Friday, January 14, 2011

The Naming of Toons

The naming of toons is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games...

I love making new toons, as I'm sure you're all aware. The single hardest part of creating a new toon is naming it. I thought maybe you folks out there might be interested in some of the resources I use for finding the perfect roleplay name.

The first stop is your typical baby name website. The one I prefer is Baby Names World, because you can search by origin or by meaning and filter by gender. I like Gaelic names for my Dwarves. I often try to come up with a meaning that is nature or element related for my Shamans and Druids. I'm rather fond of the names that come from different cultures as they are often quite unique (therefore typically not taken).

I go someplace entirely different if I'm making an Elf. Whether it be a Night Elf or a Blood Elf, I always go to The Arèthane Name Generating Page. Now, don't ask me exactly what Arèthane is or how I found it. I bumped into it years ago when I was still playing Neverwinter Nights, and strangely the website persists while many other name generator pages have fallen.

If I'm still stuck for a first name (I tend to get stuck on Draenei and Gnome names) or if I'm searching for a surname, I go to Az's World of Warcraft Name Generator. Sadly it has not been updated to include Worgen and Goblin names, but for the most part Worgen names are like Humans and Goblin names are like Gnomes.

By no means does the buck stop here. I'm sure there are a billion other resources out there. Heck, the standard Blizzard name generator in the character creation screen isn't half bad itself. Have fun naming your toons. And don't be like me and fall in love with names so that you have to make new alts just to use them.

2 comments:

  1. My character's names mean virtually zero to me.

    It does have to follow a few rules though...

    It has to be 4 letters long max.
    It has to start with a "S" or a "G".

    I'll admit. I have no soul.

    PS.

    All my table top characters had 3 letter names.

    and

    My 3 kids all have names that can be broken down into 3 letters. We did that on purpose cus we're weird or something.

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  2. As I posted earlier this week, we all have our quirks. I wouldn't say you have no soul. I've always thought it would be interesting to try to get a good 3 letter name in game, but it would be darn near impossible on a decently populated server. Yessir, I accept this challenge. Will post about it if I come up with one.

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