What’s in a Name?

When adlibbing, something that frequently caught me out was thinking of good names for supporting characters. The ever confident DM would falter when a player simply asked a random supporting character what their name was – and then seeing the DM suffer – the players would do such evil things as insisting on going to the town hall and reading all the names on the register just to see him squeam.

For the latter situation any reasonable DM would would say something along the lines of, ‘you read through the list and it takes some time although you recognize some as being neighbors‘,  but s truly great DM would simply sigh undeterred and reel them all off one by one until the players finally beg to stop. This article as well as giving advice on the actual creation of names, gives tips on their economic usage and even discusses ways in which names can be used to create character. To be honest, I believe that you should use little of your precious preparation time in creating lists of names, but I have still included guidelines nonetheless for name creation for when you wish to use names that are personal to your campaign.

Sources for names

For most cameo supporting character’s a first name is all that is needed, so my favorite and most often used source for first names is (surprise) a book of baby names. Most are inexpensive and are full of surprisingly good names such as ‘Seth’ and ‘Lodewijk’ . There all also plenty of web resources such as Baby Names and one of special note, Chris Pound’s Name Generator Page which actually randomly generates new names from lists of existing names of most nationalaties. Both the original names and the generated ones are available at the site.

Many DMs base their campaign areas on places on Earth. An obvious example is the Ravenloft setting with the French ‘Dementleiu’, the Germanic ‘Lamordia’ – as well as Russian, English, Irish and even Egyptian. General knowledge should provide some believable examples and a good look in your book of baby names should also provide others.

Other less obvious sources can be used, such as a dictionary. A good dictionary will detail the root of a word (or it’s ‘etymology’) along with the definition. Most of these roots will detail archaic versions of the word in question, so simply look up a word to do with the character then look at it’s etymology. Say the character was the last of his/her kind, look up the word ‘last’. The root for last is detailed as the Greek word ‘latos’, this is a perfectly good character name. Another example would be for a scientist/alchemist. The words ‘alquemy’ and ‘scire’ under ‘alchemy’ and ‘science’ which combine to get ‘Alquescire’.

Even word searches throw up some good names if you are willing to do a bit of scouring, look backwards, forward, diagonally and rearrange some letters to get some great sounding names. Examples found in word searches include ‘Dirkoil’ ‘Jagesood’ and ‘Penkab’.

Many people gained their family names through their family trade, for example ‘Smith’ and ‘Cooper’ are still some of the most poular names around.

The family place of origin also may be responsible for the family name so try naming some of your supporting character’s after historical settlements or places already in your setting, it can enrich a campaign by allowing a Player to determine where a family is from. Similarily a lord of an estate is almost always named after the grounds he/she owns, i.e. ‘The Lord Yarborough’ and ‘Lady Alton’ (both places in England).

Entirely new names

Simply mixing and matching existing games often comes up with many new and often great sounding names although it is time consuming and relies on trial and error. One positive point though is that it works surprisingly well when mixing foreign names/words together to generate new ones as people are less familiar with the language. This could breathe life into a miniscule list of genuine foreign names. Another popular but often overused technique is to include nouns in a name (especially in second names,) these can be used to great effect to imply personality through stereotypes, for example ‘Hervin Dustwood’ conjures images of a sleepy bookstore owner, which can be a great tool for the DM, especially if Hervin actually turns out to be a key evil villain!

Some DMs like to create mini-languages for various cultures and races. Where they pick a dozen or so sounds and some rules for how they go together. So for example maybe the O’aliher have names that are made up of L, A, E, U, I, N, R, and H, and that H can never occur at the end of a name, and the longer the name, the more prestigious the bearer (since every syllable is a distinguished ancestor). It is time consuming but great names such as “Lallin” and “Aniriha’anilar” result and also, because of the ‘rules’ applied each name means something as well (in this case the ancestor line). Suggestions for other ‘rules’ include, details of profession, social class, family achievements etc.

If you do manage to create a list and want to take it a bit further then try ‘spoonerism’. A spoonerism is when you take two words and swop their first letters. New names can be made up quickly and easily. i.e. ‘John Davis’ becomes ‘Dohn Javis’, We now have two new names which sound English (because they are English bar one letter), and are original. Of course, I would advise a prudent approach to this technique as many end up as complete nonsense.

Nonhuman names

Most Nonhuman names will require you to from them from scratch, the following are some guidelines that are useful to follow to ensure consistent sounding names for your non human races.

Dwarven

In many campaigns, first names tend to be guttural with many sharp, plosive sounds that are made deep in the throat. They are also rarely more than a couple of syllables in length. The lesser used consonants such as ‘v’ and ‘z’ don’t sound too bad in a dwarf/gnome name and so don’t be afraid to use them. Second names usually relate to the earth and the dwarven character and way of life. Examples are, Gloin Stoneanvil, Eaven Grudgetaker, Thorin Highpass. Dwarves, being ancestral creatures are also likely to use suffixes such as ‘son of…’ or ‘blood of…’ coupled with the name of a famous relative.

Gnome

In the ‘Gnome and Halflings Handbook’ (you old AD&D players may remember this) it says that gnome names are impossibly long and detail the family history, this being impractical for everyday use means that shortened versions are used. This doesn’t mean though that players should be disallowed from having such names. One of the gnome characters I’ve seen sported a names that sported 28 letters – this being the shortened version! The techniques used for creating dwarven names are very similar to Gnomes with examples such as ‘Garl Glittergold’ although their less stern and stout nature should be taken into account when choosing nouns for second names.

Elven

One view says that elven names are supposed to be long and melodic, suggesting ties with nature. Prolific use of vowels can be used to achieve this as by definition a vowel come straight from the larynx without being obstructed by the teeth, lips etc, which produce ‘cooing’ noises much like that of babies. Some Narrator’s like their elven names though to include nouns associated to things like nature, rivers, weather, lakes, forests as well as any other natural occurrences. Although this is often used for second names (i.e. ‘Frostglade’) I am not fond of it as I believe that it is inappropriate for an elf to include such ‘rude human words’ in their language, (although they may insist that their second name is only a crude translation into the common language and the real name in elvish is 10 times more beautiful.) Examples of some elven names are, Aaleana, Maenioche Bowerspring and Beorion Greenlake.

Halfling

I believe that plain English names sound just as good on a halfling as on a human. Names such as, David, Tobius, Lemelia and Rose all fit a halfling character well. For those who do not want English names in their campaign, the appendix of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ will show up a wealth of halfling names in the family trees of the ‘Bagginses’ and the ‘Tooks’.

Being Economical

Finally, although I have outlined a few ideas, sooner or later your mind will dry up and you will find it difficult to create or find more and more names. To partly combat this I have come up with a couple of ways in which to be economical with them. Firstly don’t be afraid to use a name twice, it stands to reason that there will be more than one ‘John’ within a city. For example, maybe a mother decided to name her boy after ‘John the Paladin’ who saved her life. Secondly, and closely related to this, is simply putting a number after the name of father and son within nobility i.e. ‘Rabuss I’ and his son ‘Rabuss II’, Both of these techniques tend to work well with the dwarven class.