I can't think up a better source, but if you're trying to find ethnically Norse names only, the list will be much shorter. If you broaden your list to accept Saxon names from around 750-800AD, you'll have yourself a much larger and diverse list consisting of Anglian/Saxon/Norse/Danish varieties.

Not that anyone asked me, but I would suggest not relying too much on real-world Norse names. The Nords are already in danger of being seen as nothing more than 'fantasy vikings' and I think that's a shame because it's actually the more original and oddball bits of their lore that make them interesting. I'm sure the names of the Companions could be made to fit in with existing Nord naming conventions without just being a list of 500 Old Norse names.

Obviously, some of those names sound really cool, so by all means use them. But I see no problem with coming up with some more original names as well, maybe even incorporating some decidedly non-Norse elements (such as mixing in some Celtic, Finnish and Slavic influences).


Now there's a thing. What was the ancient Nord position on female warriors? Fall of the Snow Prince implies that Nord women fight alongside their menfolk on an apparently equal footing, but that seems to be contradicted in other sources which only mention male warriors. Not to mention a common Nord (and later Colovian) complaint about their elvish enemies is that they 'fight like girls'.

We have three basic possibilities here:

1) Complete equality. No distinction between male and female warriors. This is the standard D&D-esque fantasy trope, but it's a little boring (and probably unrealistic).

2) The Sarmatian model. Unmarried women fight alongside their menfolk, with little distinction between the genders, but are expected to 'settle down' and raise the kids once they are married (or at least once they get pregnant). Killing a foe in battle may be a necessary right of passage before they are allowed to marry (as with the historical Sarmatians). 'Little distinction' doesn't mean 'no distinction', of course: women make better archers than melee fighters, for example, due to differences in physical strength. The Sarmatians obviously realised this, since there is plenty of historical evidence for female horse-archers (a role which requires agility, marksmanship, riding skills, stamina and - most importantly - the ability to multitask, rather than brute strength), but none at all for female kontophoroi (heavy shock cavalry with two-handed lances - a role requiring considerable physical strength).

3) The Shield-Maiden model. A tiny handful of women fight, but they are considered a bit eccentric at best and shunned at worst. Particularly heroic women fighters become legendary (but probably only after they're safely dead and no longer in a position to upset the social status quo). This seems to have been the case for the historical Norse and other Germanic peoples, at least at certain times. It doesn't really fit with the Snow Prince, though, where we have a woman fighting with her daughter as a 'squire' (which implies a recognised military role for women, not just an abberation).

I'm actually shooting for Atmoran, and further limiting it to a warrior caste, so I'm not really trying to represent even the full range of pre-Nord names.



This would be a good description of the names in the OP list.



Well, this might refer to more than just weakness. Since women have different strengths, the males could be saying that the elves' strategy and tactics are closer to the women they've trained and fought alongside.



I think that some of the women who play D&D and TES are attracted to fantasy gaming because of this equality.



Your description of the Samaritan model sounds closest to how Wikipedia describes the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shieldmaiden. I think this is a very reasonable way to organize the fighting force.



In my research so far, I haven't really read in mythology that fighting women were considered eccentric or shunned, and I certainly wouldn't want to incorporate that bias into the basic structure of a fantasy world. It would be good to characterize certain people or groups, to set them off from the main society. But I don't think that Bethesda's sales would be helped by making any women characters or players feel a social stigma from the whole of the population.

It doesn't get any cooler than this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorfinn_Skullsplitter, after whom a modern beer in named, in-law of Eric Bloodaxe. Imagine the uncomfortable family dinners: "Who drynke me last meade!" "Oi, whut ov it?" *clash* *wrestle* *behead*

Have you already written all of this out, or is it an open project.

Yes, if you want to gather some more specifically Old Norse forms, especially ones with kennings, I'll definitely add them to the list. This one document is turning into more work than I thought, but at the end it will be sweet.

At the moment I'm wading through Wikipedia's insanely detailed Norse pages, collecting the best Old Norse names (especially ones with kennings), http://del.icio.us/spearthane the best parts of myths and history. The list of 530 in the OP can serve as a name list for modern Nords. Here's what I have so far for the Atmorans.

Aslaug, Aslaug kraka, Bj?rn, Bj?rn j?rns??a, Bj?rn, Bj?rn farmann, Brynhildr, Eir?kr, Eir?kr bl???x, Eysteinn, Eysteinn inn illr??i, Gormr, Gormr gamli, Gunnar, Gunnhildr, Gunnhildr konungam??ir, H?kon, Halfdan, Halfdan hvits?rk, H?lfdan svarti, Haraldr, Haraldr bl?t?nn, Haraldr gr?feldr, Haraldr h?rfagri, Helgi, Helgi hvassi, Herrau?r linnormr, Hlei?, Olaf, Ozur, Ragnarr, Ragnarr lo?br?k, Sigru?r, Sigur?r, Sigur?r hjort, Sigur?r ormr ? auga, Thyra, Thyra but, ??ra, ??ra borgarhj?rtr, ?orfinnr, ?orfinnr hausaklj?fr

Meant to be archaic, meant to be almost in another language, meant to be tricky and intricate to pronounce (for modern Nords), meant to start all over. I figure there's a reason they read these out every year, beyond hero worship, but only once a year: it's like performance art, meant to ask each of them by name to help and guide the current generations. (For my http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=820329 I have an even more ritualistic interpretation and backstory, where they got the idea and what they were mimicking, and it's tied up with all sorts of unpleasant things about the atrocity exhibition that was the Night of Tears and the purge of the Falmer. But I'm not going to ask anyone to type in a thorn.)

(Oh, and I do hope the new season of BSG inspires me with a deeper, darker set of stories than Bethesda could probably get away with publishing for the masses. The advantage of being noncommercial is that you're not losing money when some poor oversensitive soul gets offended. They just stop playing, which is better for both the writer and the reader.

I dont care what the given name is, one of them needs to have "The naked" as the moniker!


Or perhaps 'Witch Frozen' Just to satisfy the running gag stereotype.

Having the Witch-Queen of Whiterun be popular is the perfect setup to tuck this in somewhere. Except that Whiterun is high enough that the cold can kill, or at least turn you blue (eg, http://media.kpic.com/images/071219_karason_470.jpg, with http://media.kpic.com/images/071219_karason_northrup_470.jpg).

I wanted the spirits of the Nordic pantheon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_deities#The_Elder_Scrolls; http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tamriel:Pantheons) to move with the Five Hundred Companions, as they established their religion by force, so I made up http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/eieol/norol-BF-X.html kennings for each of the twelve. Their current names weren't Atmoran (ie, Old Norse) enough to fit in the list, and Tsun even sounds Akaviri.



Talos' early and later epithets.

There are some really good titles you can give them. IRL the Domesday book has a pletohra of cool names. some of my favorite are "the bastard", "the unending", "the blood axe", "the foul", "the simple", "finehair", "the plain"...etc. and as was said before The "AEth" names are more saxon than norse.

You could also expand the names to include Lap and Finn names...it'd give you a bit bigger pool to draw from.