Where to go to get Oriential Names...

[Neowolf]

I can't believe no one else suggested this, but there's a table in Oriental Adventures for generating names, it's more or less a list of possible syllables you can string together. I don't remember what chapter it's in, but you should be able to find it in the index. Good luck!

 

[Mindcrime]

For chinese names, if you want to keep them simple and colorful come up with a last name from a random sino-phile site and then add a nickname. the chinese have always loved nick names:

Four Fingered Wu
Jade Tooth Hong
Fatty Peng
For girls: anything with 'little' or 'beautiful' like Little Peach Blossom, or Beautiful Flower
etc.

Of course, these days they've modernized their nicknames, adopting western names like Johnson, Thompson, Henry, Bart, Mandy, Jessica, etc. Occasionally you run into the oddball with a name like 'Top Gun' or 'Dolphin' (I had a student whose nick name was really top gun when I lived in china, and my fiance's best friend is 'dolphin'.)

Chris

 

[Tzarevitch]

There is a japanese name list (given names and surnames) in Dragon Magazine #121.

Tzarevitch

 

[Black Omega]

Well that would have been impossible.

Pretty close, and certainly beyond the scope of what OA was intended for. You'd also have to add Chiniese and other asian information as well to be fair.

For instance, Japanese is written in three character sets all combined to make a language. Kanji, Katakana, and Hirogana.

Though a Japanese friend of mine claims the English alphabet should be included as a fourth.

The Kanji set contains over 200,000 characters and hardly anyone in the world knows them all.

Though tyo clarify the joyo kanji list of everyday use kanji is like 1,945. According to my old Japanese teacher, most native speakers will know between 8,000 and 10,000 kanji.

Hirogana and Katakana are more reasonable with around 2,000 characters in there sets.

Not quite sure where this comes from. 46 basic characters in both katakana and hiragana. Including every thing you can possibly add, hiragana maxed at 104, and that's counting double hiragana (pya,pyo,etc) as a new 'character'. First year Japanese we only spent like three classes learning the kana, it's pretty easy.

I can recommend Eri Takase's fine site at:
http://www.takase.com/Names/NameInJapanese.htm

It's not a list of Japanese names per se, but you can go in, use an english name you like and find a Japanese equivilant. For example,my name comes out as Maaku. But in kanji it can also be Senshi, Gunshin, or Kasei based on the name's meaning.

Personally...I have a book listing 500+ Japanese pro wrestlers that I carry to the game for fast reference when I need a name unexpectedly.

 

[Dark Helmet]

Here is another one: http://www.kabalarians.com/html/surf-by.htm

That is one WIERD baby-name site. Not only does it have names from EVERY culture from earth history, it has some strange categories... Anime names?!? WWF names?!? (Ooh honey, lets name our baby "The Undertaker" ) Even Ferengi names.

Cool. But wierd.

 

[Rune]

I personally hate random syllable names, so, when I started an Oriental Adventures game, I created a naming system that uses english words with a flavor that fit the setting. It probably wouldn't work for Rokugan, but you can check out the system on the first page of my storyhour (see the sig).

 

[Syunsuke]

As Japanese, I want to give you "samurai-name generator".
But my English is poor, so I hope you understand what I'm saying...
(Web pages mentioned in this thread as name generator list many unlikely Japanese names...)

My methods generate personal name for male, and they are old-fashioned and samurai-like ones.

Of course, actual Japanese names have much more variation.

method 1

Take one of bellow as prefix.

kei,sou,kan,ryuu,ken,mune,gan,syun,kin,man,you,yuu,shin,gin,kou,jin,jyun,

Take one of bellow as suffix.

ichi,ichirou(first son),
ji,jirou(second son),
zaburou(third son),
shi,shirou(fourth son),
go,gorou(fifth son),
roku,rokurou(sixth son),
shichi,shichirou(seventh son),
hachi,hachirou(eighth son),
ku,kurou(nineth son),
tarou(provably first son)
suke,
zou

for example:
kei-ichi,kei-ichirou,kei-suke,sou-jirou,jyun-tarou,kou-zou


method 2 (this method gives you more samurai-like name than method 1)

Take different two of followings and put togather. Order doesn't matter.

masu,toki,yuki,teru,tada,yoshi,toshi,mune,kane,ie,tsuna,nori,sada,haru,aki,mure,masa,

for example:
masu-toki,toki-masu,teru-tsuna,nori-teru,mune-ie

 

[Wolf72]

books ...

The tale of Heike (english translation)

... or find a book on chinese/japanese culture (... or have some from your east asian studies courses ...) then take a look in the index.