So, how do people come up with character names, anyway?

[cignus_pfaccari]

Coming from the Silly Names thread, that got me wondering. How do people name their characters?

I use a variety of methods, myself.

For our Shadowrun game, I was playing a fomori (Celticy troll) Secret Service Agent, so I started digging through common Irish names, and came up with Agent Sean O'Halloran.

I played an anthropomorphic half-dragon tyrannosaur in our epic game, and while his project name* was Bitey, that wasn't going to be his actual name. I eventually started rolling syllables around in my head until I came up with something that sounded particularly in his style, and came up with Tolthrak.

* - That's for my "proof of concept characters", who're built for the express purpose of seeing how an idea I have translates into a character. The first was for Shadowrun, and was expressly built to fire an assault rifle in full auto mode with no penalty due to recoil...that was Sid.

For our Birthright campaign, I chose my first character's name from the list of Anuirean names, and then started casting about for a last name that'd seem to fit in. I eventually decided to play a little joke and build his last name off of Moron...taking out the vowels, that gives us Mrn, and I added different vowels and an s on the end, and came up with Aeric Miranys.

How do other people name their characters?

Brad

 

[Sejs]

One guy in my gaming group is bad... and I mean really bad... horribly terribly, month-takingly bad at coming up with character names. He can't come up with a character name to save his life. If aliens invaded the earth, and the fate of all mankind rested on this man's ability to name a character... with any name whatsoever... we'd all be doomed. There just arn't enough words in the english language to describe my friend's lack of faculty with names.


So, we've just taken to looking around the surrounding gaming area and rattling off the names of what we see. His first character was a gnome sorcerer by the name of Oberto. His next character was a sneaky-fightery guy with a spiked chain we ended up naming Toshiba. Toshi for short, and to his credit the character's background and history was changed to make it reasonable. He was changed from generic-man into a halfbreed shou expatriot who ended up on the wrong side when his clan's leadership changed hands. He had a dwarven fighter by the name of Ruffles, which was changed to be the dwarf's nickname from his childhood and a story was cooked up explaining it, and so forth.

Kinda amusing, really.

 

[CalicoDave]

I've got "The Complete Guide to Middle-Earth" by Robert Foster. It's got over 550 pages of names from Tolkiens books. It gets used quite a bit when people are stuck for names; we'll just open to a random page and start reading down until something looks interesting.

 

[Henry]

Believe it or not, I sometimes take note of really cool poster names of forum members I see online, and use those. Whoever "Theryn of Nowhere" is, for example, I owe him for a European-flavor "wandering martial monk" character I've played before in an AD&D game about 5 years ago.

As I'm writing this, I'm also thinking "Calico Dave" would be a cool name for a foppish pirate on the Spanish Main.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

Hi cignus_pfaccari,

I have a book of names that I crafted myself. Whenever, I hear a cool name or think one up, I write it in. Over a period of five years, I've collected many thousands of good names (just checking now...12, 335 names in a word document) - unlike ones from a random generator where one in twenty might be usable.
Funnily enough though, the best names are the ones that just pop into your head when you're doing something entirely different.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

It depends on the race...I usually just kind of sound it out depending on the race and go from there. I find that I do best(and like the most) Elf names, though I'm getting better with the rougher sounding Dwarf names.

 

[Express]

Latley Ive been going to the old standby Latin. It doesnt always work for all camapigns but can be fun.

For instance, Im playing a shifter, who I sort of take to have a were wolverine in his heritage. Gulo gulo is the latin name of wolverine. Hey presto Gulo the shifter. Well, I like it

/shrug it works sometimes although it often produces some pretty lame names.

 

[haiiro]

I have a book of names that I crafted myself. Whenever, I hear a cool name or think one up, I write it in. Over a period of five years, I've collected many thousands of good names (just checking now...12, 335 names in a word document) - unlike ones from a random generator where one in twenty might be usable.
Funnily enough though, the best names are the ones that just pop into your head when you're doing something entirely different.

I've actually been doing this for years as well, and I agree completely. It's the main reason I'm rarely far from a pen and something to write on!

When I'm looking for a name, I usually start with my list. If the character I'm trying to name is important to me (say, a new PC), and nothing on the list feels right, I spend hours -- often over the course of several days -- coming up with a name. Heck, I've sat at the "choose your character" screen in Diablo II for as long as an hour before coming up with something that seemed to work...then played for a few hours, decided it didn't work, and built the same character again just to get the right name.

I swear, it's like a mental disorder -- there should be a psychiatric term for it, it's that bad.

 

[Big Jake]

Good question. Sometime's I come up with a name and then build a character around it. Most of the time I come up with a character then figure a name for him.

Shirak the Shorn - A great name I came up with for a dwarf with no beard. I really liked the name, and I had to work on a character that I could use. Long story short: defied the head of his clan and had his beard cut off. He was to remain "dead to the clan" until his beard grew 12 inches. In further defiance, he became a nature-loving ranger and kept his beard shorn.

When I made my current character (human Fighter/Warmage/Havoc Mage/Eldritch Knight), I wanted to make a 3.5 character with a d20 Modern feel. So I created him as a member of an elite Air Force team that fought against magical threats. I bought d20 Modern armor and weapons (tonfa, a lot of police-type people use them) and dressed him up in BDUs. He would end up in the "D&D" world by a planar rift. Then I thought up a name. A good "modern" name: Chris. I have a brother name Chris. And a last name? Hmm. How about... Johnson? Peterson? naw. Ooh! Thomasson. What a great name. Chris Thomasson. I introduced him to the party, and someone pulled out a Dragon Magazine and said.. oh, like the editor of Dragon?

So, I guess I can add "subliminal messaging" as a way to create character names.

Some great names from my past:

Long Li, human oriental monk/psychic warrior. Got his name from an on-line chinese dictionary. Last name Long (a common chinese last name) = Dragon. First name Li = strength. His brother, a psion played by a friend, was Long Shen. I think it meant Dragon Mind.
Eldon, a halfling psion that I took from 1st to 24th level. His name in in the player's handbook for common halfling names, but it's also the middle name of one of my best friends. I asked him if I could use him middle name.
Bruno, human "Duh Jock" (from Best of Dragon vol 2)... I got the name from Bruce Willis' album.
Fulcrum Ironhelm, dwarf cleric. I fumbled around with a list of Dwarven names that I have from a Dungeon magazine. Neither Fulcrum nor Ironhelm were actual choices, but I took a syllable from one and ended with another, and ended up with Fulcrum.
Melodius Funk, human bard. Kind of derivitive of Thelonious Monk. His theme song "Here comes the funk!" was turned into "I smell the funk!" by his party members.
And my friend's cleric: Gregor Ianchant is one of my favorite names of any that were not my characters.

 

[Barmy Gith]

If I don't like any of the generic names for race from one of the RPG books, like the PHB, Underdark, or something else. I resort to a simple put two key concepts of the character together formula.

For instance, A friend of mine needed to come up with a PC name really fast since the game was about to start. So I asked him; what's the character's class and what is something that is a big deal to him?

He said he was a cleric and that he was planning on making the character into a demon slaying type of hero.

So we took the word Demon and Cleric, chop them both down the middle somewhere, keep "Dem" and "ic"and put them together. Thus "Demic" was born. I've also made a paladin of the harvest goddess named "Harvin" with the same technique. It's not awe inspiring, but I think it works O.K.