Name thread

How do you invent the names for your characters (and/or other stuff if you gm), Veeky Forums?
Do you use generators, or some other process? Never been any good at naming characters myself, any tips for doing it?

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Use generators, or start spouting random gibberish until I find something that sounds like a name.

I always put a Q in the name but my name has a Q

Before the start of a campaign, I use a few different generators to generate a few hundred names. Then I paste into a google doc and print out the pages. Whenever I need a name, I just grab one off a list (sometimes with a minor change), and cross it off so I don't reuse it.

Just regular generators, or something like "Steampunk name generator" if the game has a setting like that? (Or are those any good?)

I usually base my names off of other characters, because I'm not good at naming things. When I do try to come up with names on my own it turns out terribly.

Characters I've used up to this point (as both a GM and a player):
Prior Richardson
Captain Hampton
George George, owner of the George Forge
Emerson and his father Emtarkanderundersgunderson
Jim and Erik Lumberbane, the Lumberjacks
Gerald Sparklepants
Buckles the Enchilada
"Stumbleduck"
Susan Mantoya, an effeminate man who joined the party after his father was killed
Governor General Neil Door
Lord Cosby, Pudding Magnate
Wu Tang the Razor

I start with a generator, roll until i find something that catches my eye. Sometimes i tweak it a bit.

I tend to like one or two syllable names though. I usually don't go much longer.

Examples: Daston, Grulon, Uryd, Tal, Forne, Alena

>Fantasy races
Take parts of names from that race on the Elder Scrolls wiki.
>Modern setting
Baby name generator, or scan electoral registers for that location.
>Shadowrunner handles
Shit puns - "Sue D. Nhym", "Nick Steele", "Robin Banks", "Ant Tagonist", and "Dave Null" are all SINs my current character has.

I'm a linguist, so what I do is probably too much work for most people.

But things basicly boil down to:

>Take words that share a theme, or spitball sounds that work together
>Nudge sounds so that names from the same background sound related
>Google the names to weed out any unintentional references and the like

Or if you want to go full turbo nerd on it, invent several langugages and write programs that derrive names from them.

There's a piece of software that I can't remember the name of, that was talked about on the Dungeon Master's Block. It was free, and basically let you choose from several different cultures, then generate a huge list of names based on the combined cultures, until it develops an algorithm for generating names of a specific ethnicity. I think it was called the Book/Tome of endless names, but Google doesn't show any results.

Dungeon Master's Block?

Though this thing sounds really helpful and cool, I wonder if we could track it down.

It's usually based on race or ethnicity. When I'm playing some sort of unremarkable white human guy, I'll actually gravitate towards very common and familiar catholic style names. Usually in relative contrast to the crazy bullshit in the party/setting with likewise crazy names. But if you were going to play some sort of fantasy-arabic person, you have plenty of regional naming conventions to draw from. It's only when I'm doing up a tiefling or an elf or some sort of drugged-out-of-their-minds alienist wizard that I begin busting out the Z's and Q's and too many consonants. I'm too picky to be satisfied with generators.

>Buckles the Enchilada

I usually just come up with names on the fly. It took me a grand total of 5 seconds to come up with the name Percival Reginald Corvinoth for my explorer character. Strangely enough, it took me a good three days for me to come up with the name Thrak-Chik for my Thri-kreen character.

It's a rather excellent podcast, though it is geared towards GM's running Fantasy/D&D/PF campaigns. I consider it essential

I found the Software, called the Ever-changing book of names. There's supplements for name generating in various setting, including Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Wheel of Time, Warhammer Fantasy, Pokemon, and Star Trek:

kolumbus.fi/sami.pyorre/download.html

Oh, very nice work, user. Have to download this and give it a spin once I have time, but it seems pretty dang awesome.

Usually take names from random name gens,steal names from vidya or something, but usually a combination of those two.

First character was named after my first WoW character and most of his family's first names are derived from character in Warcraft.

What I usually do is figure out what Earth culture the character's culture is most similar to, then go to this "Behind the Name" website and stare at a list of names from the relevant language until I find something that sounds cool.

This looks Fucking epic...

Apparently you choose from a list of names and it generates new ones based on matching similar names. You could create names based on hybrid cultures, like a Roman-Chinese Empire.

Name generator or suggested name from the book.

> The algorithm uses chapter files that contain lists of vowelic and consonantal elements that names can be constructed of, and further information for fitting them together and checking whether the generated name is good enough. To achieve this goal, EBoN utilizes name structures, maximum frequencies for a particular letter appearing in a name, minimum distances between occurences of a particular letter, valid prefixes & suffixes etc. etc.

By the Emperor, this thing...

Here's an experimental method.

>Enable Legacy Captcha
>Open Quick Reply window
>click captcha image until you have two or three coherent words displayed

Altair Sierra

Calle Atheneum
Gratton Campus
Boulevard Markham
Viale Dolphin

I use the Lina Inverse method.

For the first name, take a regular English name.
For the last name, take a regular English word that is not directly related to the character, but still conjures the right image based on its connotations and phonemes.

>Grizzled fighter named "Richard Stout"
>Peppy thief named "Holly Jaunt"
>Calm, collected thief named "Vivian Pierce"
>Apostate priest named "Elijah Bedlam"
>Eccentric gnomish artificer named "Barry Gimlet"

bump

This looks awesome, Thanks OP.

Depending on the environs, I'll either put together names I've heard of before until I get a good first/last combo, or if I'm in a more fantasy settig I say gibberish. If it feels dumb or not fantasy enough I dmack an apostrophe at the end and gibber until I get a second part

If it's a character I'm invested in I run basic one word motifs through name databanks or wiktionary to find stuff that sounds decent. Usually I go a few degrees of separation to keep it vague so I don't start sounding like a harry potter fanfic character:

Presently playing a vaguely lovecraftian contemporary horror as an architecture student named Leona Yates. The etymology is fairly obvious (Lion Gate) but the actual lions gate of Mycenae happens to be a prominent example of what's considered cyclopean architecture: big stones, seemingly immovable by human strength, and without any form of mortar. Lovecraft had a kind of fixation with cyclopean architecture that tied into his general antiquarian fetish.

If I don't care so much about that, I just go with fonts and typefaces:
>Arial
>Helvetica
>Courier
>Georgia
>Lucida
>Palatino
>Tahoma
>Geneva
>Verdana
>Jenson
>Arno
>Bookman
>Clearface
>Didot
>Emerson
>Fairfield
>Garamond
>Hightower
etc...

Impasse Decharge
Zone Calle
Astoria Privata (ooh I'm stealing this one)

Eighteen years ago during the ripe times of third edition I made my first character, a fighter. I had a miserable time coming up with a name so I ripped a name from a show (I'm not proud of doing that). But Twelve years after, I brought him back with a custom name. Leinhardt. And then a few years pass and I see overwatch trailers and Reinhardt. And I suddenly felt my originality fading....

I sympathize with thee, that sometimes happens.

I smash my head against the keyboard until I have at least 13 characters. Then I rearrange them into a name and surname.