Comments on: Coming Up With, and Using, NPC Names

By: Martin

Martin — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 05:46:29 +0000

Got it! Thank you, hellibrarian.

By: hellibrarian

hellibrarian — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 19:37:04 +0000

Here’s my favorite for generating Star Wars names.

http://dimfuture.net/starwars/random/index.php

By: Martin

Martin — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 15:39:44 +0000

Thanks, Avlor — I’ve added it to the list.

By: Avlor

Avlor — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 14:27:24 +0000

One of my favorites for names is the Academy of St. Gabriel ( http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/ ). Fantastic lists of historic names from MANY different cultures.

By: Martin

Martin — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 15:41:29 +0000

Thanks, GilaMonster.

By: GilaMonster

GilaMonster — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 07:18:39 +0000

Another very useful site:
http://squid.org/tools/names/index.html

The phone book is my primary source of names. I keep a page long list of female names, male names and surnames and mark them as I use them

By: Martin

Martin — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 02:04:22 +0000

Lilith: Added — thanks!

By: Lilith

Lilith — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 00:40:44 +0000

http://www.seventhsanctum.com/

My favorite generator site.

By: Martin

Martin — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 21:07:22 +0000

Thanks for the additional ideas — I’ve added them to the post.

By: PW Vinciguerra

PW Vinciguerra — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 17:48:12 +0000

Two-words: phone-book

My stepfather occassionally gets hard-bound phone books from a local book binder as a customer giveaway (they bind a year’s worth of magazines too, just like at the library)

I kept one year’s white pages and it sits with honor by all my gaming books. The nice thing is it doesn’t look like a phone book, so most don’t notice when I scramble for a name and reach for it.

Obviously it works great for modern first & last names. Fantasy and alien names are usually just alterations or inspirations from names I see on the page. Especially last names.

But I will admit to also having a few typed lists (usually by some theme or ethnic group for easier referance) lifted from the internet.

By: Jeff Rients

Jeff Rients — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 13:55:44 +0000

Another resource I’ve used over the years is the Bible. There are a zillion minor characters in their with great names. It doesn’t work for every campaign but it can be fun to have NPCs named Tobit or Zerubbabel.

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 03:23:17 +0000

For real world names, I typically use Gary Gygax’s Extraordinary book of names, which has an amazing list of names from many cultures, male, female, family, and archaic. If the game is extensively in a cultural setting, I try looking up the culture online (“Italian names”, “Roman names” etc.)

If the culture is fantastic, then I do one of two things:

1) Take a real world naming and twist it a bit- “Eidol”=”Aidara”, etc. applying this across many names.

2) Establish some really basic naming conventions (“Women’s names end in A or I” “Men’s names end in R or O”, “Names are 2-4 syllables in length”, “No name begins with T”

After you do about 5-6 naming conventions, and make up some names, you’ll notice a pattern and probably be able to add 3-4 more conventions based on the ones you just made up. It provides a similar unity across the names as you go.

If you feel especially nerdy, apply meaning to certain syllables or names and mix and match accordingly. “Seru”= bird, “Jai”=heart, “Jaiseru”=spirit etc.