[Pseudo-poll]/[Study] Female Fantasy Names

[Steverooo]

I remember:

Fili,
Cannonfodder Lichesbane,
Rammadon,
Evadere,
Wraith,
Freya, and
Yngwyldr.

There were others, whose names I can't remember.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Not really. AFAIK, female names ending in "a" is one of the conventions of latin-derived languages.

Julio=male; Julia=female
Silvos=male; Sylvia=female
Augustus=male; Augusta=female
Alexander=male; Alexa=female

Other languages and language groups have different naming conventions (Alexi and Misha are apparently male names in Russian even though one would expect them to be female names in other contexts) but Latin and French are very important influences on the English language so it is not surprising that our naming conventions (and most respondents here are English speakers) reflect that influence.

We pick up on the small conventional cues that language gives us about names. So, if Loskeruin (which, if pronounced Law ske Roo In doesn't sound particularly female to me) is difficult to remember as a female name, forcing it into a recognized naming convention makes it easy to remember.

And there's nothing wrong with that. It would be a very strange world indeed (one in which names offered no clue as to the sex of their bearers) if it weren't a surprise to meet a boy every introduced with the name "Sue."

Yup... I have one to add also and a small story behind it...

Loskeruina

Which was suppose to be Loskeruin but with it PbP, no one could remember that my charatcer was female... So an "a" was added and everyone did a much better job of remembering... Silly huh?

or maybe it's sad...

 

[ArielManx]

I'm a little late for the statistics, but here are two more (my husband already mentioned my main character, Zorra):

Lithra (half-drow rogue/ranger)
Narine (human Cleric/Fighter/Doomguide of Kelemvor [epic level])

I also had a wood elf ranger named Zandra in a short-lived PbEM game.

 

[barsoomcore]

Here's a simple bit of analysis: check out how many Japanese girl's names end in "o". Those that don't end in either "a" or "i", pretty much.

But then, most Japanese boy's names end in a vowel, too, I'd say.

On the other hand, I don't think that Chinese girl's names show a preference for vowel endings. I'm no expert though -- but I'll bet there's one around here somewheres...

Does anyone know if Indian languages show a preference? I'm kind of curious. I mean, it's a safe bet that most of us here come from a Latin/European language background, so it's unsurprising that we would think up names that follow the sorts of conventions we're used to. But is it a universal thing? I wonder.

 

[afreed]

1) ~24% are names that are common in real life.
2) ~62% end in a vowel.
2b) ~42% end in "a".

Rule 1 obviously doesn't count, but rules 2 and 2b both apply pretty aptly to the current top 10 female names from the <a href="http://www.census.gov/genealogy/names/dist.female.first">US census</a>.

3) ~6% are basically names that have a reference to an object of some sort (ex. Circle, Saffron, Cupcake, etc.).

This doesn't; not entirely surprising, since object-names probably make more sense for fantasy.

4) less than 10% of the names contain a "u".

This one applies...

5) more than half of the names contain an "e".

This one, interestingly, doesn't. Probably the most major deviation from popular real female names.

Idle statistical thoughts...

 

[Kilmore]

The only one I can think of is Faeona. Yep, that fits in pretty well with the theories.

I'm going to name my next female character Uluupt.

 

[LazarusLong42]

Well, even though much analysis has been done already, my (short) list:

Raie
Kintys
Serei

Those pretty much fit the bill, but I tend to shy away from names ending in -a --on average, at least--specifically because of the Indo-European tendency toward -a marking a female name.

[Armchair linguist mode]

If you really check through languages, you'll find that most Indo-European languages tend to follow the rules you've quoted above: most end in a vowel, most of those end in -a, very few u's. This applies among Romance languages, Baltic and Slavic languages (take, for instance, Russian, where -a as a marker on a female name is almost mandatory), all of the Germanic languages (including English), the Aramaic language group (Arbaic, Hebrew), and most Indian languages (subcontinental Indian, not American Indian).

There are variations amongst these--Russian has a higher concentration of u's, for instance--but -a as a marker for "female" has probably been with us since Proto-Indo-European was grunted^h^h^h spoken ten thousand or so years ago.

I know less about the world's other language groups, but as I recall -o is the female marker in Japanese, for instance.

[/armchair linguist]

 

[hong]

Not really. AFAIK, female names ending in "a" is one of the conventions of latin-derived languages.

Julio=male; Julia=female
Silvos=male; Sylvia=female
Augustus=male; Augusta=female
Alexander=male; Alexa=female

Others:

Ninjus = male; Ninja = female
Bacterius = male; Bacteria = female
Katanus = male; Katana = female

 

[Isida Kep'Tukari]

My female characters:

Anna Cale - human cleric of goddess of healing, 2e
Raasor - human Strength priest, 2e using specialized priest from Complete Book of Priests
Helva Sensdottir - human druid, Rejurik in Birthright campaign 2e
Isida Kep'Tukari - human monk, 3e
Leyna Thorngage - halfling rogue, 3e
Kay Seben - human fighter, 3e
Rowan Stormwind - ice para-genasi cleric of Auril, FR 3e
Liayen Sunhammer - loresong faen magister, AU campaign

 

[Nifft]

A little soft spot for french names I see?

It's a campaign set in a kingdom based on renaissance France.
Now they're moving to a chain of islands based on conquistadorial Spanish colonies, so there will be some non-French names.

The backstory of the world is that the First Empire spoke Latin, conquered the world (and several others besides), and fell over 2000 years ago. Surviving humans now speak a variety of regional languages, mostly Romance ones.

-- Nifft