Creating Fantasy Names, ...an article.

[Evega]

Creating Fantasy Names
By Evega Karr

Waah! My hero needs a cool name!
Of course your hero needs a cool name. In fact, if he or she doesn't, nobody would read the story, right? So, let's see. A cool-sounding name. Oh, I know! We start it with a K, throw in some X's and Z's and plug in a vowel here or there. Kuzcox! Awesome.

Oh. Wait. Not awesome. Not at all. Do you really want to be reading a two-hundred-or-so-page fantasy story or playing a twelve-hour RPG in which your main character, an innocent teenager from a quaint village, is named Kuzcox!? In one word: ewww. Perhaps the name would work for a minor villain-type character, but for a hero, it doesn't make any sense. It's not easy on the eyes, ears, or tongue.

Naming your characters takes more time and thought than you may think. You can't just throw letters together and come out with something that sounds cool. Sure, it may be a great name, but will it really fit the character? This quick article will help you determine what kinds of names work for what kinds of characters, and how to come up with great names for those characters.

The Letters and Sounds of the English Alphabet

Think about real names that you know. Commonplace names, like Mike, Ryan, Joe, John, Mary, Emily, Diana, etc. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of "normal" names. Think about people that go to school with you, or your workmates. Your neighbors and family. There are names everywhere, and each name has a different and unique sound and feeling to it. Has anyone ever said to you, "You look like a Josh" or "Your name doesn't suit you"? Have you ever thought it about somebody else? Well, there's a reason for that. It's true, named do have subtle meanings. And I'm not talking about latin roots or anything. I don't mean direct meanings or translations, but feelings that go with the letters and sounds. An aura, so to speak.

It's true that in real life, the parents of guardians of a person determines his or her name (in our culture, at least). So you may find a person whose name doesn't fit his or her personality at all. In fact, that's relatively common. But in a story, you should have your character designed (at least his or her basic role and attitude) before you pick out your name. So while people in real life may not have names that reflect themselves, characters in a story should.

The English language has many, many sounds. And they very incredibly. Consider the hard sound of the letter "k" as opposed to the soft "th". Think of the vowel sounds, and the way a long "a" sounds so much different than a short "a". The different types of sounds, and even the different combinations of types of sounds, can make or break the aura or a name.

Harder, sharper sounds such as "k", "d", "g" and "t" tend to work well for just that kind of character. Perky characters, as well, can pull off a hard name. Let's look at a "normal" name that is used rather often today. Mike. It has the hard "k" sound in it, as well as the sharp "i". The "m" is typically a warm-sounding letter, but it is diminished by the two hard sounds of the name. "Mike" is a sharp-sounding name. Think of the kind of character you would cast as a "Mike". The cocky jock would fit, as would the annoyingly cheerful little kid (though he may even be a "Mikey"). Would the depressed quiet kid in the corner be a "Mike"? Most likely not. He would probably have a softer and quiter-sounding name.

I consider softer sounds to fall into two categories: warm and cool. Warm sounds would be the long vowel sounds and sounds more like "m", "n", "w" and "r", while colder sounds would be "s", "th", "z", "ch", "j" and so on. Can you tell the difference in the feel? Try pronouncing them out loud. A name such as "John" is a very warm-sounding and friendly name. Perhaps that is why it so common. But "John" is perhaps too warm and too blunt for our depressed loner. "Ryan" or something may be nice, but again, it doesn't have the fight feel to it.

Our kid in the corner sets himself apart from everybody else, so shouldn't his name do that as well? He's in a modern story, with that character names Mike, so his name can't be too outlandish. We can't give him a made-up fantasy name, but we want to give him a name that isn't too commonly used today. These types of names are actually my favorite. Racking your brain to think of a good obscure name will take a long, long time until you find something perfect. But going online and checking out www.babynames.com or checking a census report can seriously push you in the right direction. A name for our loner that is both soft and obscure? "Thaddeus"? "Marlin"? Those adult-sounding names aren't too great for a kid, but then again, if he were to have a name such as that it would certainly give him a unique character.

And Thus I Name Myself Aragorn!

Sorry I took Aragorn's name from Lord Of The Rings for the heading of this section, but I wanted a good fantasy name people would recognize. But, it's also a good example of a fantasy name for just that reason. You can recognize "Aragorn" from Lord Of The Rings (unless, of course, you're never read/seen LOTR, in which case you should go do so now). "Aragorn" is certainly not a "normal" name. You wouldn't expect to see "Aragorn Smith" on a business card, would you? Of course not, it's a fantasy name. They never tend to be names used in real life. But yet, you recognize and accept "Aragorn" as the character's name without really thinking about it. You see Viggo Mortensen on your TV screen with his long hair and beard and you think "Aragorn pwnz0rs" rather than "why couldn't Tolkien name him Frank?" But then again, if his name was "Argraragodon", you would be thinking more along the lines of that second one. So what makes "Aragorn" so nice? Why's it so popular? And we can look at just about any popular fantasy name and think the same thing. "Frodo". "Lyra." "Entreri". Why are they good fantasy names?

Even though the names are made up and aren't "normal", good fantasy names follow the general rules of a "normal" name. The biggest and perhaps most important rule for creating a fantasy name is that it must be pronounceable. For example, the name "Ppliphttiyn" can hardly be pronounced at all. It's confusing. If you name a character with something that can hardly be pronounced, with a bunch of random letters thrown together, the reader will have a hard time getting past the name to look at the character. In fact, a reader seeing that name will probably just label the character as "P" and simply think "P" every time he or she gets to the name. Rather, take out some of the letters and cut the name down. Generally, you'd want a vowel for each syllable, and you'd want it nicely balanced. Here's a trick: think of a name before you write it, not the other way around. If you think of a name first, the way it sounds, it will far more likely be easy to pronounce when read from paper. So, we take "Ppliphttiyn" and cut it down to "Piptin." The pronunciation of the name had changed greatly (if the first one even had a pronunciation), but it's far easier to say and is in fact a more likeable name.

Note: There is an exception to this rule. Words and names from other languages can be as odd as you want. However, if you do this, try to make sure that you give the character a nickname. You can do this by having the English-speaking main character get stumped at pronouncing the character's real name, or in some other way acknowledging that the name is foreign. It gives a sense of realism to the story and lets your readers know that you're not just going crazy with your letters. For example, in Diane Duane's So You Want To Be a Wizard, a star-character is named "Khairelikoblepharehglukumeilichephreidosd'enagouni" (yes, I just went to find the page and copied that letter-by-letter) but he's called "Fred" instead. Easier, isn't it?

The other rule is a bit more relaxed, but it's perhaps just as important. Look back at "Argraragodon" compared to "Aragorn". You have to stop and think about the first one, looking at the letters and even counting the "r"s. "Aragorn", though, rolls off the toungue as you read. Why? Aside from "Aragorn" being simply easier to pronounce, it has three syllables, as opposed to the five of "Argraragodon". Typically, in our language, a name has one, two or three syllables. Occasionally you could get away with four or five, but for main characters and names you'll be using a lot, you'll want to stick with three or less. It's easier to read, it's easier to remember, and it's easier to write.

Remember that fantasy names don't have to be crazy, multi-syllabled jumbles of letters. In a project I'm working on now, I have a character named "Cless". It's a short, one-syllable word, and easy to pronounce. It's a perfectly good fantasy name, though it doesn't go off with a bunch of "akara"s and "orog"s.

Using Base Words And Names

Here's a technique that I use fairly often. In fact, I've read about a lot of others that use this as well. I call it using base names. Rather than creating a fantasy name from scratch, it's often far easier to use a "base" of some sort. A base is a word or name that is common or has an established meaning in our language. Just about any word can make a good base, if you do enough with it.

If you like a certain "normal" name and really want to use it, write it down and change a letter or two to make it original. This often works out very well. For example, the main character of my project Alnetak Moon is names Ryen Zenglade. "Ryen" apparently comes from the name "Ryan", but the "a" had been changed to an "e". As a result, the overall pronunciation of the word has changed, and it now appears to be a nice original fantasy name. (Strangely, the name "Ryen" came from the other name technique, where I invented the name then wrote it down. However, it can easily be made into a good example of this strategy, so I stretched the truth a little.)

It's also easy to use words rather than names. A great way is to choose a word that fits your character. Let's consider a very large muscle-bound hero without much common sense. What would be a nice word to describe him? Probably something like "rock". Okay, let's take that and use it. Now that we have the word, we start by changing the vowels. This typically works because you'd want to keep the consonant sounds the same as the original word. Remember the "aura" of a word? The base word has an aura of its own, so we wouldn't want to change the consonant sounds, which give the word its connection to the character. So, we change the vowel. Perhaps we get "ruck". That needs more work, but let's say I don't want to change the consonants. Well, we can always add something to it. Throw a nice ending on "ruck and we get "ruckem". There we go! "Ruckem". It may not be the best name we could think of, but you can see it working, right? Hey, it's an example. It serves its purpose.

Many times you don't even have to change a base word. If it works, go with it. For example, the main character of Final Fantasy Seven is named Cloud Strife. Both of those words are real words, but the end result is a name that sounds very nice, doesn't it? Even though it's simply two words, it makes a reather nice name in the end. On a similar note, using "normal" names in a fantasy story can work really well. In R.A. Salvatore's The Cleric Quintet, among a group of character with names such as "Cadderly", "Kierkan", "Pikel", and "Danica", the names "Percival" and "Ivan" certainly seem to fit. They're both names used in our world today, but they fit really well among the fantasy names. Another good example of this is Brian Jacques Redwall. It's a classic fantasy story, but nearly all of the heroes have "normal" names. "Matthias", "Constance", "Basil" and "Mortimer" aren't common, but they certainly are names you would find in our world. The villains of the story have fantasy names, though, making for a nice balance and a clear distinction between the good guys and the bad guys.

Don't Forget Your Character

One rule goes above all others, however. Don't lose track of your character. If you find, as you write your story, that your character's name isn't fitting, don't change your character. Change the name. It's the actions and personality that makes a character, not the name.

This leads me into one final thing. Ugly names. Yes, it's true. Often when reading fantasy you will come across a name that you hate. When I first read the name "Drizzt" in the forward to Salvatore's Cleric Quintet, I was a bit repulsed. I spent quite a while trying to decide how exactly to make the "zzt" sound. However, I did love Salvator'es writing and went back to buy Drizzt's first adventure, The Icewind Dale Trilogy. For the first few chapters, the name bugged me. However, as I got more into the book, I fell in love with Drizzt. I found a way to pronounce the name (I say "Drist", whether it's right or not) and really got into the stories. More than ten Drizzt books later, he's perhaps my favorite fantasy character ever. I hated the name initially, but it really grew on me.

"Now what is this leading to?" you're wondering. Well, the point is that your character should always shine through. There's always a chance that someone will hate your character's name, no matter how much you like it. The best, if not only, way to get that person to like your character despite the name is to write the character. Don't write about the name. The character is far, far more important than the name you've thrown onto him. If I take a copy of Lord Of The Rings and change Frodo's name to "John", his character will still be the same.

A name may initilially attract a reader, and it may even be a description of the character through the word's aura. But remember that it's the character that really matters when it comes to the story.

Hmmm...

That wraps up this article. It turned out a lot longer than I expected, but I feel the end result is nice. Hopefully you'll apply this to your stories, games or whatever. If it didn't help, I'm sorry, but I'm sure it helps some people. Thanks for reading, and look forard to my next article!

Note: I've recently heard that a mainstream console game also uses the name Cless. I hate it when they do that to me.

[Jonah]

Thanks, Ev. I'm having trouble with names a bit. Sort of like a mid-write(ing)-crisis.