Names for people and places: what do you do?

[assault]

A question for GMs and setting designers: when you are naming people and places, what do you do?

Even if you are using a published source, you will end up needing more names.

How do you deal with the range between Qwertyuio and Bob? One is gibberish, the other mundane. Where do you locate suitable names in this range, and how do you tell the difference?

 

When you steal names, where do you steal them from?

 

And so on...

An example: The Cat of (name).

 

In the Great Temple of (name), there is always a Cat living within the Most Holy Place. Since it appears to suffer no harm from trespassing in the Most Holy Place, the priests of the Temple leave it alone, believing its presence to be divinely ordained, or at least tolerated. (Also, they aren't allowed to enter the Most Holy Place to chase it out!)

 

A bit silly, but it works. But the obvious lack is (name). In this context, (name) could be a place, a deity, or both.

How would you go about choosing (name)?

[Duke Bushido]

I wish I had something useful for you, but I straight up pull something out of the air and keep on rolling.  The key is delivering it with a straight face and without pause.  Work it into either the current conversation or your descriptive prose several times, immediately, so you remember it again ten minutes from now.

 

Rough guidelines:

 

Non-human town founders?  _Any_ collection of three to five syllables.   _Anything_.  It's fine.  Just make them flow smoothly.  Start working it into the conversation to buy yourself some time before one of the Characters asks "oooh!  But what does it _mean_?"  Use that time to decide what it means.

 

Human town founders?  Okay.  Small town?  Surname.  If you've done that recently, surname-ville, surname-ton, surname-shire, Suname-burg (try not to use burg):

 

Asher,  Asherville, Asherton, Ashershire, Asherburg.

 

Medium-sized town?  Industry-ville; Industry-ton, City of Industry, Industrial workers City.

 

Copperville.  Copperton.  The City of Copper.  Copper City.

 

Large city?  You can almost go back to any collection of random syllables, just make them sound either vaguely old world or very fanciful  (And honestly, I find that the amount of grunge and filth I expect in the city influences that decision a lot.  The filthier it is, the more "old world" I lean for the name.  No; it doesn't make sense, but no one has caught on yet.)

 

It doesn't really matter, I don't believe, so long as you delivery it with a straight face and without hesitation.

 

 

[Ninja-Bear]

I have used random name generators but sometimes those give whacky result. One trick we’ve used is use thing name in another language. For example Hunter in Hungarian- Vadasz. 

[drunkonduty]

For place names I just take them from a map.

 

For people (and related things) names I have no hard and fast rule. I do frequently end up with a lot of multisyllabic mouth full of nonsense. Or people called Jim.

[Asperion]

A trick that I have been doing lately to get a strange feel is to use real world cities but take their ancient name. So the party might come across a place called Ebicurium, that was the original name for the city of York. Other cities will have even stranger names for other societies that desire elvish, dwarven, or other societies that you wish to include in your campaign. 

[Scott Ruggels]

Most of my campaigns are very human centric, and tend to copy the cultures I have "borrowed" for the peoples in the area. Names, place names, occasional titles, al were borrowed, just with the spelling a bit more phonetic  The exception was lands once held by the Jaggiri, and because I went so in depth with them I developed a language for them (Not quite, but close to a full conlang), and the place names were from that dictionary, that gave things a stolid consistency of names without repeats that fit the less imaginative, and practical nature of those creatures. I would not recommend going as far as making a Constructed Language (conlang), for your game. its a lot of work, and Americans are notoriously resistant to language learning.

[Chris Goodwin]

A thing I've heard of being used with great success is writing down a list of twenty or a hundred names and keep it behind your screen.  When you need one, pick from the list and check it off.  Lists of people's names, lists of place names, and so on.  

 

Bonus points: add some kind of marking to denote how common a name is.  Maybe your world has a name equivalent to "John".  

 

Another idea: you don't have to go to the trouble of creating a whole conlang, but if you look in a baby book or online you can find the meanings of names.  Come up with the translations of those names into Common, or any number of dead languages, and you've got some neat sounding names.  Do similar with occupations (how many IRL last names come from professions?) and general place names (wood, village, town, ford, crossing, city, river, sea, mountain, etc.).

[DShomshak]

In my last D&D campaign, I came up with some basic naming patterns for people and places. Like, "Darod" meant any fortified place and could be used either as suffix or prefix, giving locations such as Sundarod or Darod Femoy. I tried to keep it common enough to show that it was a thing, but not so omnipresent as to become tedious. Then some more names ending in -thezor; again, just enough to show it's a thing. Also lots of place names based on landscape or occupational features, such as Lindy's Mill, Snakebridge, Shorseport, Thornhill. Pone's Crossing. Most proper names were one or two syllables. "=ion" could be used as a suffix for surnames, indication descent from a notable ancestor. Thus, the family of wizards descended from the great mage Sith Korosh where the House of Sithion. The evil overlord was named Bel Shanion.

 

My current campaign is based in a fading empire loosely impired by the Byzantine Empire, so humans have Greek or Roman names, or from other languages that have been Latinized (as was often done in the Middle Ages, e.g., Baruch to Barocius, or Remy to Remigius). Such names are easy to find in quantity, such as from Kate Monk's Onomasticon website. In fact, I went through it and saved most of the name lists to draw upon for different cultures. Elves of course get Celtic/Irish/Welsh names because duh, and dwarves get Norse or Germanic names for the same reason. (Though for dwarves, I also went through the index for the Prose Edda which, naturally, names a lot of dwarves. Giants, too. Thank you, Snorri Sturlason.)

 

For exotic names where context doesn't matter much, I often turn to the atlas. There's a lot of boring names, but with patience you can also pull out cool names such as Bagrash Kol, Ikerre, Mizratah, Osoom, or Saravane. (A fair number of the proper names I used in Doctor Strange-style spells for Ultimate Supermage/etc. came from the atlas in this way.)

 

Dean Shomshak

[DreadDomain]

When I am creating an adventure or setting and I am looking for made up name, I try to think about a characteristic of the language of the culture I am working on. Does it tend to finish in hard consonants? Do words generally have 4 or 5 syllables? Is it peppered with "w" and "z". Are "i" replaced by "j". Each culture will have a different characteristic.

I then create random words with the characteristicv in mind. If I am stuck, I use a word in another language and modify it in accordance with the chosen characteristic. I always make sure to modify it so it's not a straight up translation or I mash up two words together.

 

Say I am trying to name a mountain and I have decided slovak is a good base for this area of tropical jungle populated by hunter-gatherers islanders which are using long words, often hyphenated (note that I use a real world language that does not relate to the culture/area). I translate "accursed mountain" and google sends back "prekliata hora".... hmmm how about Prekathora or Preka-Thora?

 

Obviously this is something that is difficult to do on the fly.

[archer]

I've picked a style (culture) or an area and went with names appropriate for the area.

 

Like Ashkelon is a wonderful name for a city and players when first introduced to the name aren't quite sure if the place name has something to do with ashes, skeletons, or skeletons which are made of ashes.

 

The real-life Ashkelon was one of the main cities of the Philistines so other cities took place names from ancient non-Israelite cities in the area. And the gods became Baal, Moloch, and others (with the names filed off because players are more likely to recognize god names than ancient place names).

 

For cultures which have five syllable or more names, I pick a syllable or two for use as a familiar name for every day use and the full name is either secret or only used in official documents. So Mitth'raw'nuruodo becomes Thrawn, Mitt, or Odo while Abimelech would become Mel, Lech, or Abe.

•  

[DShomshak]

The place names I liked most, though, were plain English. (Or perhaps slightly archaic English.) The valley of Doomfallen, in the Medusa Mountains, where once stood Effigy, the City of Statues. Druid colleges called the Song of Tomorrow, the Lake of the Willow's Daughter, Cauldrondale, the Stonegrave. The Mazewood. Wrecker's Rock and the Reef of Screams. Things like that.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Christopher R Taylor]

Most of it just comes to me, but I have a file of old characters people have made in games I have run or played in that I draw on as well.  An easy trick for names is to very slightly change familiar names.  Instead of Christopher, now its Histopher.  Instead of Sarah, now its Cerah.  Or Change Dean to D'gan.  That gives you a familiar, comfortable-reading and easy to remember name with just a little bit of work.

And, I have some dice from a game called Boggle that have letters on them instead of numbers.  Roll a few of those and see what you get!

[Chris Goodwin]

I was just reminded of a "language generator" that can also create names.  You can choose phonemes using the International Phonetic Alphabet, and it will generate the language or names with a consistent sound.  Or you can let the generator do that too.  

 

The free version generates up to 200 words; there's a paid version to go up to 4000.  

 

https://www.vulgarlang.com/

[bluesguy]

Check out http://ebon.pyorre.net/ and https://www.nbos.com/products/inspiration-pad-pro

[Spence]

I try to name npc's and locations ahead of time if possible.

 

Beyond that I just make it up as I go.  I am constantly reading fantasy adventure stories/books so I have a lot of possible names running through my head.

 

I have returned to traditional rpg style settings so I don't have to invent fake jawbreakers in an attempt to represent a completely foreign culture.  Instead I just have to have fun.

 

 

[Ninja-Bear]

6 hours ago, Spence said:

I have returned to traditional rpg style settings so I don't have to invent fake jawbreakers in an attempt to represent a completely foreign culture.  Instead I just have to have fun.

 

 

Curious as to “traditional rpg style settings”. What do you mean by that? I definitely agree with the have fun part. 

[MordeanGrey]

This website is pretty decent and has a ton of specific options for races, etc. ... and it's free!

 

https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com

 

Give it a try.

[Spence]

15 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Curious as to “traditional rpg style settings”. What do you mean by that?

Loosely Tolkien'esk or such.  Essentially Western European influenced. 

 

I am not saying that other settings/cultures are not cool or fun.  I am saying that I have a firm grounding in the tropes and style and it is easy to run. 

 

There is nothing worse than trying to play a game based on a culture that no one in the group knows anything about except what they have seen on TV shows or the limited information in the rulebook. 

 

Even worse if you are the only person at the table that has done any research at all.

 

It is hard enough to ask players to play the PCs in line with the character they made, let alone trying to play one that you have no idea about.

[Ninja-Bear]

Kinda thought so Spence but wanted to make sure. I will say though that it still takes a moment to make everyone on the same page. 

[Spence]

35 minutes ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Kinda thought so Spence but wanted to make sure. I will say though that it still takes a moment to make everyone on the same page. 

Oh, absolutely.

 

It is just easier for me when I already understand the baseline.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ninja-Bear]

9 hours ago, Spence said:

Oh, absolutely.

 

It is just easier for me when I already understand the baseline.

 

 

 

 

 

 

True but did I ever tell you the story and my brother not thinking dwarves can be thieves? 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

True but did I ever tell you the story and my brother not thinking dwarves can be thieves? 

"Ja vell, dere are no Dwarven tieves because it all should belong to us as we vurk harder dan all de races combined.  Ve are chust taking it back."

--A Dwarven thief

[Lord Liaden]

I'd like to suggest as a resource, the Encyclopaedia Turakiana, a free PDF of a combined glossary and index for Hero Games' Turakian Age fantasy world setting. It alphabetizes nearly two thousand names for people, places, and things, invented or modified by Steve Long, inspired by various real-world languages and cultures, plus several fantastical ones. Steve has mentioned even he cribs from that list from time to time.

[Ninja-Bear]

8 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

"Ja vell, dere are no Dwarven tieves because it all should belong to us as we vurk harder dan all de races combined.  Ve are chust taking it back."

--A Dwarven thief

Funny! To some the point with my brother. He was aghast that anyone would deal with a thief especially dwarves. I said haven’t you read the Hobbit with Bilbo? Ok he was an expert treasure Hunter 😂.

[Joe Walsh]

Way back, I could get away with using unfamiliar place names from other countries. I've also used language generators like those in the Classic Traveller Aliens supplements.

 

These days, I just sit and think, and eventually come up with something decent, or a bunch of decent ones that sound plausible to be of a piece if it's a bunch of named places in a given area.

 

But if the PCs decide to go somewhere I don't already have a name for? I'll just come up with something passable on the spot if possible, or, if not, I'll just go with something punny.