I think I might be unusual in that I tend to look at the texture of the name slightly more than the flavor of it. I look at the actual construction between phonetics and syllable beat. It has to flow right as much as have some sort of meaning.
That is, at least how it works in terms of characters. Places hold a totally different convention for me, largely based on actual real world connections I'm trying to evoke.

In general, I do this as well. I think the only time I've really broken it was with Kahr-ret-Taris, who I wanted to sound a bit more "exotic," as it were. Plus which, he's a pharaoh, so I thought it appropriate.

Since Tevish doesn't seem to be around, I'll say what he would probably say and mention that DFLang is a powerful tool if you've already got a culture you're drawing from. If you plug at least 100 words into it (though iirc it says 500 is preferable for better results) it will find patterns and recombine common syllables to make words that should vaguely sound like the language you plugged into it. I've not yet been able to use it because I am not given to drawing inspiration from real world cultures in general -- Innistrad and Theros don't interest me for being too similar to the real world already -- and I have not yet made a list of my own made-up names/terms that was large enough for the program to use. *stares sidelong again at the text file of 70 names* ¬_¬

Oh, wow, that's a neat tool. While the topic is MtG, does this mean I could input a bunch of names from Final Fantasy X (and X-2) and it would give me names that seem like they belong to Spirans?? O.o

At the end of the day, I think the single most important consideration is this: Pick names you like.

Doesn't matter how you do it, doesn't matter what you end up with, so long as you like it.

After all, you're going to have to read and write and think about those names for a long, long time. So I'd always err on the side of a name you like over something else which might have a neat derivation, or a secondary meaning, or a thematic implication, but which you don't actually care for.

My mini-essay on naming has already been linked, so here are some stories.

Illarion Vale is what I would call a "Syllable Salad" name -- it was picked for how it rolled off the tongue (or, at least, my tongue), and is entirely fantastic. His sister Kyara has a real if uncommon name also chosen primarily for its sound, bringing things back to the NW Europe vibe that ended up defining Illarion's home and relations.

Ophelia Lumara had a name chosen for meaningful reasons: Insanity and light, which are some of the defining traits of her (initial) arc. Ophelia also had the advantage of being a very pretty name for a character who is given a lot of stereotypically western-beautiful features.

Speaking of "pretty" names, Ellia has one. In early drafts she was Ohma (or Oma, I can't remember) which was meant to evoke age, mysticism, and mystery. When I read the manga of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, I decided that "Ohma" fell under the One Mario Limit, so mine would need a new name. Ellia, a somewhat normal name, was picked for two reasons: it was pretty-sounding, and with a character as vain as her it would stand to reason she'd go by a 'pretty' name, and it was alliterative with her title, "the Endbringer".

Rangrid is a mixed name. You see, she was supposed to be Randgrid (a proper Valkyrie name like all the other Aralheim Valkyries we see), but I kept mistyping it because that first d did not stick in my head. Eventually, I gave in and her name changed to the easier-to-english version.

Lia Xin was chosen for her cultural associations. Her name would be very easy to write, say, and remember but at the same time it would scream Chinese, which her calligraphy magic really ties in to.

Larasa Farleth and Morgan of Voor are an example of me coming up with names when sleep-deprived and on a time gun. They sound fine, but both the first names are (relatively) normal while their surnames... their surnames are mangled from a source -- beyond recognition, probably, but I looked at words and smooshed them into new words.

Amah ash-Shahid bint-Fahima al-Hazid is another culture focused name. Specifically, she has (very close to) a proper Arabic name. Only "Hazid" is invented (I had forgotten all about Gwafa), the rest of the parts and the entire structure are well within canon. Having the phoneme of Hazid (and the resultant al-Hazid) was of course a slight nod in the direction of Abdul Alhazred


If you'd like to hear about anyone else, ask and I may be able to provide, but most are like Illarion.

As a native Mandarin speaker, I can assure you that "Lia" does not sound Chinese in any way.

huh. To an uneducated western ear, it does. sorry, cky.

Yep. and while 100-500 control words is good, I've gotten some excellent results from 15-30

Ò_Ó
YOU MUST TELL ME HOW TO DO THAT.

I have tried plugging in my text file of names multiple times and it keeps telling me that I don't have enough words.

No offense taken. The reason it sounds wrong is there is no "lia" in Mandarin; "jia" and "xia" exist, as do "liao" and "li," but as it happens, there is no character that can be read as "lia." It's arbitrary and I wouldn't fault a non-Chinese speaker for getting it wrong.

You type in the individual words, separated by commas with no spaces, then hit enter to accept the list of words. "apple,bear,cat" would be enough for the program, but more is better to get a consistent result. I also don't know how it treats special characters. It might have a conniption at a hyphen.

For instance, I used LangCreate to generate a language file for Altrium (on Adrisar), using the character names I had devised for the PWG as control words. So the control words were...

Aluma,Tarina,Nadia,Sela,Terinus,Tor,Ronar,Solmn,Reyal,Garan,Halidar,Korvus,Madar,Chara,Vyn,Larasha,Nueh,Orin,Prestor,Logan,Avinar,Sodar,Lenmis,Laran,Lars

And the result was the following txt lang file

Which I used to do naming for West Wind (mostly cities -- While you can ignore the "meanings" of the output list and I often do, "Liron Kadus" (The city that travels ever westward) means "City West" and "Liron Sosta" (Altrium's capital) means "City Royal")

Everyone and everything in "In the Palace of the Emperor" was from the Great Crater lang file, created with control words native to the indian subcontinent...
ravan,indra,bhgabad,gita,veda,dharma,upanishad,pandava,arjuna,yoga,visada,sankhya,karma,jnana,sanyasa,dhyan,atmasanyam,vijana,aksara,brahma,raja,guhya,vibhuti,visvarupa,darsana,bhakti,ksetra,vibhaga,gunatraya,purusottama,daivasura,sampad,sraddhatraya,moksha

Generating




EDIT: Not that this should be a problem, but I recall now that at least one word must begin with a consonant, at least one word must end with a consonant, at least one word must begin with a vowel, and at least one word must end with a vowel. This could be satisfied in two words. So if by some strange occurrence you are missing an initial or terminal type of letter, it might also give you an error for that.

Nope, still not working. I'm not even getting results from copying those lists you just gave me. Are there different versions of DFLang or something, because the one I have apparently suuuuuuuucks. It keeps saying "Insufficient data in language files." and cancels the generation.

hm... did you delete language_DWARF.txt and/or language_SYM.txt perhaps (the ones that don't start in /bin)? I think it uses those to structure the output files, but I could be wrong

The best source I can find for the download is here

http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=7174

If you still have trouble I'll test it to see if I can get a new version straight from that source to work for me.

Right now I'm stumped on naming my Crimson Mage (where Chandra uses red spells if they're fiery, this guy uses spells if they're red, the flavor text for Crimson Mage does still heavily imply that there is a scattered amount of "color savvy" peoples in the multiverse) all there is to know about him atm is he uses red magic exclusively, he's a fun-loving trickster/prankster when unmotivated to do anything else so he is frequently company to devils or efreet, and that he is inspired by my good friend Matthew (Matt) whose main known heritage is Italian. Before someone says "Why not an Italian word/name that means red?" The Italian word for red is "Rosso" and the name I go by is Ross.