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

[William Ronald]

One thing that I have been tempted to do for a humorous adventure is to use a pharmaceutical dictionary and have characters and places using product or generic drug names. Obviously, the difficult thing would be to keep a straight face while talking about some of the NPCs.

 

[Darth K'Trava]

One thing that I have been tempted to do for a humorous adventure is to use a pharmaceutical dictionary and have characters and places using product or generic drug names. Obviously, the difficult thing would be to keep a straight face while talking about some of the NPCs.

I betcha you guys have loads of fun trying to pronounce them [the drug names]......

 

[Henry]

One thing that I have been tempted to do for a humorous adventure is to use a pharmaceutical dictionary and have characters and places using product or generic drug names. Obviously, the difficult thing would be to keep a straight face while talking about some of the NPCs.

"It was a brisk day - the Castle of King Prevacid had its pennons flying in the breeze, but the mood in the castle court was a somber one, as the four companions gathered to hear dire news from the King himself. The four companions were indeed mighty - Barbitol, Holy Priest of Percocet the just; Digoxin, Peerless Druid of the Altace Forest; Dulcolax, that peerless runner of the city shadows; and the mighty warrior Loperamide, who could stop any man dead in his tracks..."

 

[WayneLigon]

"It was a brisk day - the Castle of King Prevacid had its pennons flying in the breeze,

One of my players is a doctor of Pharmacy. I must do this to him once.

I usually use the Onomasticon and then create variants depending on the fantasy world.

 

[Doc_Souark]

Most PC names are spur of the moment deals for me, some of them are pretty forgetable while some I still remember...

Thug- A 1/2 Orc fighter I played in E. Gugax's dungeon
Half Pint Beerbarrel- an (in)famuse Hobbit thief
Gorden Lightfoot- a 1/2 elven bard (okay so "Time in a Bottle" was on the radio)

 

[Droid101]

Two of my most memorable NPCs in my campaign were named while I was taking Japanese in college. My players still don't know that their best friends' names, Senman and Damarè, actually mean "One hundred thousand" and "Shut up" respectively.

 

[Droid101]

Oh, and another strange thing to note: whenever I have to think of a person's name on the fly; a player wants to talk to a local commoner or the name of a barkeep I hadn't really thought about, the name always seems to start with "G" or "J" sound. Strange little habit I finally noticed about myself.

 

[kirinke]

Hey droid. do you know of any good sites with english to japanese translations? now that would be a cool way to get names....

 

[Greylock]

"It was a brisk day - the Castle of King Prevacid had its pennons flying in the breeze, but the mood in the castle court was a somber one, as the four companions gathered to hear dire news from the King himself. The four companions were indeed mighty - Barbitol, Holy Priest of Percocet the just; Digoxin, Peerless Druid of the Altace Forest; Dulcolax, that peerless runner of the city shadows; and the mighty warrior Loperamide, who could stop any man dead in his tracks..."

I must add a dose of sad reality to this...

A good web-fiend, uhm, friend of mine has a knack for language creation. Considers it a hobby and a calling. His web handle comes from one of his created tongues and he has it fully reasoned out. Problem was, poor Ascarel never Googled the word he made up as his name.

Very true, and very recent was the discovery of what the word means ;p.

Greylock

 

[Droid101]

Hey droid. do you know of any good sites with english to japanese translations? now that would be a cool way to get names....

Heh... no, I used to. You could try altavista.com translator. I think it spits out the hiragana, however, so if you can't read that then you'll be out of luck. But if you want to copy the symbols and put them up on this website, I might be able to help you out.

Other than that, just google for an English to Japanese translator.