Are you a creative namer?

[Serus]

I love the OP ways to do it. Myself I sometimes use names off my friends or other people i know. I once or twice used someone from the Dex.
The problem arises with some games from late 80s early 90s if you want to try some classics. They often allow very short names, Wizardry 8 was maximum 8 letters, it is unfortunately limiting the creativity somewhat.

 

[King Crispy]

The ones from your example don't fall so much on the creative category...

Usually, i use thematic names

Clearly you're an idiot.

 

[King Crispy]

For male characters, I always use my own name or variants of it.

You name all your characters Dodo?

 

[I'm Big Into Anal]

There may or may not be a pattern here.

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[Not.AI]

That's some weak shit. Why not just give everyone injun names then. Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Yellow Snow.

YES.

But it is important to always delete the space. That is how progress happens. Little things. Innovation.

Ned Yellowsnow

GOOD. (Nodding.)

Totally sounds like a protagonist.

Pick two words everyone knows. Smush them together. Problem solved.

So then ... Ned Yellowsnow ... he comes from a place called ... uh ... Great Redmountain. Which is a town *next* to a mountain. A big mountain. Which also happens to be red-ish. (That's storytelling. Careful worldbuilding.)

"It's weak shit."

This is good. It means a computer can generate such names automatically. Very important in the future. (It scales.)

And still better than the following.

Cloud Strife (I'm cringing.)
Max Payne (Still cringing.)
Waf'lld Drek'Shmeck The Lizardman Wizard (I don't know how to pronounce this. Waffled Dreck?)
Hka'nkk-2A Benq-5Fa'kk (Nobody can pronounce this. It's somebody's password or maybe the model number of a television and not a name.)

Consider the following.

Luke Skywalker

Awesome.

I rest my case.

 

[Kem0sabe]

I always name my characters Illidan Stormrage, because he's awesome.

 

[oldmanpaco]

My main is always Paco, Lord Paco, Master Paco, or Big Daddy Paco. Only play as humans in any game.

If I can make a party the harem is named after their role because I can never remember their stupid names:

Bards -> Singer
Monks -> Dancer
Mages -> Sorceress

That type of stuff.

 

[deuxhero]

I take names/objects related to the character, put them in kana, then romanize them back poorly. Gives a very fantasy film.

 

[Reinhardt]

on Fallout2 there's also the name list for Prizefighter and Pornstar where you can take inspiration from.

I'm still using Big Bad Muthuh sometimes.

 

[kris]

After years of GMing I came up with 100s if not 1000s of names back in the day. Some of them pretty shit, but better when I was no longer a young teen. When i was young about half the names was obvious deratives like "Araborn" and "Dandalf".

Later though I started to think things trhough and based names on different languages and groups. And had some with more flavour.

 

[Nortar]

When girls were younger and trees were taller, I used to play pnp AD&D.
My most favored character (not the first, I think he was my 3rd or 4th) was a dwarven fighter/cleric.

The Complete Book of Dwarves had a table for proper dwarven names generation - something like roll d20 for prefix and d10 for suffix.
But I just selected 2 parts I liked "Nor" + "tar".

And it's been my go-to character name ever since.
For rest of the party I usually use the same several names of the most memorable characters of my co-players from those old days as well.

 

[AdolfSatan]

There may or may not be a pattern here.

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No, I do not have a faeces or anus fetish

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[Darth Canoli]

l an idiot.

Unlike my post, removing half the letters from yours brings us closer to the truth...

 

[RingerTheZinger]

Abu Antar

Are you Arabian ?
هلا والله تشرفت فيك

 

[Abu Antar]

Abu Antar

Are you Arabian ?
هلا والله تشرفت فيك

Hello to you, too. No, I am a real Viking.

 

[nikolokolus]

I just pull a Jack Vance novel off of my shelf, flip to a random page and go with the first name I find.

 

[anvi]

I almost ever have the same party.

Dege or Degenhardt (german rapper), Dwarf Fighter/Barbarian
Sigourney (Sigourney Weaver), Paladin/Fighter
Blasko (Bela Lugosi), Cleric
Farah (Prince of Persia Sands of time), Cleric
Schmendrick (Last Unicorn), Sorcerer
Garret (Thief), Thief

When it's only one char i play as Degenhardt, Karras or Sigourney

I do exactly like this too, only with good bands and games.

 

[GhostCow]

I have a few names that I tend to recycle a lot but I usually throw in a few random ones too.

Human males are often named Karorn Videl
Gnome males usually get named Filben Burncaster
Tokwin Kiter or Melrik Kiter for halfling males depending on class

Being named Karorn in Everquest drove people crazy because the font made it look like Karom

 

[curds]

A current example of one of my unimaginatively-named parties:

(Raf is the name of my flatmate's cat who looks just like the samurai.)

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

I named my 2 characters in DDO Porkmaster Gandalf and Porkamir. The defense rests.

 

[DraQ]

Premade party members in some versions of Wiz8 are a pretty good example of creative 'freeform' naming, BTW.

 

[Pentium]

or just randomly mashing the keyboard?

Are you suggesting names like dmnvndsvydnvldfx ffs?! I wouldn't even dare give such a name to my saves.

Which brings to question: What names do you use for SAVES? When I was little would just use the game's name followed by a number e. g. Fallout 1, Fallout 2, Fallout 3... Today I want the title to have a story related meaning or at least to be related to the place I've just started to explore. I still have saves from my first Gothic 2 NoTR playthrough: The City of Khorinis, Searching The Land, The Upper Quarter, Performing Duties, Back in The Valley of Mines, Under Siege, The Enemy Strikes, The Priests of Fire,..., Secrects of The Ancients, The Blinded Eye,..., Showdown with Dragons and more. I like to keep my saves stashed sometimes

 

[Pentium]

I always go with the Pokemon names like Bulbasaur

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

For saves, if I care, the town name or just a generic Dungeon, if I don't, the lead character's name or whatever the game offers. For more dungeon crawl type games, I just rotate whatever slots I have, so the names don't matter at all.