NPC names: mundane versus exotic?

[Ragitsu]

9 hours ago, Ockham's Spoon said:

Okay, when I said 'exotic', what I really meant was something outside of Tom, Dick, Harry, Mary, and Sue.  Names that don't appear in the top 25 most popular baby names of the year.  It just breaks the tone of the game when you introduce Bob the Paladin or Tim the Sorcerer.

 

Imagine a setting where lengthy/lengthier names are reserved for the common folk (because there are so very many of them) and shorter names like "Joe" are used by an aristocracy/gerontocracy.

[pawsplay]

On 12/16/2020 at 5:53 PM, Ragitsu said:

"Exotic" for some means "non-Western European"?

 

Well literally it just means from another place. NYC is exotic to someone from Beaumont, Texas.

20 hours ago, Ockham's Spoon said:

Okay, when I said 'exotic', what I really meant was something outside of Tom, Dick, Harry, Mary, and Sue.  Names that don't appear in the top 25 most popular baby names of the year.  It just breaks the tone of the game when you introduce Bob the Paladin or Tim the Sorcerer.

 

Ah yes, the Tiffany Problem.

[drunkonduty]

So... no-one's touching that "Tim the Sorcerer?" Probably for the best.

[L. Marcus]

*bites tongue*

 

Nnno, we're good.

[Ockham's Spoon]

On 12/21/2020 at 1:31 AM, drunkonduty said:

So... no-one's touching that "Tim the Sorcerer?" Probably for the best.

 

Man, I threw it out there, but no one decided to bite.  I am impressed by the restraint given the number of puns that hit these boards.

[L. Marcus]

A man has gotta know his limitations. 

[archer]

3 hours ago, Ockham's Spoon said:

 

Man, I threw it out there, but no one decided to bite.  I am impressed by the restraint given the number of puns that hit these boards.

 

I kept dithering between going with Monty Python humor or Magic the Gathering humor...and eventually chose neither.

[Old Man]

6 hours ago, L. Marcus said:

A man has gotta know his limitations. 

 

I thought they were called Complications now?

[DShomshak]

Well, for "exotic" I'd say either "non Western European" or "non modern" are perfectly fine choices. As a GM, you may need to come up with a lot of names -- more than a Fantasy novelist probably does. You can spend a lot of work inventing a bunch of names, most of which players will promptly forget anyway. Or you can look for pre-made names that will be "different" enough to give a sense of fantasy, but not so strange that players can't process them at all.

 

(Though just looking through a baby book for less familiar names can be good. Gene Wolfe didn't invent a single proper name for Book of the New Sun. Severian, Talos, Baldanders, etc. -- all names used by real people or cribbed from myth and literature.)

 

Here's another source, though: an atlas! Go to the back and read through the list of place names, all completely decontextualized. For instance, in spinning out background for the apocalyptically powerful artifact called the Eye of Autochthon (a bit of writing for Exalted), I noted that its known owners in the Age of Sorrows was the sorcerer Bagrash Kol, the nobleman Manosque and the prophetess Ikerre, all of whom it eventually destroyed. Okay, if you happen to live in the Gobi Desert region of China, a particular part of France, or Nigeria, these might seem funny, like naming somebody Portland or Boston. But I'm pretty sure most Exalted players don't, so these names are just names. At least, I was a regular on White Wolf's own Exalted forum for several years, and not once did anypone post, "Hey, these are place names!" So your players probably won't spot your use of toponyms, either.

 

Dean Shomshak

[L. Marcus]

Vuöni! That's a fun name. 

[DShomshak]

Oh, Exalted also made heavy use of phrases as names, such as Harmonious Jade, Seven Devils Clever, Strength-of-Many, Shepherd of the North Star, etc. Sometiomes the results were felicitous; sometimes they just sounded goofy. But that's a risk with any sort of invented names. Some people just don't have the gift -- an additional reason to look for pre-made sources.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Lord Liaden]

My mother, who was born and raised in Peru, normally went by "Amparo." It's Spanish for "shelter," which suited her personality well. In all my years I never met another Amparo, even among Spanish-speakers; but I'm sure they're out there.

 

But her father was English, and her full name was, "Herminia Amparo Fry." I always likened saying her name to driving off a cliff.

 

However, thinking about my mother reminded me of another method to developing exotic names: partially change the spelling or pronunciation of real names to give them an unusual sound. My mother told me that often happened to the names of American actors when her countrymen tried to pronounce their spelling according to their own conventions. For example, the star of the Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials, Buster Crabbe, was known in Peru as, "Boostair Crabbay."

[Ninja-Bear]

@Lord Liadenif I remember correctly Isabelle is the Spanish version of Elizabeth. Another trick would be to use older version of common names.

[Scott Ruggels]

On 12/18/2020 at 2:27 AM, Ragitsu said:

 

I generally expect fantasy geeks (and veteran fantasy geeks at that) to be one or more of: well-read, well-traveled or well-acquainted with cultures outside their own (easy to do in any moderately sized or larger city). You have to delve into some pretty esoteric real-world territory to find the truly "exotic", but I was speaking broadly: "non-Western European" in general. My point is that the fantasy genre - when represented by each DM, anyhow - shouldn't be constrained by the limitations of one corner of our Earth unless there's a good reason.

 I think most of that is because of cultural resonance. It's one where the players can make more correct assumptions than they could with other cultures they are unfamiliar with. It's easier to work with, and  minimizes assumption clash, or problems with disparities of knowledge.

[Scott Ruggels]

6 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

However, thinking about my mother reminded me of another method to developing exotic names: partially change the spelling or pronunciation of real names to give them an unusual sound. My mother told me that often happened to the names of American actors when her countrymen tried to pronounce their spelling according to their own conventions. For example, the star of the Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials, Buster Crabbe, was known in Peru as, "Boostair Crabbay."

JRRM Was a master of it. All the characters in ASOIAF, had recognizable, but slightly off names that were not entirely unfamiliar, but odd enough that they felt "of a place". It's probably not a bad idea to follow.