to consider: Aptronyms (i.e. meaningful names) generally are a bit heavy-handed and ring false. Very easy to destroy the suspension of belief and take the reader out of the story when your Chosen One heroine is named "Destiny Trewhope" or your villain is "Todd Malvoro Grimstark". Even slightly more subtle ones are sort of silly; Remus Lupin from the Harry Potter books, for example, seems destined to be a werewolf with a name like that, and it made me step back from the story and say to myself "Come on, no parent would give their child such a meaningful name."

Name Nounverber and Name Adjectivenoun also seem clichéd and twee, at least to me. I'm personally more likely to roll my eyes and laugh at a hero named Jared Songdancer than I am to root for him.

Tolkein did a weird pseudo-calque for naming the Hobbits that is pretty cool. For example: Merry's name in the Westron language was Kalimac Brandagamba. Translated to English, it means something like "Merrymac Borderbuck". So parts of the name he kept the meanings intact, others parts he just fiddled with and anglicized.

The Dark Fiddler
2012-07-03, 06:05 AM
Lets see, using google translator and switching round a few letters until you get something you like isn't a bad idea. I especially like this for place names.

Yes, the whole "Use a foreign word with significance to the character" is something I've been doing more and more lately, as well.

For example, with a character I'd recently made, Mahala Komlak (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=416952). Although her first name is entirely made up, and just something that "sounded right", her last name (also the name of her tribe) is a corrupted version of the Basque word for communal (komunalak), since a sense of community is very important to the character. I didn't switch around letters, I just cut them out: komunalak. Frequently, I'll throw in a syllable or two that isn't in the word to mask its origins, so there's just enough of a reference to make it sound right, but so it's different enough from the source that anybody who speaks the language might won't recognize it and say "that's just the word for x".

Manga Shoggoth
2012-07-03, 08:12 AM
One of my old DMs used to generate the characters for us, and invariably used names pulled from the UK maps - there are enough odd-sounding villages to come up with pretty much any sort of name you like.

Thinker
2012-07-03, 09:10 AM
I'm having some trouble coming up with names for my characters. I've tried using various baby name sites, which work great, but all of the ones I've found have turned out to be unreliable in the meaning or origin of their names, or simply don't have all that many names to begin with. If anyone knows of a good, reliable site with lots of good names, that would be great.

In addition, another thing I'm having trouble with is a good method for coming up with names for cities, regions, nations, and so on. Obviously a baby name site wouldn't work here, and the other methods I've tried have mostly come up with modern city names that don't sound quite right most of the time. For nation names specifically, it's difficult because I really can't use an existing name for fairly obvious reasons.

Wikipedia has a good page about how places got their names: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Place_name_origins

It will be easy for you to come up with names for locations if you plan on using real-world languages. It will be more difficult if you do not, as you will have to emulate this sort of logic or come up with your own languages.

Jack of Spades
2012-07-03, 02:57 PM
For surnames, remember that nearly all of them were originally titles. Given that your world is likely to be anglicized by necessity, things like Miller, Baker, and Smith will be just as common. Same for names ending in "-son." In fact, most surnames are one of those two things but in a different language. Other than that, your surnames will generally come from names of whatever tribes and clans originally settled your world, and those will often be geographical references, the name of a founder, references to a common idiosyncrasy or just something that sounded cool at the time.

As for first names? Whatever sounds cool. People come up with first names on the spot often enough. If you really need somewhere to base them off of, 90% of the names out there once belonged to a beloved king, ancestor, or hero, or appeared in a religious text. Those sources just got the names from a combination of what sounded cool and whatever naming conventions the original culture had. A good number of names actually mean something in some ancient language, but most are just sounds. And even if they do mean something, most people just choose the name for the sounds rather than the meaning anyhow.

Nations will almost always be named after a founder or whatever clan or tribe founded them. Alternatively, they will be named after whatever nation originally owned the land regardless of whose descendants own it now.

Regions will generally be named after either a geographical feature or the person who first discovered/mapped/wrote about them.

Cities will almost always be named after (or in honor of) a founder or founding group, often with a prefix or suffix that means fort, mountain, river, city, forest, or something like that.

Always, ALWAYS remember that almost every gobbledegook name on the map is actually something meaningful in some ancient language.

EccentricCircle
2012-07-03, 05:45 PM
I tend to use a scrabble set,
Shake out a few counters and combine them in interesting ways to form some nice sounding syllables, which can be arranged and tinkered with to work towards the kind of stuff you're looking for.
It doesn't create names for you, as drawing a set of random letters would come up with something a bit odd. but it is a good visualisation tool and gives you a starting point.

One thing thats quite interesting for place names is to think about the linguistic features of the place. suppose the city was founded by elves centuries ago but humans now rule it, think about what the elvish name would be and how it might have been garbled or changed over the centuries.

For example in my current game, the town of Al Eskir has been corrupted to Aeskaris due to centuries of cultural migrations.

Togath
2012-07-03, 06:25 PM
Also when coming up with last names dont forget that some cultures used the name of the father or mother instead of having an inherited last name(many scandinavian cultures used/use a parent's name followed by either "parents name"ssen/"parent's name"sson or "parents name"dotter/"parent's name"sdotter, dotter/sdotter for a female child usually, and ssen/sson usually for a male child)

Malimar
2012-07-06, 01:32 AM
I generally use a few main methods for character name generation, of which the first will probably be of most relevance to you:


Sometimes I'll go to wiktionary, type in various words with relevant meanings, and then consult the list of translations for that word. (This was how I came up with, for example, Xolodno Tuisku Kaldur the frost mage -- I decided he was from a sort of Slavic or Nordic culture, so I compiled a list of Slavic and Nordic translations of various ice-and-snow-related words, then picked the most euphonious combination. Similarly, I usually name celestials and fiends with some combination of Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic.) I'm sure Google Translate or other translation sources would work.
Sometimes, if pressed to name a minor NPC in the middle of a session, I'll use the "take a common name and replace one letter" trick. This turns up things like Waxter, Trakis, Dill, Jeter, Saeve, etc. I don't think anybody's figured out my trick yet.
When a sourcebook provides a name generation table, I'll sometimes use that. Sometimes I'll roll on it, sometimes I'll just pick appropriate words.
I also used to collect interesting and unusual names and keep them in a list to consult whenever I needed one. J.K. Rowling uses something like this method. Somewhere along the line, I stopped doing this.

HunterOfJello
2012-07-06, 02:41 AM
I always liked the names of the NPCs in Final Fantasy Tactics. So, here's a list of the random names from FFT (http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Final_Fantasy_Tactics_Random_Names).

I also use a partial printed list and have the full list on my nook of the D&D_3e_names_list (http://www.stanford.edu/~rchilton/DnD/D&D_3e_names_list.xls) from the Stanford website. I like this one because it's separated by race type, which can be very handy.