RPG characters with names derived from...

[Khelon Testudo]

And of course my avatar name on this forum is based on two ways of saying "Turtle".

 

[Bohandas]

and my screenname is a minor deity from the Book of the SubGenius

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

We've done the same lots of times... when a player doesn't have an idea for a name, I tell them to check the basic PHB suggestions or look at the map of a country with a language they don't speak.

Yes. But designers all around the world, please don't do that in published products. It's grating when your gaming group plays in that language and all the NPCs in a town where your adventure takes place have silly-sounding names.

 

[Dioltach]

I once called a village in my campaign East Clintwood.

 

[aco175]

My saddest name was a bard many years ago named Ellem In-o Pee, L,M,N,O,P. He ended up with a sidekick named Q. It was sad.

My favorite was one of my friend's snobbish noble named Pompeus Assintent. Good roleplaying, but could easily have led to PvP conflict with him not touching money and handwaving over to innkeeper saying "Pay the man." to the other PCs after insisting on the him having the best room.

 

[uzirath]

It's great hearing all these hilarious names. Much as I enjoy them, I've always tended toward less overtly comical names in my games. Anachronistic puns make it harder for me to maintain my suspension of disbelief.

With that said, I often use foreign language dictionaries (or, nowadays, Google Translate) to help me develop names for characters. I'm running a vaguely Norse campaign right now and regularly look things up in Icelandic to find an interesting word that might become a name. I also use baby name lists where they often provide lists from different cultures along with meanings for those names that might have them. The latter would hopefully avoid goofyness if you end up with a native speaker of the language in your group (as @Galandris pointed out above).

 

[Nobby-W]

I'm sure Tolkein would be turning in his grave if he saw my gonzo linguistics and wanton abuse of machine translation software.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

It's great hearing all these hilarious names. Much as I enjoy them, I've always tended toward less overtly comical names in my games. Anachronistic puns make it harder for me to maintain my suspension of disbelief.

How I name my PCs varies wildly. Sometimes, the name inspires the design, sometimes, it’s the other way around. Some are comical. Some are serious. Some are obvious, some obscure.*







* when I look at my file of names, sometimes even I have to puzzle out what inspired me if I haven’t made notes.