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Message: <blockquote data-quote="reanjr" data-source="post: 1641305" data-attributes="member: 20740">I have a knack for thinking up names on the fly, but I try to think about the character first.  You need to understand the naming conventions of the culture the character comes from.  Doing so gives the campaign consistency that the players may not notice consciously, but in a long-running campaign they will start to be able to use a name to understand an NPC better.I must first say that within a distinct culture, names may be done in several ways depending on subcultures, especially between different castes.First thing is to determine whether or not the culture has surnames.  If so, where do they come from?  Are they the name of the first important person in the family?  What happens to surnames upon marriage?  Is it a clan name shared amongst several families?  Do people have both a clan name and a surname?  Is there a linking word to specify the surname (something like ibn, du, van)?  What order are the name and surname spoken in?  Does one refer to a person by surname unless they are close (other family members)?  Does the system work differently for men and women?  In English, it is common to use the occupation as the surname, which is why we have so many Smiths, Coopers, etc.Next, decide on ancestral portions of names.  While this may be related to surnames or clan names, it may not.  A person might take the name of their father as a last name, or have a slightly modified version of their parent's name as their own.  It may be as simple as "son of ____".  Instead of parent, maybe they use the name of the last famous person in their lineage.  Again, gender and marriage are issues that should be looked at closely.Now, on to the base name.  There are several ways to name a child.  The name could mean something in the native tongue, some particular foreign tongue, or a mixture of both.  Maybe a name is created by putting syllables together that simply sound right or flow well with the surname.  Maybe it always begins with the same consonant sound.  Men's and women's names might be differentiated by a suffix or by starting with a vowel or consonent or maybe it is more subtle, like men's names rarely contain K, but women's rarely contain S.  Are names given at birth?  Do they change throughout the person's life?  If the name is given at birth and doesn't commonly change, then the name need not have anything to do with the character's personality or lot in life.  Otherwise, it may be important that a name fit the person.What about epithets and titles?  Titles are usually pretty simple (from a creativity aspect at least; the system for applying titles may be extremely complicated).  Can someone give themselves an epithet?  Is it an official part of one's name or simply how people refer to them?If there are subjugated peoples or slaves, how does that status affect naming.  Slaves in the United States often took the surnames of their owners, instead of using their own convention.  An occupied populace may be required to change their naming conventions to match the occupiers'.I am a bit of a conlanger, and so I have created languages for some of my fantasy races.  While you don't have to go creating your own languages, you may apply a real world language to each culture or use Dragon magazine language articles.  I particularly find that Gaelic works well for elves, Norse or Old English for dwarves, Semitic for gnomes, and alot of people like Portuguese or Spanish for halflings.  Using translations is a good way to keep a culture's names consistent, and using familiar real-world languages gives the players a way to apply a bit of useful metagaming to their understanding of the world around them.If anyone would like me to elaborate further or give examples (I doubt it), feel free to ask.</blockquote>

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