Sunday, 26 May 2024

Name Generator: Morpheme+Word+Epithet

Who are these fellas and what are their names? Groupe de sorciers by Lucas Roussel


Millions of names!


Each name is made of three parts. A made-up morpheme, an English word and an epithet or honorific. The names are drawn from lists I wrote; there are 335 morphemes, 345 words and 311 epithets/honorifics. I use words rather than another set of immediately meaningless morphemes for a few reasons: 

  • Words colour the name, if the name has ‘cruel’ in it, the name instantly gives a hint to the character (but sometimes it just gives an interesting sound) in a very pulpy way that should be embraced.  

  • Words make the name a little quicker to read, the brain picks out the second word; so ‘Zhongcried’ is that much quicker to read and then physically pronounce than a random collection of phonemes like ‘Ibquneche’.

  • Along with epithets, words add a touch more memorability to a name for your players. If you generate something alliterative or with some assonance, all the better!

Of course, not all characters should have a name that fits these conventions, though these  principles can be quite effective. If a name is generated and the 'epithet' is in brackets it is an honorific and should be read before the name, not after. For example 'Ozdog (Master)' should be read as Master Ozdog.


Thanks to Paper Elemental for their clever html generator generator which I used for this post and for the Archons March On blog whose many numerous generators inspired me to give it a go myself. 

Click Generate for your name:

Click for the raw lists






3 comments:

  1. This is a cool function for name generation, and you put so many words into it!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks. If anything I want to add even more, 1000 epithets would be more like it.

      Delete
  2. Spogrunt the Twice-Murdered - nice, there is a story behind this for sure. I mean, being Once-Murdered (and presumably keeping on existing) is already a sort of an achievement but somebody went for seconds.

    ReplyDelete