So I’m listening to the most recent Bluff City (Friends at the Table’s Patreon game) and was just thinking about how great all the names are. In games I run I love to have some names that sound good and have a good ‘mouth feel’. If you’ve got any names from campaigns you’ve run/ participated in, or if you’ve just got a good name I’d love to hear them!
Some of my favorites from my list are Dozens Baker, Solace Marble, Austere Greer, and Livid Jazz.
A friend in high school taught me the technique that he’d learned to come up with generic fantasy names on the fly was to pick two random objects in the room and mash their names together. Like my desk and monitor become Monisk. I don’t know where he learned it from, but it’s pretty brilliant.
This is kinda the opposite of what you’re looking for since it’s probably the least effective for fantasy, but a writing professor I once worked with said the best way to think of real-sounding names for fiction (he was talking short stories, but it’s applicable to most writing), was to just… go to a cemetery and look at some tombstones.
I’m playing in a game of Fellowship where I’m allowed to spout lore on Orcs, which has lead to A Lot Of Things, but one of the things I was quick to do was establish a naming convention, which I think is pretty handy for coming up with names in situations like that. So now all Orcs in our setting have names like Vapor Vestir Vira Bellour, Labrys Libra Later Halloway and Gina Gear Glory Variant; and all their buildings and organizations tend to also be alliterative. I think establishing a naming convention is really helpful for games that allow for it, and it tends to help you avoid situations where someone goes “oh what’s their name” and you’re like “uh… F…uck yeah I got nothin”
My favorite Cyber Punk name of all time is “Bronson Extract”. I’m currently playing a Blades in The Dark game as a “Mitsy Grine” and boy I love that name
this bot-generated Name List is a seemingly infinite list of fake, Star Wars-esque names: Stanford Generator Unique Names. It’s my go-to for non-regular names.
I used to look at exam result lists when they got posted at University and jot down names I liked, because I did things like that back then. My favourite (a name that has made an appearance in a couple of things I’ve written) was “Lucinda Friday”. It’s just such a great name.
I have yet to find a use for “Obun Ogun Death”… it’s kind of my “in case of emergency break glass” name.
A fun way to come up with at least inspiration for fantasy-ish weird names is taking your/your friends/random names and reducing them back to their words of origin. Last names are better for this imo – mine turns into “Copse Thoroughfare” which I actually like a lot as a name? But you get cool stuff to play around with like serene/fortress and strawberry/scholar and traveller/gold flower.
FatT also taught me that Puritan names are good as hell… Every name on this list is extremely potent but “Praise-God Barebone” and, just, “Wrestling” really do it for me
Corpse Thoroughfare is a very strong name and also absolutely what you start calling the character after they’ve died and been necromancied-back-to-life
I’ve done that. I ended up befriending a nice older lady who was there to visit her father’s tomb, and she told me all about his days as an organist/music professor while we sat in her car and listened to classical music.
I wouldn’t consider the names I come up with as “great” so much as a fun balance between realistic for the world and kind of ridiculous. On one end of the naming conventions I have a Elf named Laughter’s Embrace, a Dwarf named Throda Leadfoot, and then on the other end I have a Goliath named Thud, and a Gnome named Jeb Dibebb.
I apply this to the video games I play as well, and if you find my No Man’s Sky galaxies, planets, and creatures you’ll find names like The Wanderer’s First, and Knobby Red Bulb.
I take the lazy way out. I randomly smash two letters or my keyboard and fill in the middle. The one I liked the most as Aggrenor for my old WoW mage. I’ve recycled that one whenever I need a random fantasy character name.
i gather names in the wild. When i see a good name, i write it in a list of good wizard names to potentially use later. Favourite unused ones so far are Ignacio Mundo, Zoltan Hantos, and Ciara Conduit.
Something a little unconventional that I like to do is look at crafting materials on fantasy video games. I’ve found stuff like Alabaster Quill, Tattered Demalion, and Avvar Twill that way. Although you usually have to skip over the more common or early game items otherwise you just have stuff like Torn Leather or Rusted Ingot which, now that I think about it, I bet you could make those work.
Also, one time I went to an Italian restaurant and their menu had “Zuppa & Insalata” and I thought Insalata Zuppa would be a pretty good name for a character even though it just means “soup and salad”