How do you come up with fantasy names for elves and dwarves and the like?
The Nomicon. Check the Rchive.
I don't.I make the concession that, since the game takes place in a fantasy world, the words they would use would not only be different from our own, but likely unspeakable and unwritable in our own languages. The mechanics and terms being written in English is not a 1:1 translation, but an abstraction made for convenience. I call things as they are because I want to omit as many unnecessary details as possible, and I fully understand that the words I use to describe things are not even remotely close to the words people in-world use.I'm not a linguist by any stretch, I have no inclination to be, and the actual in-world languages have no bearing on playing the game anyway.
>>96639621I just give them English names. You are going to run into elves named Jeffery and you're going to like it.
>>96639621One of my players generated seven different conlangs for my setting.
>>96639621Dwarves get german names Elves get celtic names Humans get old polish namesEveryone can have christian name
Warcraft naming fucking sucks lol
>>96639621I don't.And my players are aware of this. If they are asking for names, they are going to get the first contemporary one that will come up to me, picked at random.>>96640008>Humans get old polish namesTa, jasne, na pewno, kurwiu.
>>96639823Not all of us are lucky enough to have a player this autistic, unfortunately
>>96640008>Dwarves get german names Manfred Steinhammer?Klaus Eisenbart?Peter Erzsucher?Udo Goldgräber?Thomas Axtschmied?Juergen Ewigesse?Manuel Steinmann?Hans der Brecher?I dont know, do these sound dwarven to non native german speaker?
>>96641027For the most part, but Manuel Steinmann sounds like some lind of Mexican Jew.
>>96639621This shit is the one thing I do use chat gpt for. Before that it was the random name generators.
>>96639621I look in the index at the back of the Lord of the Ring books. Lots of names to pick out there.
>>96639621I used to use name generators then came chatgpt. I noticed it's always the same names or name logic it's pretty bad but I guess you can better results if you try harder
>>96639621I just steal sounds from European languages, mostly Romance and Germanic ones, and mash them together with cool-sounding suffixes while occasionally looking up what they mean. I use mostly just English words and things that sound like them for family names.
>>96639674yeah so i learned this the hard way. I worked it all out and crafted background and history and dialectical drift and phoneemes, and consulted experts. worked out meaning and conventions, modelled after trends we see in the real world, to work out reasonable but alien names. They weren't usable in games; players couldn't use or remember them reliably. Inevitably, they would nickname characters and use those. We just ended up eventually back at this, with players understanding it is another part of the abstraction. Sometimes it's really not worth reinventing the wheel.
>>96639809Based.
I use this site. https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/
>>96641027>SteinhammerNot, Hammerstein?
Elves.Looked up old Latin/Gaul names. Changed s few letters around to make em softer.>dwarvesLooked up old germanic names. Changed a few letters around to make them harsher.
>>96646941Dwarves are essentially cavemen.Elves are pretty much woodsissies.
>>96646882Both work. I know a bunch of people called Goldhammer.
>>96639621>Character is an evil elf>Pansydick>Syda Pnick>Weird last name but it makes them more unique, good enough. Do I have other characters named similarly to Synda?>Fuck, forgot about Sianda>Oh, I see a Belgian beer can that says Martens, she'll be Beltens Gianmar>Damn I'm good at names
>>96641027The last names work but the first names don't. They are too familiar and remind even non-germans of real names and people.
>>96639809Is Jeffery the long-suffering butler to a dwarf named Phil?
>>96641027yeahto americans they probably sound jewish though
>>96650832Nah, we would probably peg all of those as German names except for Steinmann since a lot of Jews with the surname Steinman live here. The rest sound decidedly German.If any of them ended in witz, berg or stein, I could see it.
>>96639621I’m working on a setting where the forces of Heaven and Hell are in conflict, but are prevented from waging large-scale battle in either of their two realms. As a result, they use the mortal world to get around this. That’s not the issue at hand though, I’m running out of name ideas for both sides that aren’t just the names of angels or demons from the Bible, and could use some suggestions, and I would love to hear how you name your own angels and demons as well. I want the names to be meaningful beyond just slapping “el” to the end of ordinary names for angels, which of course makes it harder on me…One idea I had was that succubi and incubi, especially the former, mainly take on the role of spies in the mortal world, so I could use some names for that kind of demon in particular. Lilith as their queen is a given, and names of historical women associated with lust (like Helen because everybody in Greece wanted to marry her) could work for some of them, especially if the rumors are true and said women become succubi after death, but I can only think of a few and I still need some more ideas for succubi that weren’t ever human, thanks in advance for any help you can give me! Someone else suggested I take a page from the book of Journey to the West where the animalistic demons have titles instead of names, which is a start at least, and someone else suggested naming angels after virtues and demons after sins and vices, but that only works up to a point, what do you think?
>>96639637Not OP, but thanks. What have you named using it?
>>96657825I'm making my own setting, and I keep referencing it for things from town names to racial namelists.
>>96639621In my setting, Dwarves are russian and Elves are Aztec.
>>96658155Tell us more about the setting please.
>>96639621>elvesSlap together random Welsh/Irish name parts from Wikipedia"Diann Lludd Chnucha" "Gwydion CĂ©tchathach">dwarvesNordic first name, metal/rock name + body part last name "Bjorn Ironkidney" "Bork Shalefoot"
>>96661122Also all my evil wizards have names made from hebrew "Ezekiel Beytsah" "Gazeyroh Neshikah" "Assiah Yirmiyahu"
>>96639621Elves: NatureThing+NounDwarf: RockorSmithingThing+Noun.Gnome: WhimsicalThing+NounHalfling: RelaxingThing+NounHuman: John.
>>96661131>Also all my evil wizards have names made from hebrewWhat about the good wizards?
>>96665713I just steal good wizard names from Tolkien stuff
