Would this break a fantasy setting for you?

[seriousbizzle]

I rather like the "Song of Ice and Fire" convention of naming. If you read through and sound out a lot of the names, they're just modern names with a more fantastical spelling.

Bran-Brandon
Robb-Robert
Jaime-Jamie
Joffrey-Jeffery
Paetyr-Peter

some of the names at least, I rather like this method for Human and close to human cultures as it separates more normal people from high fantasy heroes.

 

[Dracorat]

Have you ever heard of "The Everchanging Book of Names" ??

It's what I use. I just print out a list of 100 and use names as I need them.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

All five female characters in our current D&D group are named after Disney princesses. When one player decided to name her minotaur barbarian "Minnie", we were off to the races. So no, names don't necessarily bother me.

One guy playing a female invoker tried to buck the chain, but he got "nick-named" by the group. Since he is one of the prime "nick-namers" in the group in previous campaigns, he hardly has room to complain.

That's what happens with any name that is too complicated in our group--it gets shortened. I just ran an adventure with a white dragon name that was Fristhy(somethiing)(somethingelse). Five seconds after being mentioned, the dragon was "Fristy Freeze". Though not to his face.

I like to get names out of Roget's Thesaurus. One of my more memorable foes was a water elemental lord named "Rill". Very easy to remember, and not a word for "creek" that would ever get used by any player at our table.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

All five female characters in our current D&D group are named after Disney princesses. When one player decided to name her minotaur barbarian "Minnie", we were off to the races. So no, names don't necessarily bother me.

Hmmmm

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08wOPt-2PeE&feature=youtube_gdata_player]YouTube - Cab Calloway - Minnie The Moocher[/ame]

 

[Haltherrion]

I would find names like that very hard to swallow. I'd like to say it would be depend on the book or game but honestly, I would have a very difficult time seeing past it. Pet peeve? No doubt but it just seems either disrepectful of the reader/gamer or extraordinarily unimaginitive of the auther/ref. Why not the name Youreafooltoreadmysloppyfiction?

I'm enjoying the show and will give the books another go because my wife just loves them but I have to confess that the Game of Throne names put me off (yes, I know this is some of the most loved fiction out there). But place names like Winterfell, Riverrun, King's Landing? Those names sound like the ones I used in my earliest junior high school games. Right up there with Hobbithole, Highmountain, Summerplace, Orcwall, Badguyshere.

 

[Scott DeWar]

I don't have a problem with appropriate-sounding modern names like Megan or Erik.

you could also toss a bit of variance such as Elricik and Meagern

 

[OnlineDM]

On the one hand, a modern name (especially a nickname) on a character in a fantasy setting can certainly be jarring. Tim the Enchanter from Monty Python and the Holy Grail comes to mind - it was supposed to be jarring and funny when he told the knights his name.

On the other hand, I like the examples from [MENTION=3887]Mallus[/MENTION] (can't give you XP again yet, apparently), and that's the vibe I tend to go for in my games. The NPC who hired the party in my most recent game is name Charles Suha. Had he been Charles Johnson, it would have felt weird, but he seemed to work fine with his current name. Calling him Chuckie would have also been... odd.

Charles, James, Edward... hmm, English king names all seem to be good examples of names that sound fine in fantasy if you use their full forms, but sound lousy if you use the nickname versions (Chuck, Jim, Ed - or Chuckie, Jimmy, Eddie).

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Charles, James, Edward... hmm, English king names all seem to be good examples of names that sound fine in fantasy if you use their full forms, but sound lousy if you use the nickname versions (Chuck, Jim, Ed - or Chuckie, Jimmy, Eddie).

Hmmm...you can still get some milage out of nicknames.
Chas the Charming (Bard)
Eddie the Knife (Rogue)
Jimmy Witchhammer (Paladin...from "the neighborhood")

 

[Pseudonym]

As most 'modern' names aren't, no, it wouldn't bother me much.

I got in to a lengthy argument after I named a halfling rogue character Rufus until I finally was able to persuade some of the other players that it is in fact historical and not a Bill and Ted's reference..

 

[Twowolves]

I think an excellent example of how to straddle this fence can be found in Glan Cook's The Black Company series, at least the first few books. The initial campaign takes place in "The Jewel Cities", where every city is named after a gemstone. Every member of the company leaves behind his real name and takes on a pseudonym or nickname, like Silent, Croaker, Big Bucket, etc etc. The main villians are "The Ten Who Were Taken", massively powerful wizards again nicknamed after some feature, such as Shifter, The Hanged Man, Soulcatcher, etc. There is also a nice plot element dealing with "true names" that helps to tie a lot of this together.

It made reading the books fast and easy, with no confusion about characters or places, and I never once felt it wasn't "fantasy".