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/rng.php?race=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.slacknhash.net/name_generators.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
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/generators/2/elven_name_generator.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.myprecious.us/name_generator.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.elvenrunes.com/mume/namegen.html
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://elffetish.com/SindaFrame1.php or http://elffetish.com/QuenFrame.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?
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.