Serious first world problems: How do you name your Characters?

[Fredward]

Please stop with that stupid, 'First world problems' meme. Problems are problems.

 

Pshaw. Not all problems are equal.

[Diogenes]

Greek philosophers.

[Aramintai]

There are tons of old English and ancient Celtic names with meanings behind them over here:

http://www.behindthename.com/names/origin/old-english

http://www.behindthename.com/names/usage/ancient-celtic

 

My personal favourites for Aedyrian protagonists are Ethel (or diminutive - Ethelyn) for female and Faelan for male.

Edited March 24, 2015 by Aramintai

[Diogenes]

Don't name your character Ethel unless its an 80 year old woman.

[Fredward]

Don't name your character Ethel unless its an 80 year old woman.

 

Or a gun. Ethel is a great name for a gun.

[Katarack21]

My first character is pretty much always named Katarack. It's my forum handle, and it works for fantasy names pretty well.

[PromisedPain]

I use my own name.... haha.

[Freshock]

Personally I tend to use norse names in all my games, and got around 10 different names I use over and over again. Always try to have a name ready before a game like this drops, been too many cases were I spend two hours finding the right name in the character creation. 

[Aramintai]

Don't name your character Ethel unless its an 80 year old woman.

Why? Is that your grandma's name, lol?

[Diogenes]

It's every grandma's name.

[PhroX]

In recent years, I've picked up a habit of trawling through the culture files for Crusader Kings 2 for interesting names for my RPG characters. Particularly when a fantasy culture has naming conventions based on historical cultures, as many of PoE's ones are, it's a great way to get ideas.

 

(oh, and, yeah, Ethel is definitely an old woman....)

[Aramintai]

It's every grandma's name.

Well, that means that it is an old English name, lol. The website is correct.

[PhroX]

 

It's every grandma's name.

Well, that means that it is an old English name, lol. The website is correct.

 

 

It is indeed an Old English name, but it's use persisted well into the middle of the 20th century (in the UK at least). Which means that it's quite common for people to have met women named Ethel, but they're inevitably old, hence the association with grannies.

[Aramintai]

 

 

It's every grandma's name.

Well, that means that it is an old English name, lol. The website is correct.

 

 

It is indeed an Old English name, but it's use persisted well into the middle of the 20th century (in the UK at least). Which means that it's quite common for people to have met women named Ethel, but they're inevitably old, hence the association with grannies.

 

Whatever, I'm not from UK so I've no clue. Amusing though.

[PhroX]

 

 

 

It's every grandma's name.

Well, that means that it is an old English name, lol. The website is correct.

 

 

It is indeed an Old English name, but it's use persisted well into the middle of the 20th century (in the UK at least). Which means that it's quite common for people to have met women named Ethel, but they're inevitably old, hence the association with grannies.

 

Whatever, I'm not from UK so I've no clue. Amusing though.

 

 

Yeah, it's always funny when names you've chosen for characters turn out to have meanings or associations in other languages or cultures you had no idea of.

 

As an aside, I think the diminuative form you suggested - Ethelyn - is actually a really good name to use.

[Mamoulian War]

Well, I almost always make my first character as spellcaster and call him Mamoulian or Mamoulian Greyhair. I don't think it will be different this time. Long time ago when I played BG for the first time, my main was called Hades Greyhair, but it pretty sucked in the end. That name did not fit the setting at all so I just started to use name Mamoulian

 

I have few more names in sleeves, but unfortunately this game lacks Half-Orcs and Gnomes as playable characters and I do not think these names might be very fitting for the races

 

But for follow up playthrough, I already see my Coastal Aumaua Paladin named Bubble

[Quillon]

I don't much care about appropriate names for the given setting or culture or whatever, as long as its not too modern a name I feel ok with it. I could go with Quillon or Beren(silmarillion), Halbarad(lotr) or names in my lang which I think fits in these types of games like Kartal(means eagle).

 

I remember I named my first character Batman in an rp-pvp server of age of conan(first&last mmo for me), I was made fun of and laughed with them till GM forced me to change it, which I renamed to Dicaprio lol, later this also had to be changed.

 

Another possible name is Rawer, which doesn't mean anything I know of except for RAWRRR!!!

[Luckmann]

But on a more serious note, I *hate* the fantasy/sci-fi trope of Weird Names.

Fair enough, Bob.

[Aramintai]

 

 

 

 

It's every grandma's name.

Well, that means that it is an old English name, lol. The website is correct.

 

 

It is indeed an Old English name, but it's use persisted well into the middle of the 20th century (in the UK at least). Which means that it's quite common for people to have met women named Ethel, but they're inevitably old, hence the association with grannies.

 

Whatever, I'm not from UK so I've no clue. Amusing though.

 

 

Yeah, it's always funny when names you've chosen for characters turn out to have meanings or associations in other languages or cultures you had no idea of.

 

As an aside, I think the diminuative form you suggested - Ethelyn - is actually a really good name to use.

 

Yea, ok. There are some cool sounding names on that website, but I'm gonna use another for my female character anyway - Myrra.

[Messier-31]

For my Vailian am gonna name him BONAVENTURA or BERTOLDO LIVIANI.

 

Other names I like:

 

KORIVIEL REHEN

RAEVAN

CAED DHU

THISEDOR

JORDI

TALDOR

VERAYN

AVESFELD

BRANVARDEN

PHAELIN

MADMARTIGAN

OBAMACARE

SWORDWIELDINGGUY

[aozgolo]

It's like naming a child, but usually far less stressful since you don't gotta worry about bullies beating them up over a silly name (well you probably do actually) but just come up with what sounds cool.

 

A fun way to do it is smash nouns together that kind of encompass what your character is about like "Blonde haired monster slayer" and find translations in other languages for those words or even made-up languages like Elvish. Maldafindl Uuvanimondengina might be a tad long though, so just play around with it.

[Jarmo]

Just a quick glance through surroundings, combine any two suitable names.

Like.. Sanford Lipton... or Xylene Grundig.

[Luckmann]

For my Vailian am gonna name him BONAVENTURA or BERTOLDO LIVIANI.

 

Other names I like:

 

KORIVIEL REHEN

RAEVAN

CAED DHU

THISEDOR

JORDI

TALDOR

VERAYN

AVESFELD

BRANVARDEN

PHAELIN

MADMARTIGAN

OBAMACARE

SWORDWIELDINGGUY

 

My Vailian Barbarian will so be named Obamácare.

[.Leif.]

For my Vailian am gonna name him BONAVENTURA

You use Behind the name as well? I just made a Catalan Rifle Ranger in Wasteland2 using the Catalan named Hector Bonaventura.

 

I am likely going to name my first character from the Living Lands Olafr, Vlademar, Völgarr or something appropiately Norse like that. For some reason I imagine the Living Lands to be some mash-up between the omnipresent danger of the world of Darksouls 1 and the abundant assortment of strange foes that you might find in a Dungeons and Dragons second edition Monster Manuel.

 

Benvolio will be my Vailian name. I reckon if we're playing a game set in a fantasy early-Renaissance we may as well take full advantage of the setting and play a swashbuckling musketeer.

 

Dwarf names are pretty fun to think of given the silly Dwarven-naming conventions of Dwarf-Fortress. Elf names are pretty-well established in general fantasy lore by now.

 

Check out Behind the Name if you want a great resource for the root sources of all sorts of different names from different languages.

Edited March 24, 2015 by .Leif.

[Ultimo Noressi]

With the guide to character creation from Sensuki out a more serious problem remains. What names to give?

 

I know my main character will be called Pari which means fairy in farsi. It's one of the main characters in the book Traumsammler

But for the others i have currently no idea.

 

 

 

 

 

That's easy, use a baby name generator. Find the names that resemble the ethnicities of this game's names the most. ie: For the Vailians I would use an Italian baby name generator.

Edited March 24, 2015 by Ultimo Noressi