Making a Name

 Sundered over on his blog asked to hear about others' methods for coming up with the names featured in their games, even being so kind as to call me one of the good name-finders. Since what I do is pretty simple, I thought I would walk through my methods.

 Method 1: Weighted d20 Table
You look up names from the two or three inspirational sources you've selected, typically cultures from two different continents you think go together well. Then you make a d20 table that's weighted into a light Zipf Distribution. Maybe there's one really common name that has a 4-in-20 chance of being selected, two 2-in-20s, four 1-in-20s, and an 8-in-20 chance of consulting a much longer "rare" name table. If there's different classes of name, like if the setting has gendered names or there's some class or culture split, it's not to hard to make multiple of these tables. Don't be afraid of "normal" names like Tom and Margaret and Wei and Ramesh. With the profusions of Elijahs (Holy Selmat), Udens and Udenos (Acmori), and Ashurs (Locheil's Ashes to Ashes), you'll want to use...

Method 2: Epithets
You might have a sense that in many places, before surnames became formal and standard, people were referred to by their appearance, where they lived, their occupations, and so on. What's neat is that we still do this naturally. When there's three Sams in your college class and you don't know their last names, you might refer to one as "Tall Sam" and another as "Sam from our Dorm" and another as "Girl Sam". Some fantasy settings get really silly with this, and make everyone's surname something like "Bronzebreaker" and "Trueshot". I find that loses the reassuring veracity you can achieve with more plausible epithets, only breaking out the fancy titles for rare characters and demigods. Epithets are also a useful characterizing cheat for DMs, as you can get a result like "Gwen the Lovable" and consider whether she really is that lovable, if the epithet is ironic, if she gave it to herself, or what.

Method 3: Behind the Name
Namers of people must occasionally come into contact with the website behindthename.com, but they may be unfamiliar with its name generator. Glogger deus ex parabola showed me the pleasant mixture when you select about three categories to get, once again, that pleasant melange. In his Unfinished World setting, for instance, he's observed that Dutch and Chinese names, though lacking any obvious affinity, end up going together "like peanut butter and jelly." There are some shortcomings of the website. You can quibble with the categories, like "African" being too broad. When you generate with a melange of categories, you'll find that some are much deeper than others, and there's no way to weight them equally. Still, if you can get it right, you'll be well-served. Again, don't be afraid of common names.

These Arabic names are all beautiful, but I was hoping to get more Thai names in the mix : /

 Method 4: Unprincipled Translation
This method is more for place names. You simply head to google translate and shift a word into another language. "Sweet Water" becomes "Acqua Dolce", for instance. If you don't like the look of the translated word, check for synonyms or input a slightly different word. It also helps to learn some of the affixes of the target language that relate to place names, so rather than a native speaker seeing your map labelled "Sword" and "Pig" and "Corruption", they read "Swordton" and"Pigville" and "Corruption City". Much better.

Method 5: Gygaxian Combination
I remember reading "Gary Gygax's Extraordinary Book of Names" and finding it only so-so in the current environment of good name resources online, but was struck by its Appendix C, in which they advocate just stringing together random letters, with a very simple structure to make it kind-of pronounceable. These results are crunchy and noisy, but sometimes offer something usable. My two PCs in Locheil's A2A campaign, Urisiha and Etekam, were named by a simple version of this method. My Wild West Wizard Generator uses a noisy name generator that gives names like Enlaac, Bidenue, Jeage, Laem, Ayiaxuf. Definitely a "sometimes food", but your setting has plenty of people with common names, so this wizard nonsense will properly stand out.

Method 6: Substitution
In Arnold K.'s blogpost on creativity, he sets out a method I've used a couple of times, where you find a word you like and shift the consonants around until it's untraceable and fresh, as in the shift  of 'jerusalem' to 'cheluzaren'. You really can't argue with the results.

Method 7: Gene/Ration and Gener/Ation
A simple way to randomly combine and recycle name elements that's a bit more low-tech than using Markov Chains involves breaking a bunch of names in half and sorting them into two piles: beginnings that end in a vowel, beginnings that end in a consonant, endings that begin with a vowel, and endings that begin with a consonant. Then you make a big table of each and connect beginnings that end with a vowel to an ending that begins with a constant and beginnings that end with a consonant to an ending that begins with a vowel. You can depart strategically from the strict form, but beware unaussprechlichen name. My Deserts of Vo hive generator uses this method, and you can see where it sometimes goes wrong. My names of Manteau generator includes a parenthetical consonant as a hedge that makes you decide each time whether it works better with it or not.

Method 8: Fantasy Name Generators
Another great resource is fantasynamegenerators.com, which has a surprising profusion of generators for a variety of situations. Some are better than others, but I note that many of the generators for real-life culture groups seem to hold up okay, even with the occasional compromise. Their lack of what I consider an ideal American name generator inspired my own effort, which I've found holds up pretty well.

Method 9: Stupid Jokes
As is traditional, RPGs can bear a lot of unprincipled and stupid etymologies. "Sex: M Race: Elf" becomes "Melf". Writers reverse or anagrammize their own names to appel to powerful wizards. A writer notice that the Greek name "Charops" looks like "Char op" as in "Character Optimization" and finds it funny. The renowned senator Doritus. Conan's slightly worse cousin Donan. Just calling a guy Aragorn. All of that is fun and fair, even in a serious game. If you run it well, people will take Aragorn the Warlock seriously pretty much right away. 

Method 10: Trust Your Heart
In a similar vein, because it's a fun game you play with your friends, you should sometimes force yourself to come up with a name on the spot, with no table or generator and little consideration for suitability. Sometimes the name "Craig" will come out, and sometimes it will be "Bald Dad." This is the ultimate form of the lesson all these different lesson teach you, to separate your preconceptions about a name from the name as it exists in the world. Don't avoid the name Barney because it reminds you of the Flintstones, reclaim it to a mindset that predates television and cigarette product placement. Don't invent a world where no one has embarrassing names. Let someone with an embarrassing name be a threat, a lover, a power player. Names are powerful! Make them your power!

You are ready for A D V E N T U R E !