Name Inspiration

[DungeonmasterCal]

I like to watch movie credits. There is no way my imagination could generate names as good as some the things people get called in real life. Exotic, clever, funny. I have a friend who got a character name straight from a movie credit. The name?

Richard Biggerstaff.

I just processed some info about a guy with the last name "Biggerstaff" this morning... lol

 

[DaveStebbins]

But, I now swear by the Everchanging Book of Names...a slick little shareware program, that includes modules for both real-life and fantasy languages (including Tolkien, Greyhawk, and Forgotten Realms). I have EBoN crank out 100 names of the appropriate flavor, and I can always find a few good ones within that list.

It's at:
http://ebon.pyorre.net/

I've been a fan of EBoN for years. I choose different cultures or whatever for names from different regions in my campaign. Then I generate 100 to 200 names for each region and drop them into a wordpad document and print them out and drop them into my DM Binder. Then I always have cool-sounding names of every flavor available. EBoN is the best piece of gaming software I've come across. I liked it so much I paid the shareware fee and contributed a couple of (name) seed files (years ago now).

-Dave

 

[Tuzenbach]

I either steal them (Tuzenbach is a character from Anton Chekov's "The Three Sisters") or they fall out of my brain.

For some reason, the name "Foy Achleides" fell out of my brain this past week.

 

[R-Hero]

If not entirely made up, they generally come from different languages like Latin or German.
I try to have the name fit the character.

Ex. A paladin whose family worships Paladine got named Veritas. (Veritas=truth in Latin)
An opposing family that worships the Dark Queen, Calthairse. (Bad phonetic spelling of German Kalt=cold & hears=heart) ((Forgive the crappy spelling))

Another paladin character/family got named Daywalker because I has just watched Blade on dvd just before game time. The name led to a story line, as defenders of Kelemvor. (anti-undead)

 

[philreed]

Not only names but also descriptions of NPCs:

Building Believable Characters

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...104-5337737-3113514?v=glance&s=books&n=507846


$15 for a great resource.

 

[Emperor Valerian]

I usually use a combination of foreign languages and the names of historical people. For example, my last campaign was based in a European-type empire, so I used Latin sounding names for NPCs and places: Lucius, Andronicus, Harrapias, Comnitas, Iskeldrun.

In my current campaign, based in a China type setting, there's much use of rearranged historical names. Hu Jintao (former president of China) gave his surname to the bad guy, while his given name went to an ally of the PCs. Yuan Shikai (former dictator in China) had his surname given to the Imperial family, and his given name completed the name of the bad guy. Thus the BBEG is Hu Shikai.

 

[sniffles]

I've picked names up all over, but in a pinch I've been known to resort to the appendices of Return of the King. As-is, or scrambled a bit. Lots of great names there.

--Impeesa--

I concur!! I get most of my names from Tolkien. There are some websites for names, too:
www.20000-names.com is a good one.

I also once ran an alien in a Star Trek game whose name came from my company phonebook (with a few tweaks). His name was Cesteen Dexceb.