What's in a name?

[AllisterH]

Kinda wondering, thought about putting this in the 4E forum, but it really is a more general question.

What makes a name good? Some people hate compound names, others hate made up names and some hate boring names.

So what in your opinion makes a name good?

I'll give an example. What makes GNOLL a good name? It's a name pulled from a novel by Gygax for an undescribed fairy race.

Is it traction? Would hyenamen been better?

 

[EricNoah]

The sound must seem an echo to the sense.

Or something like that.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

You know what makes the name GNOLL great? Because it leads to craziness like this: "Gnoll are rumored to be the cross-breed of a gnome and a troll by an evil magic-user." (Paraphrased, IDHTBIFOM.) They look nothing like gnomes or trolls? Details!

Can you get that kind of awesomeness with the name "Hyenamen"? Probably not. Is there anything better? The THOUL, of course.

So, yeah, traction.

 

[rossik]

whats "IDHTBIFOM"?

 

[jdrakeh]

You know what makes the name GNOLL great? Because it leads to craziness like this: "Gnoll are rumored to be the cross-breed of a gnome and a troll by an evil magic-user." (Paraphrased, IDHTBIFOM.) They look nothing like gnomes or trolls? Details!

The original Gnolls did look like giantish gnomes with big, pointy teeth. There's an official drawing of them posted over on the OD&D Discussion forums from an early D&D product, though I can't drum up a link at the moment. At any rate, Gnolls as they exist in D&D now are not the same creatures that existed in D&D by the same name some 34 years ago. Things change (and so, apparently, do monsters).

 

[EricNoah]

Oh, and good names should be fairly joke-proof. I can't tell you how many times I've heard "grassy gnoll"...

 

[hong]

Succubus? I 'ardly even know you!

 

[el-remmen]

The truth is we can get used to just about any name if we are exposed to it or use it long enough.

There are absurd place, animal and items names in English (and other languages) as well, but we are so used to them we hardly, if ever, think twice about them.

 

[Cor Azer]

whats "IDHTBIFOM"?

Usually, it's "I don't have the book in front of me"

As to the original topic, good names in my opinion, like Eric said, are fairly joke proof. Which is actually fairly hard in my experience, because so many gamers seem to be keen on really bad puns.

In addition, good names need to not be generic or from a common item. I believe Sean K Reynolds went on a rant about this once, about the horribly named Effigy - a burning undead monster of some sort. People hear 'effigy', and immediately think of something... something that is not an undead creature, so it's very incongruous.

 

[Delta]

I think that the #1 best option is if the name actually comes from history or mythology that fits the dark ages/medieval world view, and is connected to other stuff in our culture.

Granted that that's a limited set, and if a game wants to publish new product without limit, then they're going to run out of that stuff and start turning to other options.

"Gnoll" was pretty good because it was short, not obviously a joke, and (as given above) at least conjured other fairy monster types like "gnomes" and "trolls".

As another example that's gone back and forth in D&D publishing history, I much prefer "mind flayer" to "illithid" (what they tried to prioritize in 2E). Granted there's no real-world myth this is based on. At least the first is descriptive and evocative, the second doesn't mean anything at all to an English-speaking audience. Stuff like that feels more like science fiction (recently made-up technical jargon).