The Name List
My past several posts have been pretty worldbuilding oriented, so I wanted to do something more immediately practical this week.
One of the classic "D&D problems" is when players and the GM have a differing sense of what the tone of the world is. The Dungeons & Dragons 4e Dungeon Master's Guide calls this out explicitly:
And clearly, the problem is not solved, despite 4th edition D&D's advice on the matter.
So what do we do if we want to have names like Travok, Anastrianna, and Kairon for the tone of our game, but struggle intensely to actually come up with those names? There's all sorts of advice out there to help with this, from bloggers like the Alexandrian, to reddit posts, to video advice. And what about if we're going for the illusion of a consistent, plausible world, where there should be overlap in names and where different cultures might have variations on names like how Juan and John are similar?
So today I'm going to throw in my two cents on some common methods of generating names, and then share what I do. And I'm fully prepared to rehash the fight I once had with a player who wanted to name an NPC from their backstory "Edmund" as part of it.
What's Out There?
So first, let's look at what advice exists already.
The List of Examples
The easiest--and most supported by official material--way to name characters is to consult some sort of standing list of names and draw inspiration from that. This is what D&D 5e supports, as the Players Handbook offers sample names for each race.
Often, this will be fine enough for players. They can take a name from the list, and there's enough provided options across all the races that it would be rare for two PCs to select the same option.
For DMs, however, who might be managing dozens to hundreds of NPCs over the course of the campaign, a dozen or so names isn't quite enough--especially if you don't want both Thorin and Thoradin to confuse your party.
So, DMs turn to longer lists of names provided online, that other people have whipped up. For example, the Alexandrian's list below:
Justin Alexander
But the problem with this is that eventually, you run out of names that sound right, and so you go in search of more name lists. That eventually leads a lot of DMs, including me, to our next option.
Random Name Generators
Random name generators tend to be like the name lists on the back end. They're drawing from a collection of names or syllables, smushing them together, and spitting out options for you to then choose from. One of the most common options, from a cursory scan of recommended sites on reddit, is Fantasy Name Generator.
And this often can produce names that are good enough. These names, like the names from the book-provided or blog-provided list might not have a particular meaning or relevance, but they're likely fine.
This is what I used for a long time, so truly no judgement for turning to Fantasy Name Generators. There's usually a sound that the names all share for a particular race, which I think is really critical--it helps players (and the GM) place an NPC if, just from their name, you can place something about them. The name Torvek Ironbeard and Ariennia Evensong do not sound like they could be siblings, and just from those names you probably can match them to a D&D race just from association with naming tropes.
Again, these options are usually good enough... but sometimes they fail in one of two key ways. Sometimes, the names don't sound right--maybe they break from the sound you have in your head for a proper "elf name," even if you can't quite place why, or maybe just none of the names inspire you. That can lead to clicking 'generate more' a bunch of times until you start getting repeats and growing increasingly frustrated. The other way that it fails is for a particularly important NPC, where you want the name to mean something. Your big villain probably shouldn't have a bright and sunny-sounding name, unless a faux-niceness is part of their shtick.
Take a Word and Translate It
Another common strategy that requires more effort than choosing a name from a book or a generator is to run a word through multiple levels of Google Translate. You take a word that has meaning to the character, change it into another language (either once or multiple times to throw off the meaning more), and then maybe twist parts of the name to make it sound less recognizable.
While you do want to make sure no one at the table knows the language you're using--I'm remembering a Tumblr post from years ago that I cannot find about a friendly NPC who would be revealed at the climax as a secret villain whose name translated to basically "Liar Evil-Guy"--this allows you to give some real meaning to your character names.
For example, one of my players once wrote an NPC into their backstory to be a foil and a school rival to their character. The NPC's name was Eris Armik: Eris from Greek for “conflict/strife”, and Armik from Albanian for “enemy”.
Again, I'm a big supporter of this method. It gives you more control than a list or generator does to find that perfect name--one that has meaning AND sounds right.
The problem with this method, of course, is that it takes time. You have to search, possibly several languages, to find something that works: especially if you're doing Romance or a Germanic language, and you don't want to just directly give a character a name that is just identical in English. You likely have to try several words to find something that sounds like it could be a name. Eris Armik sounds like a name, but using French and going conflit ennemi doesn't sound nearly as good.
So while this is great for a single PC or core NPCs, it is not a great solution for GMs needing to name a character on the fly. That's where my solution comes in.
The Real Life Name List
Building out a whole fictional language--a conlang--is one of the things I've banned myself from doing. I don't have the linguistic knowledge to ever be happy with a conlang, which means that it is a ton of work for relatively little payoff. That's not what I'm advocating.
My "name list" has a list of real names, and then parallel fantasy names for each of my big cultural groups--John (English), Juan (Spanish), and Hans (German) can translate to Ozal (Halfling), Oxal (Tiefling), and Osdal (Dwarf).
This system gives you names that can have a meaning, lets you have matched names across cultures and the possibility for consistent sounds within a culture (if you design the list well), and lets you still be able to pick a name for an NPC fast.
Designing Your Name List
Ok, so how do we build this spreadsheet of names?
First, we select some common IRL names. You're definitely not locked into these forever--you can expand the list over time--but you want to pick a few dozen names at least to start, so that you don't have too many NPCs with the same names.
Second, figure out why those names matter. This can be the name's actual meaning (I like using Behind The Name for research on this), but it can also be some other meaning. For some examples: I took the name Victor (and Victoria) from their literal meanings of "victory," but for the name Benjamin, I went with "diplomatic" as its core meaning because of Ben Franklin (and so a lot of diplomat NPCs have a name that I've set to be a fantasy parallel to Ben). You can give names multiple meanings or have multiple names matched to one meaning, to add some complexity and variability, but you don't have to.
Third, identify culturally parallel names, like Juan/Hans to John. Again, Behind the Name is a great resource for this. Make note mostly on how different these names are--Hans feels more different from John than Juan is. Try to pick one to three real cultures to map onto each of your big fictional cultures (maybe all elves, or it might be a particular geographic country or even a duchy in your world).
Fourth, design a core matched name for the English name you've identified. Use whatever your preferred method of name generation is: you can mess around with a name generator to just find a name that sounds good, or you can go with the Google Translate method for the "meaning" that you identified.
Fifth, twist that English core name based on how your other cultures have different versions of names. For example, if John = Ozal, then Juan is one sound off from that. If I'm inspired by Spanish names for my tieflings, then I should make a tiefling version of Ozal that has one letter different. Hence, Oxal.
Then, you can apply these rules to the cultural twists on your core name. Oxal is the tiefling version of Ozal because I wanted to make a one sound change (John->Juan), and I needed a X or Y (Ozal already has a z, so I wanted a different one). You can still break these rules sometimes (my dwarf Ozal is Osdal--no double letter), but you should apply them more often than not.
This advanced version will help you keep up a consistent sound for your names... but it adds a step and some complexity, so I think it is probably overkill for most.
Step 5 takes the most time, since you're now filling out the entire spreadsheet. Be prepared for this to take some time! This is prep in service of things being faster during play.
Using Your Name List
It is fast during play because you now have both names and meanings. I need a diplomat NPC from my majority-tiefling country? Great, I look up the Tiefling version of Benjamin. I have someone who doesn't necessarily fit my "meaning," but who my brain keeps wanting to name "Bob" for some reason? Let me just pick the parallel to Bob, which keeps a more correct sound instead of the Bob issue that we started this post with.
It also opens up other avenues for character building. I like modeling NPCs after historical figures (in case you couldn't guess based on the entire theme of the blog). So if I'm building a grand vizier type modeled after Cardinal Richilieu of France? Well, Richilieu's successor was Cardinal Jules Mazarin, so I can obscure the Richilieu parallel a little better, and go for whatever name is my match for Jules.
The challenge comes, of course, that I don't want all my diplomats to be named Benjamin. The answer is simple: focus on another aspect of their personality. Maybe that diplomat was also active in religious reformer circles, and so has the name I've matched with Martin. Maybe I'm modeling that diplomat specifically after the famous diplomat Talleyrand (who served Napoleon), whose first name was Charles. Switching these things up helps you keep the names from getting too repetitive.
Lastly, you have to expand your name list over time. If you find a real name that isn't on the list that you want to steal, do it--and then fill in parallel names across the board. If your players come up with a name using the Google Translate method, and they explain the name's meaning, find an IRL name with the same meaning and then incorporate their creativity into your list for the future.
Over time, this will help you build a dictionary of names that you can pull from quickly, while preserving the fact that names have meanings, cultures have consistent sounds and patterns to them, while also reflecting cultural exchange as similar names will spring up across cultures.
Conclusion
I'm not going to provide you with my list of names that I use. That's not the point--I don't want to be just another list of names to draw from. Rather, I hope that this helps you build your own name dictionary, and that having a name dictionary helps you in running your games.
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