Tip Time: Naming Help

Tony posted this on January 10th, 2010.
Tagged as , , .
Categorized as Tip Time.
Shorthand Link: http://mmeow.net/tw2539

While there are always peo­ple who name their char­ac­ters some­thing goofy like “blade­ofdeath”, a lot of LOTRO play­ers seem to like to name their char­ac­ters some­thing a bit more fit­ting. Unfor­tu­nately, the game’s been out for so long that many of the more obvi­ous names are taken, includ­ing any real vari­a­tion of the sug­ges­tions Tur­bine offers when you make a new character.

To help you out, I’ve put together a list of name gen­er­a­tors and related tools. I won’t pre­tend to know which ones are more true to the lore than oth­ers, but I think these can get your thoughts going.

Angband.oook.cz’s Ran­dom Names Generator

http://​angband​.oook​.cz/​r​n​g​.​p​h​p​?​r​a​c​e​=​elf

This ran­dom name gen­er­a­tor is for a game called Angband, but it also works well here. Names aren’t based upon any­thing specif­i­cally Tolkien-esque, but they def­i­nitely do the job. What’s nice about this one is that is offers sug­ges­tions for humans, elves, dwarves, orcs and gnomes. I don’t really feel that the gnome names are good replace­ments for “typ­i­cal” hob­bit names, but if noth­ing else it can give you some ideas.

Slash ‘n’ Hack Name Generators

http://​www​.slackn​hash​.net/​n​a​m​e​_​g​e​n​e​r​a​t​o​r​s​.​php

This site has sev­eral gen­er­a­tors, some of which are based upon race and some of which are based upon class. Pretty much every­thing is cov­ered here and it lets you nar­row things down based upon gen­der and (real world) cul­tural origin.

The Coun­cil of Eldrond Name Finders

http://​www​.coun​cilofel​rond​.com/​m​o​d​u​l​e​s​.​p​h​p​?​o​p​=​m​o​d​l​o​a​d​&​a​m​p​;​n​a​m​e​=​S​e​m​a​n​t​i​c​s​&​a​m​p​;​f​i​l​e​=​i​n​d​e​x​&​a​m​p​;​v​o​l​u​m​e=4

This is not actu­ally a name gen­er­a­tor, but instead of list­ing of name equiv­a­lents in Sin­darin, Quenya and Rohirric. Not exhaus­tive, but it can be helpful.

Syl­vari Name Generator

http://​www​.rdinn​.com/​g​e​n​e​r​a​t​o​r​s​/​2​/​e​l​v​e​n​_​n​a​m​e​_​g​e​n​e​r​a​t​o​r​.​php

A name gen­er­a­tor for elves. This one let’s you spec­ify gen­der and whether the name is a given name, sur­name or both. I like that it lets you out­put one, 10, 25, 50 or 100 names to choose from.

My Pre­cious Name Generator

http://​www​.mypre​cious​.us/​n​a​m​e​_​g​e​n​e​r​a​t​o​r​.​php

This place sells Tolkien-related mer­chan­dise, but it also offers a name gen­er­a­tor based upon your name, cho­sen sex and cho­sen race. My hob­bit name would be “Soirry Bull­roarer Brownlock”.

Elven Runes Name Generator

http://​www​.elven​runes​.com/​m​u​m​e​/​n​a​m​e​g​e​n​.​h​tml

This one doesn’t just cover elves. In fact, it cov­ers more Tolkien-specific races than any other I’ve come across. You can nar­row things down by race and sex. It also lets you save results you liked so you can com­pare them later.

The Sindarin/Quenya Name Generator

http://​elf​fetish​.com/​S​i​n​d​a​F​r​a​m​e​1​.​php or http://​elf​fetish​.com/​Q​u​e​n​F​r​a​m​e​.​php

This is another one that’s just for elves, but it is by far my favorite for them. It allows you to com­bine words so that the result is some­thing that actu­ally is under­stand­able to you. It takes into account the rules of the lan­guage when com­bin­ing words too, which is quite nice. I got Eluveril’s name from here, which means “blue rose”.

You can also have one ran­domly gen­er­ated if you like. There’s a lot of sup­ple­men­tal infor­ma­tion on the main names page of this site too, if you’re inter­ested: http://elffetish.com/names.html

For some rea­son, it also con­tains a Magus sprite, for you Chrono Trig­ger fans.

That should do it for now. Are there any oth­ers any­one would like to share?

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One Response to 'Tip Time: Naming Help'

  1. I used to really strug­gle with names. Nowa­days, my secret is to name char­ac­ters after loca­tions in other MMORPG’s. With a lit­tle bit of tweak­ing (putting two loca­tions together, play­ing with suf­fixes), you can make a name that sounds fan­ta­sy­ish — after all, you stole it from another fan­tasy game — with­out ago­niz­ing to find some­thing that isn’t taken.

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