# Fantasy Name Generator



## Ifinx (Mar 28, 2012)

Hey everyone!  Does anyone know of a good fantasy name generator?  I need a few names for my book.  A female elf-type-race, and a genderless fairy kind of race.  Any suggestions?


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## Queshire (Mar 28, 2012)

Blech, I don't like random name generators, there's no sole, er, soul in it! You should come up with names that mean something!


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## Jess A (Mar 28, 2012)

I would also avoid name generators.

I tend to look at authors' names in bookshops, or movie titles/credits for strange names. Another good place to check is a baby name list, found in books and online. You can pick foreign ones if you wish. I don't just pick any old random name - I am very picky indeed, but generally people know if they like a name just by looking at it on paper, or hearing it sounded out, or comparing it to a character. 

Old historical figures (not famous ones; common people are more obscure and interesting) mentioned in records - that is another good place to check. Or public records. Both surnames and first/middle names can make cool names. Or place names!

I also invent names. I place all found or invented names onto a list. Sometimes, if you want names to be similar for a particular race or culture, you could try to use names from a specific language here in our world. Turkish baby names, for example. Or ancient Chinese names. After a bit, you begin to see the similarities between those names and you can make up your own if you need more. For example, Raymond Feist has a world where the people have very Japanese-sounding names. Not all of them are Japanese, but most of them seem to be. Sometimes it can be predictable and should be approached with caution (you probably don't want your race/culture to be a direct mirror image of a real, obvious culture from our world...but then again, you might!). Katherine Kerr used Welsh names and Welsh mythology in her novels, and it worked quite beautifully. Celtic names are also lovely, especially for elves.

A few of my characters just have plain old names from our world (one of my characters is named 'Logan' without any fancy spellings). I like a bit of familiarity in there.


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## Ice Spider (Mar 28, 2012)

Well, I wouldn't turn to one too soon...as the above poster said, the fun of fantasy is getting to use your imagination. 

If you're really stuck and you don't mind doing something more stereotypical, "ai" "y" "w" "l" "r" "a" "u" "th" "ar" "e (with the accent that makes it say "ay")" are all common sounds for something ethereal, elvish, and feminine. Avoid using the vowel o, though sometimes this can work (I know someone is going to give me a counterexample if I don't say this...maybe they will anyway )


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## Jabrosky (Mar 28, 2012)

I generally use names from real cultures, which is helpful if you're going for the Fantasy Counterpart Cultures trope as I often do.


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## Saigonnus (Mar 28, 2012)

I remember having a pink baby name book with thousands of names from most of the cultures of the world. That was how I used to name my characters.


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## Xanados (Mar 28, 2012)

I abhor the idea of a name generator. Creating names should be something fun.


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## JCFarnham (Mar 28, 2012)

Shock horror I'm going to say something completely different.

Name generators don't have to be the most abhorent things in existance, one quick google search away and you'll find countless generators built by proper linguists and conlangers. An example of this would be the Everchanging Book of Names (EBoN). These often require some input in the way of the sounds you'd like to use, but once you've set up some lists in the right format you can generate as many names as you need and NOT BE CONSTRAINED BY PREDECIDED NAMING CONVENTIONS.

There are other more traditional generators (also built by conlangers and linguists of course) but I'm not going to mention them all here.

Using a generator to help along your creative process doesn't mean you have to use exactly what it gives you. I thought that much should have been obvious...

Something I like to use when I want more traditional fantasy names is Inspiration Pad Pro 2.0. Its a group of generators aimed at GMs mostly, but it has two very valueable generators in the package. US female and male names based on 1990 census data. (along with stuff *supposedly* based on hungarian, icelandic, etc as well as elvish, dwarvish... those rat things from D&D...)

It's probably wildly inaccurate when it comes to real language based names, and it comes up with some real rubbish, but it's decent enough *if you use your head*.

There. 

Oh and I do partially agree with what everyone's said so far, I just wanted to mention that you can be clever about it as well


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## Steerpike (Mar 28, 2012)

I agree, JC. Any tool can be helpful when used correctly, and this is an example of one such tool. Further, you actually addressed the OP's question rather than simply assuming he hadn't given any thought to the issue. +Rep.


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## BWFoster78 (Mar 28, 2012)

I agree with JC as well.  

I love coming up with characters and plots, but I hate naming people and places, especially secondary characters.  Better to generate names using one of the online generators until I find one I like and then continue writing than to stress about it.


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## Sir Tristram (Mar 28, 2012)

As do I.  
Also, I'm having a serious problem naming a fairly important evil henchman.  I just can't come up with an evil-enough sounding name.  I am also in serious need of a name for a thief, as everything I try just sounds... wrong.  Help!


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## Ireth (Mar 28, 2012)

One of the first things that came to mind for a thief name was "Klepp", from kleptomania or compulsive stealing. Though Klepp sounds more like a surname than anything. Maybe your thief comes from a family of bandits or pirates?


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## Ifinx (Mar 29, 2012)

Thanks.  I just get to the point sometimes where I'm just completely out of names or just hit a blank spot.  So all the suggestions are awesome.  Sometimes, just like BWFoster78 said, it's easier to use a generator rather than sitting here wrecking your brain trying to come up with a single name.  Anyway thank you all for the help.

Ifinx


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## BWFoster78 (Mar 29, 2012)

Ifinx,

I use this one: Seventh Sanctum - Names

I generate 50 first and last names and then choose a first name and last name that sound good.  I wouldn't consider telling it to pick one name and just going with that one.

Hope that helps.


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## Kristina.Fugate (Apr 5, 2012)

I use Seventh Sanctum too from time to time. It's pretty legit. Should solve your problem in no time. I usually find a few I like and mix them together until I have something I like.


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## Shockley (Apr 6, 2012)

I'll admit that I use a name generator from time-to-time, but with one caveat: I don't use fantasy name generators. Behind the Name has a pretty good generator that lets you select nationalities, and you can get as many as four names at a time. It's pretty fantastic if you want to 'blend' several real world cultures together for naming conventions. Personally, I use a mix of Irish, Scottish, Welsh, English, German, Ancient German, Norse Myth, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Finnish, Polish, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish and Icelandic to get the names for my people.

 That said, a lot of names I do pull from thin air. However, since I do so much working generating names (I have several Word documents full of names) they have a consistency to them I might not have developed otherwise.


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## Hans (Apr 6, 2012)

I was involved in porting a name generator to linux.
Lyreword | Free software downloads at SourceForge.net
Of course that's the one I recommend ;-). Very configurable and written with the help of linguists, so it is a big help in creating a consistent sounding language.


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## Steerpike (Apr 6, 2012)

Hans said:


> I was involved in porting a name generator to linux.
> Lyreword | Free software downloads at SourceForge.net
> Of course that's the in I recommend ;-). Very configurable and written with the help of linguists, so it is a big help in creating a consistent sounding language.



The Linux folder is empty!


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## Hans (Apr 6, 2012)

Steerpike said:


> The Linux folder is empty!


Sorry, I am not the main author. And it is not up to me to upload anything to sourceforge.
You can have my version if you want. (Legally. The license allows that.)


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## Poppy (Apr 6, 2012)

"Hunger Games' comes to mind.

You can't tell me that "Katniss" wasn't chosen because of links to sly, wise cats. That's how it appears to me.

Seems to me names are chosen to reference some character trait you want to communicate.


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## Ifinx (Apr 8, 2012)

Thanks everyone for the help!


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## Ireth (Apr 8, 2012)

Poppy said:


> Seems to me names are chosen to reference some character trait you want to communicate.



I do that a lot with my characters. Ariel, the female lead in my novel _Winter's Queen_, was named for the Little Mermaid because she loves to sing; the villain is named Fiachra, which means "raven", because of his dark hair and typically dark clothing (which became odd as I found myself describing him more and more as catlike, especially in his facial expressions). Also it allowed me to sneak in a reference to Poe that I couldn't bear to pass up. XD


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## Kenneth Logan Jr. (Apr 9, 2012)

I use movie credits myself honestly, I mean Avatar alone has a boatload of interesting names in the credits.


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## studentofrhythm (May 3, 2012)

You know, you could always just give "American Indian" names: short descriptive phrases.  I put "American Indian" in quotations because that is a risk you'll take: people will look at it and think: oh, Indians!  And I drafted a novel with cultures deliberately resembling various indigenous American ones with character names like Cliff Swallow, Lamplighter, Loud Drum, Stargazer, Catch Two Snakes etc.  The AI flavor worked for me, and I realize you might find it distracting.  You might find it refreshing though.

After all, if you go back far enough, most if not all names originated like this.  It's just that people import them from other languages so that it's less obvious.  So look into the origin of some names (behindthename.com is very good for this) and then calque them.  You could squish the words in the calques together too.  Instead of "John," call a male character "Godisgracious," or for "James" call him "Heelhold."  And so on . . .


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