Moniker
Way back in Handbook of Heroes #9 we were formally introduced to your favorite unicorn and mine, Lumberjack Explosion. I haven’t gotten much better at thinking up names since. That’s doubly true if we’re talking about thinking up names on the spur of the moment.
If you’ve ever sat behind the big cardboard screen o’ limitless power, you probably know how hard naming stuff can be. And if you’ve never been in that situation, trust me when I say that limitless power don’t count for beans when you’ve got to come up with proper nouns.
What makes this especially tough is that it usually happens right as you’re in the flow of RP. You’ve conjured an NPC from thin air, and he’s a hit with the party. It’s going so well that they think he’s a integral part of the plot! Your players are even writing down session notes like good little gamers when one of them looks up and asks that seemingly-innocent question: “What’s his name?”
And there you are with your improvised dwarf and a sudden sense of panic. Your mind flashes to Thorin Oakenshield, Bruenor Battlehammer, and all the dwarfiest things you can imagine. And so you reply in a broken and halting voice, “Thornor Alehammer.” And your buddies stare at you. Everyone knows that you’re a big fat phony. Then one of them does a quick google to find out if “Alehammer” is a metal band, which it apparently is, and your game grinds to a halt as you listen to something called the Barmageddon album.
Most of the time these clunky names are grist for the comedy mill. Occasionally however, this sort of stumble can really hurt your game. That’s why I included a glossary of NPCs in my Young Minds murder mystery module. Here’s the rationale:
In a sandbox module like Young Minds, players are almost guaranteed to hare off in unexpected directions. That means GMs will have to improvise new situations and NPCs as they arise. This glossary should come in handy as an aid for inserting new characters on the fly.
Since Young Minds is a mystery game, the glossary also offers a more subtle benefit. If players realize that an NPC is the product of improvisation, it can be difficult for them to avoid the metagame inference: Don’t worry guys. This character isn’t part of the module, so he’s obviously not the villain. As such, it can be useful to have a spot to flip to within the module itself.
That’s the closest I’ve ever come to solving the problem in any case. What about the rest of you guys though? Do you keep a running list o’ NPCs? Do you lean into the comedy? Or do you find that you have a natural talent for making up believable names on the fly? Sound off with your best tips and tricks (and improvised names!) down in the comments.
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Improvising names isn’t too difficult for me; while there is a noticeable pause for thinking, rather than for looking through notes, this is only something observant people would take note of. What more comes an issue is when, a few hours later, someone asks, “What was that guys name, again?”. Cue me searching through my computer, then flipping through my notebook, then checking the backs of monster character sheets, then checking the notebook again, then checking the computer again, then realising I forgot to write down the name because I had been in the middle of a conversation when the name came up. The only hope of an NPC name surviving is if they become major enough, quickly enough that they name becomes enshrined in at least one person’s memory.
Just continue making up new names for the same character. Do so with authority, act all indignant if anyone calls you on it, and jif all else fails just declare that the new name is a nickname. Flawless strategy!
Either that or the character is actually a bunch of doppelgangers taking turns.
(Takes notes)
I’m planning to for future campaigns keep a list of NPCs, with both name and personality, so that when the time comes for it, I can just drop them into the world, and let with it. Should solve both the problem of forgettable names and non-existent personalities, though comes with the problem of being yet another thing to keep track of, lest it get lost amid a swirl of notes and take eons to be found once more (or a few minutes of players sitting their awkwardly while you rummage around for the NPC they’re talking to).
I like the name list strategy, but I always found that the personality quirks were more trouble than they were worth. YMMV, but I think it’s actually harder to stick with “always repeats back the last thing said to them” or “hates people taller than them” while trying to improvise than simple going with the flow and inventing a new personality to suit the occasion.
Probably the most embarrassing tale of forgetting a character name occurred when I was a player, and in fact forgot my own. See, when it comes to PCs (and important NPCs) I like to pick out a name by just figuring out what feels right. We at one point had a one-shot, and rather than getting myself a character, I just printed out the stats of a character that I’d pre-made. I hadn’t thought of a name for him yet, and so just took a few minutes to figure out a name, then went on with the one-shot. It went quite well, well enough that we decided to make it a two-shot. We packed away the character sheets, and reconvened a few weeks later. Issue was, though… because I’d just printed out stats, rather than writing a full character sheet, I’d never committed my characters name to paper. Nor could I remember it with the weeks gone by. There wasn’t even a list of random names I could look through to jog my memory, as the name hadn’t come from a generator in the first place. I was able to bluff it quite well for a while, as everyone just said, “Hey, could you…” or “would you like to…” or, “roll initiative”, but eventually, the moment came, when someone said, “Listen up, rogue… I mean… not rogue… what’s your character’s name, again?”. And that was it. Everyone had a good laugh at my expense, I grabbed myself a random name, and we all moved on. Fortunately, me being the most common DM of the group, everyone was quite used to this happening to me.
Somewhere in the multiverse, a rogue still wonders what strange magic stole his name.
When I first started GMing, I had a paper of 50~ random NPC names that I crossed off as I used them. I also had stats of some basic random encounters with randomly rolled HP, and dozens of side quests which I could insert into the story as needed. I have never been as prepared since then.
Starfinder has made me better about this. The naming conventions are so different for the alien races that I pretty much have to write out examples ahead of time.
I make a list of names, typically sorted by race, and keep it on hand whenever I need to improv an NPC out of nowhere. I mostly have to do this for the ones who aren’t human: human names I can usually make up on the fly.
It also helps that I recycle NPC’s across different campaigns. Since what few groups I play in don’t have a player whose in both groups, I pretty much just copy/paste NPC’s back and forth as I need them. Ferric Strider, Dwarven Merchant, always appears in my games whenever I need a dwarven merchant. Myrn Atisha is the ever constant mysterious Elven waif here to offer prophesy and guidance for the PC’s who need the plot hook. And of course Tyrael Marchrosias, the ever surly demon warlock master who is constantly doing something, and always able to offer players a chance to prove themselves and gain sweet loot.
Recycling NPC’s also helps develop them enough to seem personable without having to draw up an entirely new backstory for them. Even when I use them in different worlds, their roles are more or less the same, just tweaked to accommodate the setting. Maybe Ferric isn’t a merchant but a barkeeper when we’re playing in an outlaw world. Sometimes Myrn is less a Mystic waif and more a competent healer who happens to be well read about lore, so she provides cleric services and Nah e some advice. Tyrael can easily just be a BBEG as much as he could be a quest giver.
Heh. Echoes of Elric there. The NPC with a thousand faces.
With the exception of elf and dwarf names, which I think I’m pretty good at making up fast, I am really really shit at making up names on the go. I usually default to plain stuff like sam or john which. Luckily I’m not usually a dm so that doesnt come up much.
Like the scollover says, Bob Johnson seems to show up in my games with alarming regularity.
For me it is always George the friendly npc that shows up, and I am the gm.
For me names are a hassle and not really worth it unless there is a special tone or theme (like norse,greek or pirate). In a common medieval fantasy game I use namea like Smith, Steve, Harald, Nicely etc. Because they are easy to improve, and more importantly people remember those names.
Sure the main villain name is Washington is silly but at least it will be remembered.
I have a feeling we’ll be seeing a lot more of that from 5e thanks to the MtG setting books: https://media.wizards.com/2017/downloads/magic/plane-shift_amonkhet.pdf
Best trick I learned was having NPC’s refer to themselves with a nickname if they were epic or mysterious. Wizard’s were often “The {insert color/animal} wizard.” (Thanks Harry Potter).
This trick was also a way to give depth to a character just like the PCs, since the nickname was often based on their profession before they became epic. Lots of Mr. Smith, Mr. Mason, Miss Goodweave and so on. My favorite was a youngish lady named Books.
I like it! Though I honestly don’t recall any “Yellow Aardvark wizards” in Harry Potter.
Back when my current campaign was in the “Excitedly discussing possibilities” phase of things, I mentioned how the previous generation of heroes toppled a tyrannical lich-king so that the bard who would later father the entire party could claim the throne.
Or, as I put it at the time: “So they overthrew, I don’t know… Deathbad… McLord… Skull.”
And someone else said “You realize that has to be that guy’s actual name now.”
I try to prepare a healthy cadre of better named NPCs ahead of the players’ progress, but Clan McLordskull has still terrorized their hometown for generations in the lore. They recently learned about Deathbad’s four children, Icestab, Bloodgale, Hellfist, and Doomstone. Sometimes you just need to embrace the silliness and run with it.
How does Deathbad answer his emails with fighting gauntlets on?
http://www.hrwiki.org/wiki/How_do_you_type_with_boxing_gloves_on%3F
This reminds me of Berry J Bluejeans from TAZ.
Reminds me of Thomas Exposition from Glass Cannon.
Reminds me of Jim Darkmagic from Acquisition Inc.
Personally I generally try to make something up on the spot, I find the trick is to just say the first name that comes into your mind with as little hesitation as possible.
The players can normally tell that it’s not one that was prepared ahead of time, but the lack of hesitation helps make it easier for them to not have it break their immersion.
I do know a kinda cool thing this dude I know once did in a detective campaign he ran.
He just openly prepared the game without assigning names to anyone and then had a long list of names that he’d use for NPC’s in the order the PC’s met them. That way they knew that they wouldn’t be able to know from how long it took to say their name when asked whether a NPC was made up beforehand (and therefore might be involved in the sessions mystery) or if they had just been made up on the spot in response to the PC’s looking for them (and therefore definitely wasn’t).
One trick I heard was to take an IRL name and shift it by a letter:
Mark > Marn
Bethany > Bemany
Thomas > Tovas
One approach that could be interesting could be something along the lines of “Eskimos have twenty words for snow” meme. Suppose that Dwarves have a lot of different words for exact kinds and compositions of rocks, and a lot of Dwarven names incorporate those words. But since Common doesn’t have that same number of words, a lot of those words just get translated as “stone” or “rock”, and Dwarven names end up sounding repetitive in Common.
Stone Differenttypesofstoneson.
well, yes of cause I use a random generator.
I also have a few pdfs for not quite random NPCs, like the NPC and Villain Codex or „Unusual Suspects“
and if all else fails just go down the list at the race entry in the rules book.
Is that a real product?
that was lazy typing, sorry
NPC Codex – Paizo product
Villain Codex – Paizo product
Unusual Suspects – Frog God Games product
ISBN 978-1-62283-025-1
Wait a minute… you mean the NPC Codex is more than a sub-page on the PFSRD!?
yes, and at least the pdf is worth the money:
it’s easier to read in a page by page format
plus there are pictures and encounter suggestions
I, too, have resorted to the “let me look at my notes” distraction, while I actually frantically google a name generator in the background.
Thankfully (and infuriatingly at times), my players hardly ever ask NPCs of their names, even the important ones that I’ve put much effort into naming beforehand.
Since I tend to run modules, my latest “let me look at my notes” challenge is figuring out how to describe an NPC’s facial expression long enough for me to find the relevant bit of info in their “Questgiver Q&A” section. It feels strangely similar to the name issue.
I used to have a lot of ease coming up with names and characters on the fly, but recently I have had some struggles, perhaps because the world bounding has become so thick that I am now having to come up with hundreds it seems as the players ask for a name for every person they talk to (it would be rude not to!). While it doesn’t seem to bother them that it is an obvious rando, nor take away from the scene, I feel like I am losing something of myself every time I have to think about it for any length of time. Fortunately, there’s an app for that! I personally use FaNG for my android powered device, and there is always Fantasy Name Generator if you are on PC, but the modern age has seen a number of sources of pretty dang good rando gen programs, and I don’t mind saying, I like them. They free up a part of my brain to just find the one I like, rather than search for one in my head and possibly bring the game to a halt.
Fantasy Name Generator is indeed what I was thinking of while writing today’s comic. I tend to use it myself. I just hate the couple of seconds of delay that comes with opening the correct generator and responding to my player.
you could just set a bookmark for each generator
I‘m using this one:
https://donjon.bin.sh/
Now see, Beardy McBeardminerson seems like an NPC we need to keep in the Handbook-verse now, as one of the classes- Just look at how good his design looks! Props to Laurel! Also, is he a Dwarf or a Human? Beard and name suggests Dwarf, but he’s a bit tall looking (unless Gunslinger’s size is skewing my perception).
You know you messed up when even Gunslinger is giving you a doubtful, condescending look.
Name-wise, we’ve had a recent situation of such in an AP. An intelligent Clockwork Servant we wound up, the DM decided to comment that they knew ‘over 50 different languages’, and that its name was 3P4.
Back in college (after running though wood elves with names like Khan (coniferous) and Dice (deciduous), I often defaulted to any of the millions of “Bill” that apparently populated my campaign world if I were sitting on the LEFT side of my room; If were seated on the RIGHT side of the dorm room, I would shoot a panicked look over the shoulder of my players–directly at the bookshelf of my roommate’s scifi collection–and churn out NPCs named Ben or Bova, Delany, Isaac, or even Brad Berry (a halfling druid).
I guess that’s one way to use a reference library.
Did the “random” button disappear? Or am I an idiot? Both?
We’ve been having trouble with the silly thing. Multiple reports of it always taking folks to the same page whenever they click it. The disappearing act is a new one though.
Thanks for the heads up.
Us ‘Text Only’ gamers have a huge advantage here, as its a lot harder to get a peek behind the curtain with pauses and such. Its also super easy to have a list of names ready to go, but I usually don’t have one. I just have consumed far too much media for one person, and have a huge library of names to remix into new combinations. Though I’ve noticed some pretty clear patterns in my naming habits, in that they’re shaped by what I’ve been listening to recently. For example, I’ve been watching a lot of Overly Sarcastic Productions videos, and my recently created Swashbuckler ended up with the name Astarte. I like the idea of a glossary though. It’s a clever way to keep the curtain drawn.
One day my pbp campaign will take off… one day.
I had a big list of fantasy names (a PDF of something like 26 3-columned pages of nothing but names) always open on my phone when I was DMing so that when my players asked the name of the mayor of the tiny village in Ustalav that I expected them never to interact with again after the opening scene, I at least had something ready to go. Unfortunately, it seems like now the site that the list came from is dead, so I can’t access it again. Now I’ll either need to find a new list or start making up the NPCs’ names myself…
There’s gotta be another list out there somewhere….
Ha! Chris Perkins to the rescue:
https://brandondraga.tumblr.com/post/66804468075/chris-perkins-npc-name-list
When the party is interacting with Dwarves there are three major groups, and most Dwarves just go by last-name unless you’re specifying “Which IronBlood”? Dwarven last-names are much easier to come up with off the cuff.
Don’t wanna confuse your Goldaxeales with your Goldaleaxes. That’s how you start a feud!
It’s a bit easier since the three major groups of Dwarves are the Stone clans that live in the mountain “Classic Rock”, (Stuffy traditionalist monarchy) Gold clans of “Glam Rock”, (Merchant-lord oligarchical kleptocracy) and Iron clans of “Prog Rock”. (Wacky communists) So among the Stone clans there’s the StoneFists, the StoneAxes, etc. makes coming up with names off the cuff easier.
With the Magic Kingdom^TM most of the characters are references to characters from other pieces of media. From the guy who runs the staff/wand/broom shop Royston Major (Raistlin Majere. Doing his raspy coughing voice really hurt) to Minister Ellie (Elminster) who sells robes, cloaks etc, to Father BlackMountain (Schwarznegger is Deutsche for Black Mountain) who runs the Temple of Kord, (God of storms and fitness) to Mike Dankmagic (Jim Darkmagic, played by Mike Krahulik) who leads the Illusionists.
For other races I just pick out some appropriate first-names and avoid last names unless directly asked. Usually I just steal names from other media. When the group killed a group of soldiers, Sterling, the archer among them surrendered because he wanted to escape the horrid authoritarian-dystopia and Cyril’s corpse was of comparable build to his. He asked the party to send a message to his wife Pam to “Water the plants” in his absence.
I suck with names, i suck with them. Which may or may not be a problem since i am the one who makes the setting. It’s not, since i use that for my advantage. I use descriptions as names: The God of Death and Undeath, The God of Deceit, The City With Three Doors and so on. Normally if something has a name it’s important and a feature of the setting or an small joke. The First People call themselves that way not because they have been the first chronologically but because they are the first on overall score. That many people doesn’t know that and think they are some kind of precursors only make the misnomer better, they have a thing with trolling other people. YMIR, a being that may, or may not, created the gods to later be betrayed by them and murdered, or not, is an example of something named and important. How i manage to pull this? Simple put, i am the one of the setting. So i say: “Gods don’t use their names because that makes things safe for everyone”. Then i let hint that using a god true name may allow people to control them, then i let hint that is bullshit and you can’t just control a god by knowing its name, then i let hint there are other reasons for that and then later i let hint gods may actually not have a name at all. I use that little weakness of me and use it to make the setting better. And my group like it, no need to remember lots of names, i save some time and work from the DM and i don’t have that constraint each time i create a whole new world 😀
By the way, how is that Gunslinger isn’t trying to make a group with Kobayashi Doubtfire?o_O
I’m good with names, but I also like to keep pre-prepared lists of names and descriptions for NPCs made up on the fly.
Then if the players develop a sudden interest in the blacksmith, I can glance at the names under “male, normal”, and say without missing a beat that he’s called Clint Morrison, and that he’s got a distinctive eye patch.
Boom. I look like I’ve prepared this complex NPC that the players like. I look good. They need never know that Clint Morrison was made up a few minutes ago, and had no name, physical characteristics, or personality a few minutes ago.
I feel like we’ve seen that style of tattoo before (Blue and magic looking). Am I crazy or is there something here?
I’ve got the same problem for writing and worldbuilding. Every time I have to turn to my friends or the internet to suggest a fitting name for the character, place, or setting element.
On the plus side, I think that it’s turned out some pretty good names for my current project. Thanks to the dutiful efforts of friends and community, the setting/story is called More Than Mortal, demons gain power through Annealment when their authority is recognized, and the main character is named Alex(ander).
Or I steal a name from something I’ve read recently that’s either appropriate or completely off the wall. The classes of demons are behemoths, leviathans, and succubi (after the three Endbringers from Worm, very loosely for the last one of course), the genderfluid character is named Theo/Thea after Theo Vilmos from The War of the Flowers, a major demon lord is named Caedrus after the dude who wrote a guide on using fear for D&D 3.5…
That last one is also how I name a lot of my new RPG characters. Locus, Jaun, Vin, and Aurochs are all RPG characters of mine whose names were borrowed from Red Vs. Blue, RWBY, Mistborn, and Worm respectively.
I am extremely terrible at coming up with names.
This isn’t a major problem in pbp games though since nobody can see you improvise/roll on a generator repeatedly until you get someone useful.
This is also partially why when I made a tiny little system/setting recently I just declare that in the setting people’s names are all food or cooking related things or colors or color related things. It’s pretty hard for someone to eyeroll at someone named Oak when their name is Bread. =D
Realistically: I give a blank stare while mumbling the first somewhat-realistic-seeming name that pops into my head & then record that name in my notes in case it comes up again.
Ideally: I’ve been planning to add a page into my GM Sheet to make my own sort of random generator with lists separated by race / region… but have never actually gotten around to actually doing it.
I had a githyanki npc that wasn’t even improvised, I just forgot to give this character of minor importance a name. When asked for his name I choked on the spot, and in the pause one of my players suggested “Kendrick Lamar.” I immediately replied a hard no and told them a name that looked fine written down, but when said out loud was a slippery wet mess. Ken Drick-Lomar continued to adventure with the party for some time, and was eventually joined by Kahn Yie-Wesz (a temporary character from the same goddam player) and Ty Lurther-Krator. (All following the naming convention of “firstname last-name” I gave all Githyanki).
Man, no wonder gunslinger has trouble finding a group if he throws shade on people’s sparsely developed backstories.
Pretty much every player I’ve ever enjoyed playing alongside started out with little more than “human barbarian” written down and grew from there.
Are you implying that the three shipwrecked sailors, Steve, Steven and Stephan, were not intended from the start to be complex characters of great depth and narrative importance?
Weirdly enough, my latest campaign has had four named dwarves: Gravin Goldhammer, Urist Stonehammer and the brothers Cain and Bodir Smallhammer. But all three of those last names came from separate sources! Goldhammer is from an AP book, Stonehammer was made up by a player as a part of their character’s backstory, and I made up Smallhammer because Cain and Bodir’s player hadn’t given them a last name and let me do it (and it fit their theme). So -hammer appears to be the -son of dwarves in this world. (I might save Alehammer for an emergency. Though Jorgunhammer is pretty badass too.)
For PC names, I usually (no joke) consult the alphabetical list at cheese.com, picking a random letter and scrolling through names until I find something that sounds like a fantasy name with one or two letter changes. That’s gotten me names like Edam Adalest, Professor Takelma Tuada, Monsi Stewlart, the ever-recurring Father Ibore Bressan and the ill-defined Major Paneer.
There was a time when my PCs grabbed 17 comatose people out of an enemy base, threw them on a cart and made a run for it. I ran off and did some rolls on the Reincarnate table for their races and genders, and then let one of my player come up with their names. (Though the one he is creepily attached to, Bertha the half-orc, I gave the true name Dara so there could be this whole running gag of him calling Bertha but everyone else calling her Dara.)
Oh, there’s also Scroll Lady, the scroll saleswoman. That’s probably not her given name, but it’s what she goes by, and because she’s (we think) an extradimensional entity possessing enormous magical power but content to do nothing with it but sell pieces of paper at market price, no one presses it.
For my Iron Gods-based campaign (well, the first one), I did develop an interesting naming system for Kellids based on a few names in the AP. Most traditionalist Kellids have a personal name and a single-syllable clan name, separated by a dash (“Kevoth-Kul”, “Drom-Mok”, “Arat-Thul”). But if a woman marries into a different clan (which is quite common), she drops her birth clan’s name and her husband’s clan’s name is put in front of her personal name (“Kul-Inkit”, “Mok-Reyla”). In more formal settings, the wife might use both clan names (“Kul-Inkit-Tal”, “Mok-Reyla-Thul”), allowing her name to express quite a lot about her familial relations (quite important to Kellids) in just a few syllables.
It would be funny if the dwarven word “h’ammar” literall meant “son of.” It just gets bastardized in Common.
I find names to be both incredibly important, and difficult for me to come up with, especially on the fly. Consequently if I am having a group of NPCs meet the characters I will try to have a list of up to about 10 names for the group they are meeting and maybe a few quick descriptors in mind–not necessarily tied to names. “Olive-skinned Female, Red-haired male” etc ready to go. Having that stuff handy, and roughly how a group of NPCs interact with each other lets me do more natural things.
Instead of saying “The Lieutenant turns to the Sergeant and tells him to X…” I just go “Lieutenant X turns to her side and says “Sergeant X, do X.” The red-haired man next to her does X.” To me the world becomes a little more clear and rich when people are addressing each other as we really do.
In my SW:RPG I had the entire 10-12 person crew of a ship have names assigned–and not other traits really, so I could build on that. The party wound up not interacting with the crew so I just brought forward the list of names and now they could be something else entirely. (Names of a rebel ship! Smugglers…whatever!) If the name gets used I write a short 1-2 line note of the role they were assigned next to the name “Bartender – Fuzzy Weasal”.
If the party refers back to it the NPC suddenly can have more life/detail added and eventually start becoming a major NPC because the party invests in building the relationship so they get rewarded with more information.
Having some pre-generated names for some NPCs also lets me answer questions like “We want to look up the name of the director of X”. I don’t think any of them read your blog…but I have been using names linked to stories of betrayal because the party is getting strung along by a manipulator who wants to betray them. It’s like pre-building an easter eggg and sprinkling all kinds of them in that hint at the plot.
I tend to use name generators or name-lists. So for example, months ago my players were asked to commit espionage on a kingdom to the south, one ruled by an aasimar nobility.
Since I wanted the names to be thematic for the npcs, I gave each of them Israeli names, since in my head, the languages of the Outer Planes would be Semitic (the Inner Planes would be from one language family, the Feywild and the Shadowfell would belong to another). So during the actual game, the people that served the royal family or defended them were picked from minor nobility, but aasimar nonetheless. I had a list of hebrew names already pulled up, and so would just quick reference the list and tada, a quick name.
Generally speaking… I actually don’t name most of my NPCs. In my current game, for example, only the various top villains are named. One of the biggest contacts for the PC’s is a adventuring team of Bards who call themselves the Battle Bards (which is an awesome name I am borrowing from elsewhere.) But the individual characters, who are all some variant of Bard are actually unnamed.
So there’s The Old Skald, his son the Fencing Fop (who is secretly Not Gay), and The Drummer who might actually just be a straight up Barbarian. You know how drummers are. How it works out in game is that each one of them is memorable for their various character interactions to the extent no one has ASKED for their names. The players are mostly like “Oh yeah, that’s the Battle Bards. The Old Skald is like tops for old stories and lore.”
In my opinion, this is better than the say, Tolkien’s ten million unique nouns. It frees me to move on with more important things-like running the universe-and it frees my PC’s from having to remember Torb Jorbinson, Son of the Daughter of Starswake, 19th of his Clan, 3rd of His Name. You can argue that all that is wonderful and immersive and great…
But it ain’t why my friends are at my particular table.
Ohhh yeah, my favourite subject. I’m an absolute sucker for names in fantasy settings and so few authors “get it right”, as in: manage to make me suspend my disbelief about the fantasy world and accept it as plausible.
The Witcher setting is fantastic for this very reason (and several others of course). The names Sapkowski (the author) uses, convey that much needed sense of detachment from real life (drawing a clear line in the sand between RL/Fantasy), while at the same time being real if archaic names. Ouder de Wyngalt, Menno Coehoorn, Vattier de Rideaux, Manfred of Ard Carraigh, it’s a real treat for the eyes to read the Witcher-verse’s list of names and understand the connotations. If you’re tired of Bruenor Battlehammers and the like, cast your gaze upon the dwarves of Witcher. None of that Luke Nounverber, son of Chuck Basementcrab tedium. By analysing their naming conventions you can clearly make out four cultures from which they derive their names.
Hungarian (Zoltan, Moran, Boros, Molnar, Gabor), Hebrew (Golan, Caleb), Italian (Cianfanelli, Giancardi, Carlo, Corto, Blasco) and Scottish (Munro, Fergus, Barclay, Malcolm). Real names, every single one (except for Golan I suppose), but still “other” enough to engage the reader, without becoming ridiculous.
To give an example of said ridiculousness: My biggest issue with the Forgotten Realms isn’t its kitchen sink approach, or how it pillaged several of Eberrons ideas or how there isn’t really much to do once the players realize that Elminster exists and could end any campaign threat by sneezing through his pipe.
It’s the names. The impossibly stupid sounding names of just about everything and everyone (sole saving grace being ToA and the naming guide for RL cultures in the XGtE, thank you oh Lord for that tiny crumb! I’ve been using it ever since).
You drop the player into a city of intrigue, rival criminal syndicates rushing in to claim an enormous fortune for themselves, gambits and conspiracies piling up on each other, power brokers determining whether you’re a player or another chess piece from behind the scenes. A secret society of outcasts and renegades with access to heretofore unseen technology stalks the heroes on their path to unravel the intrigue. The names of their lieutenants: Soluun Xibrindas, N’arl Xibrindas, Fel’rekt Lafeen and Krebbyg Masq’il’yr……that shit took me right out of the game.
These are not names. This is someone having an unhealthy fascination with the apostrophe key, or possible someone having a heart attack while hovering his finger above it. You should never ever say those letter stacks out loud in front of your players. Best case: they won’t get a laughing fit, worst case: set a timer until someone says “That Krabby Patty elf”. Goodbye to that clandestine atmosphere you were trying to build.
Unfortunately I found name generators giving out exactly these sort of ” names” way too often. So I use behindthename, names sorted after languages (including dead ones) with filters for gender, mythology etc.
Running into this issue right now with another comic project. Thought it could be cute to have a culture named after weapons and armor. It took me too long to realize that “Saberic” and “Aegiskarian” sound ridiculous. Reworking now.
This is where reading a bunch of fantasy novels nobody else at the table has heard of. They’ll probably catch on if the duelist’s name is Darya Sark, but you can probably slip Myne the librarian past them. And if you’re wrong, they’ll probably go “Oh, I didn’t know you liked Ascendance of a Bookworm!” instead of “Copycat.”
Definitely works in cosmopolitan areas! When it comes to worldbuilding though, I get etymology in the back of my head, and wind up worrying that I’m not sticking to whatever “these dudes are Finnish, these dudes are Arthurian” naming schemes.