Manly Name
I can never look at this comic without thinking about the Voltaire tune. Laurel and I saw the dude at Dragon*Con a few years back, and let me tell you, the guy is pretty splenderful live. If you get the chance, make it a point to see one of his shows.
Names are hard for fantasists. You want to evoke the spirit of your character in a few short syllables, and you’ve got to squeeze in culture and gender and class and personality. I get Tolkien in the back of my head too, and I freeze up remembering how the Old Norse name Gandalfr incorporates the words gandr meaning “wand”, “staff” or (especially in compounds) “magic” and álfr “elf,” and all at once I’m too aware that I’m a hack by comparison to choose anything at all. It suddenly feels a bit hollow to name your half-orc barbarian Frar because “it sounds right,” you know?
Have any of you guys ever really nailed a character name? Let’s hear it in the comments, because I could clearly use the help!
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I named my Solar Exalt from the Coral Archipelago Pisho, which is the russian word for fish. She ended up being a master of Dreaming Pearl Courtesan style. I think very fitting because of how her name and heritage both come from the sea, and her marital arts ( combined with some other charms) made her flit and dodge like a fish in water.
My favorite Exalted character name comes from a player in a game I ran a few years ago–he’d never encountered Exalted as a setting or system and admitted that when he’d googled around for ideas, he’d thought all the Exalted-specific generators were a joke. Sadly, as we went around the table and player after player announced that they were “The Many Faces of Death” and “The Black Hand of the Triumphant Vulture,” his face kept falling until we got around to him and he quietly admitted that his character was “Walsh.” There was nothing wrong with it, of course, but his momentary confusion upon realizing that Exalted names could be that weird was pretty hilarious.
Russian word for fish is рыба, transliterated as “reeba”. Pisho is not a word in Russian.
“Fizz Whizzbang, Goblin Alchemist” was my best I think
Please tell me you used the WoW goblin voice for the character.
I once gamed on a MUD with someone who always named his summoned steed “Pecadillo.”
+5 points for originality. -2 points for comparative un-manliness. Unless of course the character was a bard, in which case it’s +2 for irony.
These days I generally just take names straight from other sources. A dwarf Ironsoul Forgemaster (Magic of Incarnum), for instance, I named Hadrian Volundr; St. Hadrian is a patron saint of soldiers and arms dealers, and Volundr is a variation on the name of Weyland the Smith from Norse mythology.
More often I only do that for the first name, with a surname being either some variation on “[name]son” or just putting together a couple of words that seem vaguely appropriate (Gearguarder for a mechanist, or Needle-Eyes for a sniper type, Heavyhand for a guy who uses a lot of power attacks; you get the idea). If something a bit more exotic is desired, just run it through google translate into a language with the right flavor and call it a day.
This is why I now Google for my players’ names. It’s interesting figuring out where “Kalten” or “Enarme” came from.
My fighter picked up a magical beast cohort. He tried to break a magical object with a borrowed morning star. Failed, the morning star and object became one. The weapon turned into an egg on a stick. From that hatched a metal kiwi with spikes,
My dude named him Mace. xD
My paladin once had an axe. He tried to hit the god of chaos with that axe. The god of chaos turned my paladin (temporarily) and the axe (permanently) into rabbits. The rabbit is named Axe.
And also, that was a good morning star. I miss using that morning star.
May not be in battle but you can at least still hang out. Mace seems to have a super high intel and a need to help. So maybe he could help your paladin with something? Maybe you guys could go on an adventure. Or make cupcakes.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I smell a Banjo-Kazooie style mascot platformer. “The Weird Adventures of Mace and Axe.” They take turns wielding each other.
I was the DM for this session. Axe still remains one of my favorite NPCs in any campaign I’ve run, period.
I really hope to see “Mace & Axe” adventures in the future.
Spinoff campaign? Might I suggest a new system for the new game?
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/131729/Wield
My most played character is a pseudo-paladin swordmage called Stenos Sunborne. At the end of the day he just wanted to settle down with his giant wife and be a farmer.
Rock solid fantasy name right there. Also possibly Hagrid’s dad, so bonus points. 😛
Albert Winifred Granger, expert alchemist and gentlemen by day. And should you ask him about his central moniker, it was in honor of his dearly departed great grandmother Winifred Daisy Granger. At least in pleasent company…. a bit o’ da juice, tho. Heh heh heh. Slackjaw comes out to play, eh my pretty flesh poppets?
Pathfinder Alchemist in a sort of Dishonored/Dunwall setting who took Master Chymist prestige to get a second personality when he takes his spirits. He got the name slackjaw from the transformation breaking loose the left side of his jawbone every time, giving him a wet and spittle filled slur.
Full on Jekyll / Hyde, eh? I’ve always thought it was cool that Paizo gave support to the character archetype. I’ve never had a chance to play it myself, but it looks like a blast.
My current character is named Ulfric Hardcrotch (D&D 5e). He’s a stereotypical Northern fighter (hence Ulfric), who’s last name was given to him by his old battle companions, as is the tradition in the North. In his youth he was rather enthusiastic and whenever he went into battle the adrenaline made him grow a boner. Manly indeed.
Bloodlust was never so literal.
In Castle Falkenstein all dwarfs have rather pansy names, like Rhyme, Buttercup, Morningdew, etc. That is because all dwarfs are male. New dwarfs are made when a dwarf (which is a special kind of Faery race) mates with any female faery being, like nymphs, elves and stuff. The (male) dwarfchild is then reared, and named, by his mother, until it is ready to join dwarfdom. Female children are of the race\faerytype of the mother.
Heh. I bet they’ve all got Taserface issues.
Well, yes and no. Most still have that, but they turned their rage/humiliation into a constructive force. All dwarfs now want to get a “master” (sur)name. If you invent\discover something new, you get named after that discovery. So Buttercup Steammaster (for the inventor of the steam engine) and Rhyme Enginemaster (for the inventor of the Magickal engine). And that gives you heaps of standing within dwarf society. And also the right to marry the king of your dwarfhalls daughter (as happened to Rhyme, after he became Enginemaster)
My tabletop characters mostly have boring names like Roland. I did have a wizard named Felespar (after a character in Ultima V, no idea where it came from before that).
…on the other hand, my worgen warlock is Vective, as in Darth Vective. “Take a word beginning with in-, where removing the in- does not result in an English word” — our Sith Name Rule #1.
Well then. That’s ridiculous and awesome. I approve!
My first-ever D&D character was a dwarven fighter (because I figured I should start simple) called Dworgen Stoneface.
We go through some shenanigans — a town gate gets guarded from rifraff, a cabbage merchant endures misfortune, some homeless people get a free meal — and then we get into a fight with some local malcontents. A couple people get set on fire, our cleric’s summoned raven absolutely murders everything due to multiple natural 20s, and then the big malcontent wearing pots as piecemeal armor walks out.
At this point, we all suddenly experience a collective period of incompetence — nobody is rolling well enough to accomplish anything productive. I’m whaling on this guy but can’t get through his armor, he’s whaling on me but can’t get through my armor, our rogue fumbles and stabs himself through the foot… it was a mess.
We eventually killed him by having the wizard Mage Hand a pot up to blind him and give us the edge we needed, but before that happened, the big guy managed to grab me by the head. But, since we were all still rolling really badly, he fumbled his attempt to squeeze and the DM ruled he hurt his hand on my face. After the fight, we all had a good laugh at how appropriate my character’s name ended up being to the situation.
Spat out my goddamn coffee. That’s how you know you’re doing it right!
https://66.media.tumblr.com/5412f4d1c275b71529a70d1357898e27/tumblr_oo3itfaXhP1vpg9oso3_1280.png
My job here is done.
I’ve had/seen a couple of good ones.
One of my primary online handles these days actually originated from a 2nd Ed Exalted Lunar I played – Sightless Raiton. Fun fact: Sightless Raiton was part of a crew of sky pirates; the group was a mixed variety of exalts, and only Raiton was a Lunar, but except for the doctor the entire circle had bird names. (Screeching Magpie the Gem-hoarding Mars Caste whose Sidereal Anima Banner manifested as EXPLOSIONS. Pink ones. With sparkles. Captain Owl the Solar Night Caste. And… I can’t remember the other’s names, it was years ago, but everyone but the doctor was birds and it was a complete accident. It was great when the doctor was arrested and interrogated and they thought he was making it all up because he described our personalities and it sounded like he was just describing the animals we were named for. The player got a truly amazing rant in character about how they’re deed names, that’s how they work! All of us at the table were in hysterics).
Bonus points: Sightless Raiton was not in fact blind, but I did purchase the ‘mute’ flaw for him – his vocal cords were wyld mutated partially into obsidian before he got his tattoos.
For other good names, one of my friends always wanted to have a Raven Familiar named Quoth. First time I played a Sorcerer I stole the idea and had a raven named Poe.
One of my buddies played a Warforged Artificer name Ohm, because when the DM asked what the PC’s name was the player went “Ummm…” And suddenly realized he hadn’t thought of one even though they’d already started session at this point. The GM misinterpreted, and thought because the character was a) a Warforged, and b) an Artificer it was a reference to the electrical measurement. The player ran with it.
I had a buddy sit down for his first game of Exalted once upon a time. He went through an exalted name generator, thought it was broken, and came to session with a normal dude. The introductions were great.
“You may call me The Unrepentant Finger of the Carp.”
“I am known as Azure Wing of the Sunrise.”
“Hi! I’m Wash.”
lol. I just realized that Laurel told exactly the same story in a comment further up the page… nearly four years ago.
I see a name as being something that feels… right for the character. It’s not exactly that it sounds right, but more… if I want to name a character, I kind of just stop talking and basically just think on that character, causing a name to eventually come that sums up the character, in my mind. Since this process involves thinking on the entirety of the character’s personality, the time it takes can vary. For my first character, it took a few seconds to name him “Windslicer”. For a particularly complex one-shot character, it can take 15 minutes. And for the single most complex character I ever created? Naming that character took between nine months to a year.
So, I was shocked and horrified to discover, in my perusal of the 5e PHB, that a fellow 3.5 player had named his character after one of the sample names. And that he liked random name generators!!! (GASP!).
Unless I’m DM though. In that case, gimme those name generators, I ain’t got time to come up with a name for each an’ every NPC!
My main two methods are looking up character-related Hebrew and Japanese words for names, or starting to type a name that I like the sound of into Google and seeing what it suggests.
My favorite name with meaning was from the second method. I was making an empathetic Yuan-Ti Paladin from a vaguely Persia-like society, and was trying to find a name with a lot of “s”s in it, so I typed in “Persia Sass” and it came up with “Sassanian Empire”. One tweak* later, I had the name “Sessani Flinx”, and he’s a character I’ve been playing for years now.
and an Alan Dean Foster reference
The names are hard to imagine weaver wordle. The warrior I chose was a dwarf named phrazle. Seems a bit funny, right? Thanks for your post, it was very interesting!