How do you choose your names for your character?

I hate coming up with names for characters, either for games or my fiction. For the games, I started out taking them wherever I liked one, often from anime. My character Teresa of the Faint Smile got her name from the anime Claymore. Saya from Blood and Blood+ For the past year or so I have been taking names from mythology and legends: Morrigan, Penthesilea, Valfreya, Kirke, Medea, Lilith, Sigrun, etc...

I like to use a name from in game lore, my current character is a Nord named Gudrun Hanin. The first name is taken from book I read -It is the name of a tank. My Breton assasin is called Jezebel Nightshade. I like to use names that have different meanings or sources than people think, like Bilbo,Shiva,or Spade-all three can mean Knife. If I have a warrior with red hair, they become Volen the Red. I will try to make the name match the race.

I usually use two sources;

1. My dog-eared copy of Dictionary of Mythology by Bergen Evans.

2. http://ebon.pyorre.net/

I just think of a name that I think sound like someone of that race would really have, such as Remanil for an altmer, Jonius Flarus for an imperial, etc.

Buffy's name is. . . complicated. There are several influences and forces at work:

1. Alliteration. Buffy the blond Bravilian Bosmeri bowgirl. We much preferred the sound of Buffy to, say, Bambi or Barbie. :tongue:

2. As a child, her parents had difficulty keeping clothes on her. She was always running around 'in the buff', as it were. Water seemed to make matters worse. In fact she was nearly thirteen before the red-face protests of her archery master, Daenlin, finally convinced her to be more discrete and not drop her clothes to go swimming in every stream they encountered while hunting. To this day, she pleads guilty to the refrain, 'Water makes her clothes fall off' - particularly near any waterfall. :twirl:

3. At the precise moment of sunrise that marked her birth, Buffy was touched by Azura's hand of fate as a Child of Dawn. Although she does not embrace the role, she is indeed one of few women with special abilities to help kill vampires. She is a Slayer, and her bow is so named. The influence of another Buffy with a vampire problem is inescapable.

4. In naming Buffy, I felt the name would be rather tongue-in-cheek and prevent me from taking her too seriously. In that regard. . . I fear I have failed miserably. :blush:


Buffy's precious black mare is named Superian. That was an easy one that Buffy came up with by simply combining the names of her own father and mother. Superior + Terry Ann = Superian.

http://www.silgrad.com/wbb2/thread.php?threadid=913

My characters name is Freydis.She is a Nord ShiledMaiden named after Eric the red's daughter,from Norse history.
In Norse history ShieldMaidens were woman who fought on the battlefield.
The name Freydis also follows well with my favorite Norse goddess Freya.

Another character I had was Thorson,a male Nord,who followed the teachings of Thor.
I find nameing Nords easy to do but the other races I have a difficult time with.

Rosalind was named for the main character from Shakespeare's As You Like It. Her horse, Virtue, was so named after the people at Weynon Priory kept telling her to "Go with virtue."

I do something Lore- Appropriate and then try to do some kind of play on my own name.

I'm not the most imaginative name-giver. A lot of the names I've given to ES characters are recycled from Diablo II characters I've made. I have an Imperial stealth archer named Rafflesia, which I suppose is appropriate since it's Latin-sounding, and it does happen to be the genus name for the Corpse Lilies indigenous to the East Indies. Not that she happened to stink like rotting flesh. I just liked the whole "death flower" idea. I also had a DII Amazon by that name. She was a nasty piece of work.

I give my Bretons Old English/Gaelic/Celtic names. I know they're supposed to have French sounding names, but I don't care. I had an early Breton battlemage named Ailith, Old English for "seasoned warrior". My current Breton is Eileen. It's a name with various, disputed origins; it could be derived from the Gaelic "Eibhilín", or "Aveline" from Normandy. Regardless, It's a name that I like which rolls off the tongue pleasantly.

I had an Altmer named Elowyn. It was a name I just pulled out of my nether regions because it sounded elfy. Turns out, people actually name their children Elowyn, now and then. It can be looked at as a derivative of "Elowen", which means Elm. I guess that's prettly elfy.

I either use a name from a book (example: Kerris Vinchis [from the Edge chronicles, Kerris Barkwater mixed with Vichix])
Or; I use a name from http://medieval.stormthecastle.com/medieval-names.htm for my Characters (Letholdus Gillygate)

i always try to include some cultural reference, plus i try to hint at the nature of the character - like for new vegas i had Buzzard A. Quantrill, or i had a sheriff type called Hank Diddley - a cross between Hank Williams and Bo Diddley

a lot of the time a char i'm making will remind me of someone real - recently i had a Jodie Foster and a Grace Jones.

recent oblivion names include - Ptolemaz the orc pilgrim, a play on Ptolemy because he's scientific and inquisitive, and Spook Hoss the redguard rogue, which is a name from the usual suspects, refering to a shady criminal character, and an argonian cartographer called Sits-in-Tree, which counts as a lore name i guess, and a breton healer called Constance Paine, which is me being lazy.

My currents character's name is Elberond, a Bosmer name I got from the http://www.tamriel-rebuilt.org/index.php?p=modding_data%2Fngen&race=D_ELF&gender=male&count=10. I chose that particular name because it sounds a lot like 'Elrond', a character from Lord of the Rings. I always liked the name 'Elrond' and was delighted to find one similar for a Bosmer.

One of my Altmer mages is named Kelendiil. I chose that one because it seems elven and sounds like Elendil, another Lord of the Rings character.

My female Bosmer Assassin is named Drehdwyn. It's a combination of Drehd (because pronounced like Dread) and wyn (because wen is a fairly common ending in Bosmer names and I wanted to put a slight twist on it).

My Dunmer War Mage (custom class) is named Dreloth Vandaal. I got it the Tamriel Rebuilt Name Generator.

I have a book of character names. Categorised by race. I do this because I svck at coming up with names, and I want them to be lore correct. So any name I think of that works, I write it down.

I quite often take names from mythology, for example, I had a Nordic Ranger called Skadi (naturally, a female).

Helena Aurelie is a special case. Helena is a recurring theme that the band Kamelot uses, and I'm quite a fan. Plus, I think it's an absolutely beautiful name. Aurelie is a cannibalisation of aurora.

Edit: Oh, and I quite often take names from places that influence me. For example, Chani Belavyn. Chani is Paul Atreides' lover in Dune, one of my favourite books of all time.

Things like that

Every now and then I play online games and that has forced me to come up with a list of names that I like. After several years I have about ten tried-and-true names that I love. It's a relatively quick and painless matter nowadays to select the most appropriate name from that list.

But before I got to that point that I suffered agonies. I have a spiral notebook around here somewhere that is filled with as many as a thousand potential names that I rejected before gradually settling on the short list I draw from now.

I don′t think I did really. One day in Bruma outside the Mages Guild my dear Dunmer suddenly told me what he was called. As some of you know, it′s Lothran. He says he kept it a secret from me all this time to see if I was truly worthy to know.

I guess I was :happy:

>.< What did you refer to him as before he told you?

This is embarrassing, he actually had my name. My real name that is, not mirocu. I thought he could have that until he told me his true name as he refused all my other suggestions anyway.

I never could imagine it would take nearly three and a half year before he considered me worthy. But now we have truly found each other :hugs:

It's not embarassing! Three and a half years? Damn, Lothran evidently doesn't trust terribly easily. Or, he waits til he's 100% sure of something.

In that regard, he′s my twin :wink_smile:
And you know he′s a Dunmer and they′re not really known to trust outsiders like me :thumbsup:

Haha, it's easy to see why you get along so well then!
Yes, of course He wouldn't be a true Dunmer if he poured his heart out to you the moment you met.

Lissa's name is an abreviation.
Her full name is Maelissa Oleta Cristenn
Her first name is a tradition. All the women of Lissa's fathers family have name starting with Mae, Which Lissa hates.
Her middle name is after her mother, who wanted to put HER mark on Lissa's name.

i svck at names, i used to just take names from books, change a few letters. Places from some high fatasy sound like people names,

Yes, but once you worm your way into Lothran's heart, he's a treasure. Buffy knows. ^_^



That sooo explains Lissa's older sister's name, Maelona!