Names, how do you come up with yours?

[AsuraKing]

Character names are one of my favorite parts of RPing, I just love coming up with a fun, cool, and interesting name for a character. So I was wondering, how does everyone else come up with their characters names? Do you just use that random button? Do you just wing it and make it out of thin air? Or some other way?

Personally the way I come up with names has changed over time from me being lazy and just slightly changing the random button, to using research into RL cultural names or sometimes even variations of latin words.

That is, unless I make a gnome, then I make it up on my own and make it intentionally the most fun name to read I can :P

[Kaybrie]

I tend to use names from the real world equivalent of where my character's come from. Anasath was a bit of an exception, her name is a modified middle-eastern, egyptian name Asenat. Her name was originally Asenat, though I sort of westernized it as her 'rebirth' name she took after becoming a priestess of Lathander.

But yeah, Aesa is from Norse mythology meaning Goddess.

Gabrielle is a French name meaning woman of god.

Chione was again Egyptian because of her Mulan ancestry.

Taking real world equivalent's is my way of coming up with character names. I tend to put more of a flair of 'destiny' around the name meaning if the character is religious or holy. So Aesa's name is just a name for a barbarian, Gabrielle was more fitting for a warrior of god.

[Intrepid42]

In Forgotten Realms settings, I tend to use the sections on dwarven naming in the old 2e supplement FR11 "Dwarves Deep" as a guide.

Almost all the NPC dwarven population in dwarven holds probably have fairly standard dwarfy names. For outlaws, exiles, the clan-less, adventurers and other unusual sorts, dwarves who grew up in human lands, and those travelling through human lands, almost anything goes, including suitable human names.

If I wanted to finesse it I would just enter the primary name into the NWN2 engine, and add various qualifiers such as clan name to suit the situation during chat. But when it comes to the crunch, I keep entering the clan name during character creation. Otherwise, it feels like I'm stripping the character of their clan, which just feels plain wrong. Maybe next time.

[Sparkie]

For me, it's one of three things: A) I have a name pop into my head while I'm making a character, and I'll just roll with it. B) I'll just hit random name, and change something about it, or C) I'll take a look around the room, and the first word I can turn into a name that I see I go with. Not the best processes in the word, but they're what I go with.

[nezzerscape]

I typically get IC in RL and start creating a voice that fits the toon (yes I do voices IRL). This also helps me to form the character's personality. I have even been known to build toons around voices I do.

I will sometimes look up names and scroll though lists till I feel inspired.

• Elandra: Was a variant of Yolanda, a friend of mine that gave me the basis of her personality. (Nezzerscape is the name of my PC stolen from the Matrix nebuchadnezzar)
• Alexandra: Stemmed form the lore I build around Elandra. The name had to be similar but different.
• Yodglum: This toon was based off of Yoda, I started doing his voice and then came up the idea.
• Ash: I started off with an old voice, then as I was speaking the words "Old Ash" came up and thus the name.

[Mournas]

I take fractions of words and smash them together: (A+Candle+Slain) +(Draconian+Dove) = Andelain Dovenian

[Memnoch1962]

I usually sit back and visualize my character. I begin to hear them speak on who they are and let them tell me their name. Weird but true.

[Fuzziebunny]

I usually pick a name that seems to fit what I want my character to be.

[cmosier]

Sacrifice lesser names to the Name Gods and heed their wisdom.

[jarlexel]

I use other people's name from people i know.

[Thief Of Navarre]

I take fractions of words and smash them together: (A+Candle+Slain) +(Draconian+Dove) = Andelain Dovenian

I like that 😯

Normally I take the character in mind and give them a stereotype then figure out a name based on that.

I wanted my rogues name to have a Victorian feel thus Lester. If I make a warrior who uses an axe I might go for something Old Norse. If I'm making a necromancer I might want to go with something eastern european. A shaman I would probably be looking at something African. I also use names from mythology and literature but go for less obvious ones; Harvard instead of Odin or Orolin instead of gandalf.

[Doubtful]

For NPCs I'll often have to come up with names quickly, which is sad because I'm terrible at it. While I like to avoid nominative determinism as a player (though frequently don't) I'm less careful with NPCs - Though it's always good to avoid going the full Dickens and rolling NPCs like "Chumly Niceguy" or "Draco Badcrook".

Otherwise it's just sounds that work together to create a nice sounding mess.

Lastly, if I'm in a real pinch then I'll just have people defined by role (something that having just read the Annihilation/Authority/Acceptance trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer makes me chuckle a bit more), though normally with the Welsh twist of Jones. Jones the Baker, Jones the Smith, Jones the Butcher, Jones the Sociopath, etc, etc..

[DM Inquisition]

Lots of whiskey

[Mournas]

I like that 😯

Normally I take the character in mind and give them a stereotype then figure out a name based on that.

I wanted my rogues name to have a Victorian feel thus Lester. If I make a warrior who uses an axe I might go for something Old Norse. If I'm making a necromancer I might want to go with something eastern european. A shaman I would probably be looking at something African. I also use names from mythology and literature but go for less obvious ones; Harvard instead of Odin or Orolin instead of gandalf.

Thanks. For Elfs I use the Dragon Magazine that has the elf name generator in it. Really good resource. All the suffix and prefixes for the names have meanings and I tend to base my name off the character idea. http://www.angelfire.com/rpg2/vortexshadow/names.html That's the one for Elfs there's another one for Drow. I think Intrepid even mentioned there might be one similar to this for Dwarfs.

[Lugwy]

I steal.

Sometimes, I mangle them afterwards.