I hope this does not become Tesral’s corner.
These are presented as a suggestion and possible help. The names are very much tied to the cultures of my game.
In short I suck at coming up with a name on the spot. This is to get around that, or when keying out things like cities that need hundreds of names. This does not represent the full list of possible names, just a quick guide for GMs with memory holes.
They are offered to players but hardly required.
Random Names.pdf (3.3 MB)
Very cool. Are the titles such as “Airalaner” a particular culture in your games? I don’t recognize some.
Yes, very much so. Airalaners are a subset of Human known for height. The average man being 7’2". The language is 4/5 concurrent with Tudor English. The other unfamiliar names are likewise human cultures within the world.
Novimeer = Russian
Catalan = Spanish
The Novimeer are Russians. Babba Yaga along with Rasputin opened a gate to Thindacarulle and led 10,000 White Russians to safety. about 5,000 years before the present. Both are considered saints.
Great name lists. For my published settings I tend to transition through a series of naming methods as my settings evolve. At the very start of a campaign in a new setting, when it has the least amount of development, I tend to use generic names (Edgar or Robert for a pseudo-English Human region for example), or equally stereotyped names for cultures with only a vague sense to them (Ragnar and Thorim for the pseudo-Nordic Dwarves). Sometimes I’ll just grab a list of randomly generated names for a website and use whatever “sounds right”. As my settings become richer through play, the names become more codified and then I start creating custom lists for each culture or race. Even though then, I usually use real world cultures as phonetic inspiration.
That is where I am frankly. The game started in 1976 and has been played since, same world. There are old and established places.
More Cultures. The above link is updated.
Yea once I start poking something I can’t leave it alone. More names featuring Italian, Algonquin, Australian, Polynesian, and Roman names. The culture names are local to my game of course and the link at the top is updated.