Off-beat Inspiration for Fantasy Names?

[Hejdun]

For the longest time I had a terrible time coming up with fantasy names. I've never found any fantasy name generators I've liked, and I'm downright terrible at coming up with them on the spot. And now that I'm getting back into DMing and building my own homebrew, I've realized that I need to have a big long list of decent fantasy names to whip out when I need to.

And then I noticed just how many hockey players there are with names suitable for fantasy. So I looked through the player lists at nhl.com and now I have a huge list of good names all ready to go. It helps that no one else in the group follows sports. But I think names like Koivu, Iginla, Kessel, Kopitar and Sarich are perfect fantasy names. They're clean, lack apostrophes, and don't sound like first names you would hear in everyday life.

Does anyone else have some non-conventional sources for fantasy names?

 

[Voadam]

For the longest time I had a terrible time coming up with fantasy names. I've never found any fantasy name generators I've liked, and I'm downright terrible at coming up with them on the spot. And now that I'm getting back into DMing and building my own homebrew, I've realized that I need to have a big long list of decent fantasy names to whip out when I need to.

And then I noticed just how many hockey players there are with names suitable for fantasy. So I looked through the player lists at nhl.com and now I have a huge list of good names all ready to go. It helps that no one else in the group follows sports. But I think names like Koivu, Iginla, Kessel, Kopitar and Sarich are perfect fantasy names. They're clean, lack apostrophes, and don't sound like first names you would hear in everyday life.

Does anyone else have some non-conventional sources for fantasy names?

Baby name sites for other countries are great, pick one for use a lot and they can give a unified sound to NPCs.

At one point I had plans for using the Vampire card game list for sabbat names to be demons.

I currently use a lot of federal judges for my character names. Thus I have Sir Merrick Garland an aasimar fighter, for a while I was playing Hael Boudin, duergar ranger (took the "Mic" out of Michael) Sir Conrad Cyr, tiefling soulknifre, Josea Cabranes gnome druid (condensed Jose A. Cabranes), etc. I'm up to the second circuit so I was trying to conceptualize how I would use Sotomayor. Before she was nominated I was thinking it felt right for a fantasy samurai.

For elf names I generally just spout a long list of flowing syllables and see where it takes me. This is how I came up with Kalenestarianthalus 'Kalen' Floriandin, Gray Elven Beguiler.

 

[Aeolius]

Aquarium Fish: Tropical Freshwater Fish and Saltwater Fish for Home Aquariums The latin names for fish make a great foundation for names used in my undersea campaign.

 

[Clavis]

A technique I like is to take real-life names and just change the vowels while keeping the consonants. It's gives some interesting results.

For example:

David Smith become Dovad Smuth.
Amy Brenner becomes Imo Brunnir

Here are some place name examples:

Green Lake becomes Graon Liko
Long River becomes Ling Rovyr
Gigantic City becomes Guguntac Cotu

Etc.

 

[Rechan]

My favorite names are actually descriptions. Such as Rolling Thunder, Stalks the Shallows, Splits the Sky, Bleeds for Others, etc.

I also suggest baby name sites by country.

For one campaign, I had an area where everything was fairly Germanic; it had only one syllable, and you had to be able to grunt it out. Arn, Bren, Gul, Ral.

I once knew a guy who named all his elves after drug names. Paxil, Lexapro, Sudafed, etc.

 

[Mallus]

My current D&D PC is named for two perfumes my wife likes to wear together: Yatagan and Fracas.

Turns out to be surprisingly fitting. A yatagan is a type of Turkish sword, and, of course, a fracas is what every good adventurer creates whenever he goes.

 

[Barastrondo]

My brother likes to name characters after cities. No, I don't mean he has a character named "Detroit" — but he has an "Oslo," a "Mosul" and a "Turin."

A friend got "Magnus" and "Vastyl" from strongman competitions.

And I like the trick of staring at a sentence and trying to find attractive conjunctions of letters between words. So, for instance, a sentence that includes "handing out monetary" produces "Goutmon," "give some thought" provides "Vesometh," and so on. If I were to look at the previous sentence I would take "like the trick" and swipe "Kethet." It doesn't have to be three words, either; "Ussen" is a perfectly fine barbarian name from "previous sentence"… oh man, I better stop or I'll be at this forever.

 

[timbannock]

I took the names of all the players I've ever personally played with, wrote out their full name and any nicknames, and then started rearranging syllables and so on from their first and last names (and nick names, as appropriate) to develop some interesting sounding fantasy names like:

Risk, Anais, Kripsa, Parick
Nolo, Picran, Oloc, Gen
Drasphae, Lanie, Shelan
Hematt, Tama-Hanesh
Omasz, Kyzmoth, Zam Tokaz
Nimrag, Athan, Maegrim

These are coming from people with pretty standard names, like Matt, Nathan, Melanie, etc.

I also wrote down every character name they've ever come up with (that I could find) as well. So I can reuse those names, or do the same thing with the syllable or letter flopping to get new, original names.

I get it mainly from my love of Gygax and crew doing that very thing (Gygax was big on this, but you also see Monte Cook using "Ucec Ordell" -- Bruce Cordell -- in his Planescape works and such). It's not only a ready source, but also a way of "immortalizing" some players or characters by having variants of their name appear in the game.

 

[Atlatl Jones]

I get names from all sorts of sources. Sometimes I pick them from foreign cultures, sometimes I smush together real words, and sometimes I have no idea where the name comes from.

I wanted my shifter character, Heyoka Jumps-Off-Mountains, to have a somewhat native/tribal vibe, so his first name is the name of a Lakota "holy fool" and his last name is made-up pseudo-native BS. He's brave and reckless, and almost compulsively athletic, so the name fit.

The name Atlatl Jones sprung into my mind fully formed. I can't explain it. Some have suggested that it's take on Spearchucker Jones from M.A.S.H., but if it is, my subconscious is a lot smarter than I am.

I created the name Sir Lien Repossessed while studying law. Lien sounded like a great name for a S&M Deva Cathar, who believes that flesh is evil, and that he is cursed to be trapped in flesh until the end of time, though reincarnation. "Repossessed" just seemed to fit his philosophy too.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Gary Gygax's Extraordinary Book of Names, by Malcolm Bowers, is an excellent naming resource, one of the best rpg books I own.

It's got a lot of good advice about the structure of historical names. Including a place name - Anne of Cleves, or an epithet - Ethelred the Unready, makes the name feel a lot more archaic.

Kate Monk's Onomastikon is also excellent, contains historical names from a wide variety of cultures.

Poeminster's Archaic and Poetical Dictionary has some good stuff. Abada, thrang and tintamar, for example.

One suggestion I've seen is to take a normal English name and change one letter. This fantasy-s it, while retaining the shape and feel of a real name.

Examples:
Steve -> Sreve
Gordon -> Yordon
Jerry -> Jerdy

For place names, just use an atlas. English villages are a good choice for a generic fantasy world.