On Fantasy Names (Resurrected Rant)

[Technomancer]

Ugh, the apostrophe shotgun (scattering apostrophes randomly throughout a word) is one of my fantasy name pet peeves.

A couple of others that annoy me are replacing the letter k with the letter q, and adding the letter h after random consonants for no reason other than to make the word look more exotic.

So Bob Barker becomes Bhob Bhar'qer

 

[Tal Rasha]

As someone with an uncanny talent for making up silly names with no meaning whatsoever behind them, I would be interested to know how the good writers come up with their names for characters. Tolkien was great at this, all his characters sounded the part - hobbits were hobbits, elves had elven names, and so on. Then again, he was a very gifted linguist.

Does anyone have any thoughts on what backgorund you need to be able to think up euphonic, sensible names?

 

[Doug Sundseth]

While the OP mentioned the gratuitous doubling of vowels, he missed the gratuitous doubling of consonants: Tomm (or Thomm, I suppose), Jonnz (doubling plus z for s), Forrester.

Oh, wait, not that last one.

And let me just put in a plug for an amusing (and mildly appalling) website, "Baby's Named a Bad, Bad Thing": http://notwithoutmyhandbag.com/babynames/

 

[Piratecat]

My god, I want to play a character with this name. Axeaxe Flintflint, dwarven stutterer!

Although it is still trumped by a character I once heard tell of, the dwarven eunuch warlock Duncan Nonuts.

I dream of getting to play Kickjunk Grabwallet, dwarven rogue.

 

[Eric Tolle]

The obvious way to get around this problem is to do what I do: I call all of my characters "Dave", followed by their occupation. So, Dave Thefighter, Dave Themage, Dave ThepriestessofLolth, etc.

This relates to a larger problem I've been seeing in games: player creativity. Not only is there an epidemic of ingenious names, but I've been seeing more and more players doing things like describing their character's features, giving their characters backstories, families and relationships, and occasionally, even giving them goals and personalities.

This sort of untrammeled creativity is leading us away from the pure "kick the door down and hit it" dungeoncrawling that is the one true essence of D&D, down a path that can only lead to amateur thespianism, wearing black clothing and black mascara, and smoking clove cigarettes. Gary Gygax WARNED us about this threat! WHY DIDN"T WE LISTEN!

 

[kenobi65]

Ugh, the apostrophe shotgun (scattering apostrophes randomly throughout a word) is one of my fantasy name pet peeves.

Gah! I *hate* that one!

At least, when Anne McCaffrey used apostrophes in dragonriders' names, they were there for a reason (to symbolize the shortening of a name). I think that's the exception to the rule; most of the time, you see them because the author decided they looked cool and exotic.

 

[gizmo33]

Robert Jordan told me I should use "Ghyyz'mo" for my screen name.

 

[AnonymousOne]

Well let's look at the reasoning behind the names in my game.

Gol Ven - lvl 6 +1LA
Classes: Warblade 5
Race: Goliath
Ven apparently is a Goliath Tribal name from Races of Stone. And Gol ... well that's the name of one of the player's favorite cigars: The CAO Brasilia Gol (Gol is actually the name for that specific size of cigar while the Brasilia annotates the tobacco blend.)

Rearden Jens -
Classes: Rogue1/Swash3/Fighter1/Rogue1
Race: Human
Rearden being one of the protagonists in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and Jens beig a slight bastardization of the last name of a character in a Terry Brooks fantasy novel (Jans -> Jens)

Maerit Constantine -
Classes: Cleric 6
Race: Ursanare (think of a bear that walks and talks)
Constantine being the founder of Constantinople and a saint of the Eastern Orthodox church and Maerit came right of the DnD wiki where we found the race.

Felix -
Classes: Technomancer 6 (Homebrew class)
Race: Human
This name is a throwback to our earlier campaign where we had an NPC tinkerer named Felix.

I'll admit that there is a great number of completely absurd names out there in the fantasy world. But come on, you can't damn us all can ya?

 

[Zurai]

As someone with an uncanny talent for making up silly names with no meaning whatsoever behind them, I would be interested to know how the good writers come up with their names for characters. Tolkien was great at this, all his characters sounded the part - hobbits were hobbits, elves had elven names, and so on. Then again, he was a very gifted linguist.

Exactly. Tolkein was extremely interested in what made languages work and spent literally dozens of years dissecting and studying languages. He then applied what he learned to his world; not only did he invent languages, he aged them over the course of thousands of figurative years. There's a reason his names sound so good: they all have a solid grounding in not only their appropriate language (many of which were borrowed from real-world languages), they each have a history.

 

[Forrester]

I'll admit that there is a great number of completely absurd names out there in the fantasy world. But come on, you can't damn us all can ya?

Yes. Yes, I can. "Maerit".

But I'll forgive you if you provide me the link to the Robin Laws "What kind of player are you" test you (and others) have apparently taken . . . you know, that powergamer/buttkicker/casualgamer/etc. stuff . . .