You’ve just finished writing up The New PC. (Or NPC, but I am using PC for convenience.) You have a fantastic concept, rockin’ stats, the best gear that credits/goldpieces/whatever can buy and a detailed backstory with a full dozen (count ’em!) hooks for the GM. Everyone knows what she looks like, because you described her using the features of no less than 6 hot actors, found the perfect image on an art website (you did ask permission, right?) or maybe even spent a few hours with pro art software lovingly crafting an original portrait. (Wait, you mean I’m the only one who does that?) So, what’s her name? Huh? Her name. Surely you’re not condemning such an all-around paragon to be known forever as “Bobbi’s Character,” “Tiefling Sorceress,” “Jedi Elsa-clone” or whatever snarky-“brilliant” moniker your gaming buddies come up with.
But you can’t think of anything. This is for you – and your characters, who deserve names as cool as Frodo or Princess Leia. There are all kinds of naming inspirations out there.
Baby name and meaning sites/books and name generators for various genres are the obvious. I don’t go to the baby ones much. Yes, most of them now include all kinds of cultures and nationalities in their list, but the sheer volume makes it hard to search, and some may not allow you to limit your search other than by gender. 20000-Names is my favorite of the name sites and it doesn’t suffer from those drawbacks. The homepage has tabs for many ethnicities and nationalities at the top, plus links for all of them in the main portion of the page, which are further divided into female and male names. Most categories are only 2 pages each for male and female, so you can find a great name (and meaning if you like) without slogging through a lot of pages. I found this site when I named my FATE Oriental-fantasy character – given name, surname and even a couple other names that figured in her backstory. AND this site isn’t humanocentric! Is your character a werewolf? Here be dragons? Got a favorite weapon? Demon/ess or Sith BBEG? Or just want a name that means “Butterfly”? There are Wolf, Dragon, Weapons/Armor, Evil, Butterfly and many more pages.
Fantasy Name Generators is another good one. It has generators for Dragons, Places, Pop Culture, etc. , as well as Real Names. Hover over any of these and you get an extensive menu of subcategories. Fantasy covers Aliens to Wizards, plus creatures and cowboys/girls, as well as classic fantasy race names. Pop Culture is where to look for your comic, movie/TV or video game-inspired names, as well as classics like Arthurian names. I don’t like this one quite as much because I prefer to pick names, rather than have a random one, but it is still a great resource.
Favorite books, movies, video games are other sources. My first ever PC, back in high school, was named Isilwen and the only reason I am not still using the Tolkien dictionary that helped me name her is that I don’t have it any more. I think the poor paperback probably just disintegrated from over-use. I borrow names from my favorite book series all the time, and those namesakes might not even belong to the same genre! Many gamers, especially I have found, those who play Star Wars RPGs, use given and surnames from source; one of the many ways to tie your PC closer into a setting. I am no exception; my namesake NPC is Master Z’Rissa Organa (Yes, she is a relative of Bail’s) and I have already introduced you to Dr. A’lura Vao.
There are other sources I don’t use quite as often. Just as you can take names from the source movies or books, there may be legacy names specific to a campaign or even certain players, often when players take up new PCs related to old PCs or a retiring character hands off their codename. Legacy characters are a common trope of comics and the RPGs campaigns inspired by them. Related to this, I have a friend, whose PCs of a certain class in one genre are sometimes descendants of one of his favorite PCs. There is also the trick, beloved of bored elementary-school girls, of taking their perfectly good real-world name and changing it up. You don’t have to stop at changing Y to I! Melissa becomes Merissa – or even Z’Rissa!
And finally, sometimes you come up with a good, fun name just by chance. Several friends invited me into an established Mutants & Masterminds campaign. I had decided on a snow and ice-themed character because Energy Controller was an archetype the group lacked, and well, Frozen. While I was Skyping about the PC with another player, my son was making up hilarious phrases for the Text-ese “YQW” (“You’re quite welcome”). I passed several of these along to my fellow-gamer for his amusement – including Yule Queen of Winter, which we decided was a cool Codename, certainly better than “Linda’s Elsa Clone.” The in-game origin is a little different: Maximillian Mars had discovered her when her abilities manifested during a Christmas concert, so Mars Tech researchers working with the new Stormer called her “Yule Queen” as a good-natured joke, and she liked it.
Linda Whitson
Latest posts by Linda Whitson (see all)
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