NPC names

[sabrinathecat]

We play a lot with names.
One NPC was "Agamom", which was supposed to be a shortened Agamemnon. Unfortunately the GM sometimes forgot, and the Achian Warrior King would stride across our battle field.
What's more, there was a published mod with Obinar, who was variously Obama-nar or O'Bummer, depending on the situation.

I named dragons with various Gaelic proper names. Poor "Scheivenamon" had is name tortured so badly...
At the moment, I'm dealing with a number of anime fans, so I take names from either the original or the English dub and tweek them when they are dealing with characters based on a given anime. Some of my names have turned out to have unfortunate meanings in Japanese. Oh well.

 

[Lord Rasputin]

For naming languages, this is a long-acknowledged essential of making them. For sound changes with Indo-European tongues, try Wikipedia.

 

[Omegaxicor]

wow Rasputin that document is good but waaaaaay too complex for what I want but thanks

EDIT: sabrinathecat that's kinda the problem I want to avoid...

 

[stevelabny]

How to name NPC humans and locations.

1> Look at what Paizo did with Golarion.
2> Don't do that.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

I hate silly names or real world names but I really like the names that Ed Greenwood comes up with. I've compiled a list of over 2,000 of Ed's names which I am still adding to - these are not names of well-known characters - and I have a random number generator on the spreadsheet to help me choose whenever I need to name a PC.

If anyone is interested, most of the names are spread over four posts but I will shortly be posting a link to a Google docs spreadsheet. Here's the link to the posts: https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3417307288214203410#allposts

 

[Ahnehnois]

I like Gary Gygax's Book of Names.

Then again, I also like making up stuff.

 

[Mallus]

My advice would be to relax and have fun. Try to create NPC names that don't lend themselves to mockery and you practically guarantee the players will find a dozen ways to mock them inside of 10 minutes. Shoot for names with gravitas and more likely than not shoot yourself in the foot, err, nomenclature.

I've become a big fan of word names, names ripped off from real-world cultures, sometime modified, sometimes not, and names otherwise stolen from sources outside my own head. In my experience, it's worse to create names that sound too same-y, which is a big risk if you try to do all the name-creation yourself. The world sounds as small as the DM's imagination. Borrowing freely from the wider world, real and fictional, helps mitigate that.

I've found themes help. In the old homebrew I'm dusting off for a new Pathfinder campaign, the city of Narayan most names are bad French, bad Hindi, or a mix of bad French and bad Hindi. This is to give the names a particular and hopefully memorable sound, and to suggest the cities history; the original, ancient culture (Hindu-ish) and the barbarian culture that sacked then later integrated (French-ish).

Here are examples from my campaign-prep. My players may want to stop reading now!

• Dame Nathalie Satyajit-Rey, the evil, aristocratic captain of the Bred of Wickedness (who's also an evil priestess known for her Ray spells...).

• L'Enfer Dame Adjani, La Petit Morte, the Sister of the Seventh Tower (Nathalie's goddess, sort of an advanced succubus).

• Mlle. Opalé Fleur, the mistress of Masion Basé Moi (which is on Rue Prix Nuit, aka Night Price Street).

• Diella "Dilly" Daliwhal, Mlle. Fleur's lazy maid.

• Bagwan-Bernard Bodhi, a very wealthy man.

• Ragwan Wrothchilde, aka The Bloody Pike, a very wealthy pirate and politician, head of the Red Sea Party, or Mer Rouge.

• Pavur-Pascal Rajani, aka Pavur of the Golden Door, a famous magician specializing in teleportation.

And some other names:

• Lustful Curds, a foreigner who serves as Mlle. Fleur's "cheese-wallah". He's also an accomplished cigar-roller.

• Galen Wrecks, a hulking, brutish physician.

• Parzival Lanka, a knight and detective.

• Kappa Jo, aka Josephat of Miir. He owns a coffee shop, and is, in fact, something of a kappa.

• Tumult Gunn, clock-and-firearm maker, owner of the Bold Curiosities Shoppe.

(you may have noticed I don't shy away from puns... but hey, neither did Shakespeare!)

 

[Omegaxicor]

what did I say about pronouncing them

I like some of the other names but your campaign prep, probably because they are partially French, are difficult to pronounce/remember.

 

[Trit One-Ear]

Many posts above have covered using less-commonly used languages, which is a trick I use myself. I've found Estonian works to fill in the gaps where other languages don't. It gives a nice mix of rougher sounding words and more fluid, elegant sounds, making is useful for both orcish and elven languages.

I also use the steal-a-name technique, often mashing first and last names from different characters together to hide some of my tracks.

I cannot strongly enough recommend saying your names out loud a few times before your players hear them. And old Mutants and Masterminds game I ran had the ill named Crier (as in town crier) as an ally the heroes met. Soon the puns began ("quickly, to the whaa-bulance!" Or "his sidekick, The Sniveler"), and he was quickly renamed mid-session to The Herald. I've also written names which have sounded good once or twice, and looked great on paper, but once I had to say their names 30 times a session became a minefield of verbal gymnastics. Definitely test out your names, kids.

Trit

 

[steeldragons]

I think the number one reason I haven't seen anyone address (and forgive me if I missed it): How did this "ancient extinct race" name themselves? What did their names/naming conventions sound like?

Did this culture name folks:
Varaganxyrak and Sebredi?
Kal-el and Kara?
Lord Dansen and Lady Rudnell?
Lamentable-Cries-of-Fear and Shining-Golden-Wings?
Ib and Ok?

And how [or even "if"] would any of those translate into English (or whatever your game world "Common" is).

Come up with those and you can come up with the sounds you want to portray this "big bad" and "incorporeal ally."