Dungeon Masters Workshop - Creation tip - Advise on Naming

Let's be honest, a lot of us lack the linguistic prowess of most mainstream fantasy writer to come up with Tolkien like thirteen syllables, triple-barreled names that mean one translation in one language and a different translation in another.

Whether it be for magical items, names of places or naming important NPC's I use a couple of different techniques and resources for making this a little easier and less of a stumbling block for when it comes to writing your campaign.






Naming NPC (Human , Dwarves and Elves)

When it comes to naming the characters that your PC's are going to be meeting as they travel through your adventure, typically I steal names from both fictional and real cultures. Using western anglo-europian names is an easy way to populate your world,
and depending on the world your running can be a great way to go. If your playing in a world that is mainly human-centric and the other fantasy races dwarf, elves or orcs are barely seen or indeed not there at all, it can be a useful to simply use names that we use and names that are typically found in the era-appropriate setting and that makes sense. For example the name "John Smith" is a fairly self-explanatory name, it tells you who he is and what his family either does or at some time did, the same is true for names such as "Alex Tailor" or "Sara Hawker", these are fairly typically names for many peasants during the medieval and renaissance era. Another way is to include some detail about where that person may be from, for example, if someone is called " Darren Scott" that would indicate that their family has some background in the country of Scotland, this is a fairly general, however if you apply this to someone who has some nobility then maybe their name is "Jacob Riverdale" , this is far for specific , you have their name and a less general place of where they come from. This could demonstrate to your PC's that perhaps this individual owns or rules the land of "Riverdale" and as such that has passed down in their name. All this may seem like obvious stuff but its the little details that really add to the flavor. This also gives you the chance, therefore, to use names from other cultures such as French, German, Spanish , Indian and Chinese to name but a few, to give to other cultures of human around your world , showing your players that not all of your human cultures are cut from the same cloth and that each one has its own traditions and storeys that influence what we name our children .

when naming other races such as dwarves and elves, I've often found that the names of these particular races often mimic that characteristics of the race themselves and the real-life people that influence them. For example, the dwarven people are highly influenced by Scandinavian and Germanic cultures and can be found a lot in their folk tales and hence have a lot of hard vowel sounds such as D's, K's, N's and G's in their names.  The male Dwarf is often portrayed as a stout strong individual that is business-like and reserved and i have found that for a short, stout and stocky race, their names are often the same, mainly staying to one or two syllables. "GerTag" is a name with two syllables but also has a poetic meter of two "Ger-Tag". "Drim" "Gorrak" "Fimur" all stick within this one to two syllable idea. For female dwarves I've often found that they have two to three syllables, examples being "Thoron" "Muna" "Sumunni" "Dwingoli".

While the origins of elves come from around the world including within Germanic and Scandinavian cultures, they can also be found in early Welsh, English, and Greek. I could be wrong, but I believe this to be the origins of Tolkien's style of elves. With greek names such as "Anastasios" a Male name meaning "Resurrection"
and "Aeronwen" being a female name meaning "Battle blessed" these to me at least, sound distinctly elven in nature. I think this is because of the fluid nature of how the names sound and the length of them remind me of typical Tolkin elven names such as "Legolas" and "Celebrimbor", hence when I'm naming my elves I often take form Welsh and Greek names.

While I take all of this into account, I also do have a list of fantasy names for different races both male and female that I take form video games and books that I've read, such as "World of Warcraft" and "The Witcher " franchise.


Places 

naming a place can be as easy as have a verb and a noun and sticking them together. For example one of the towns in my game is a village called "Stoutstone", a verb and a noun just sandwiched together to make a villagey sounding name. "DarkWell" "Golden field" and "ShadowFen" are all examples of the same thing, try and make these names relatable to the town that they are named for, "Stoutstone" in my game is a River town that is made up of mainly stone buildings that came from the stones found at the bottom of the river bed, it influences this pretty bleak little town so that all of the houses are made of stone because that's what the people there have to build with. When it comes to naming countries I take inspiration from old languages such as Norse, latin and greek, for example, the ancient Norse for shield is "SKJÖLD" and I love that name and so I named my human country after that, its also the shield for the mortal races against the frigid wastes to the north in which the hobgoblin armies and unknown horrors lie in wait, gaining their forces in hopes of moving south. However when it came to naming the chromatic Dragonborn nation I had some difficulty in naming it. It is an island that has four active volcanos of four different elements, there is an ice volcano, a fire volcano, a acid volcano and a lightning volcano, (its fantasy I can do what I want). They are meant to represent four of the five colors of chromatic dragons, and so I decided to take elements of words earth, wind, fire and water came up with the name "Firath". "F" from fire "IR" from air "A" from water and "TH" from earth. It came up with a name that I found pleasing and so I put it in my game.

Magical item.

The naming of magical items I find to be the most fun out of all of the naming processes. I usually don't like just giving my players a magical item out of the dungeon masters guide without sparkling it up a bit. I don't bother with items of uncommon to rare status a lot of the time, but when the group finds a very rare and up item then I feel its time to give it the name. Why do you ask? Because everyone likes something that is unique, a fighter using a polearm of sharpness sounds less cool than Anton Haversham wielder of "Juvantis the Windcutter". It gives the item more narrative weight if the players believe that this item is the only one of its kind, and can lead to the players keeping sub-optimal gear because they have fallen in love with this item that means so much to them and that has woven itself into the fabric of their character.
So how do I do it? Well let's take the name of the polearm of sharpness that one of my players now wields "Juvantis the windcutter", in my mind the blade is of elven make and the name "Juvantis" sound to me like an elven name, this tells the players that it was made by elves and maybe for a particular elf who commisioned it , "the windcutter" is a demonstration to the deadlyness of the weapon itself, a blade that is so sharp and people believe that it can cut the wind in half. This is hypocrathful of course no blade of very rare status could do that but it gives the weapon a name that represents its awesome power and again makes the player feel truly great for wielding this weapon and makes it an even greater piece of loot that they found.


Thanks for reading guys, a bit of a lengthy one today but I hope its been useful, and so until next time guys.

Bye!