[Lord Aquaman]

Whenever I read a sword/sorcery epic or see sword/sorcery themed film I feel like there are hundreds of complicated or names-that-don't-really-exist (LOTR comes to mind). In writing drafts of sword/sorcery stories, I feel obligated to come up with similar unusual names (whether it's conjoining two other words or spelling a word backwards or whatever...). I'd like to ask if anyone has any further suggestions or advice on the subject (like whether it would be alright to just go with old names you don't hear much anymore like Thadius).

[civilian_number_two]

Whatever you name your folks, they're going to evoke some Earth imagery, and people will latchon to that as they read. Tolkien went with Germanic naming for all of his humans, and faux-English for the Hobbits. It woiuld be a bad idea to mix genres too much, unless you're using characters from different lands. For example, it would be a bad idea to have twin brothers Castor and Teppopachdi.

Place names should vaguely match people names.

That's all I got.

[barend]

i've gone for made up names in my book.
but there is a pattern to names and places... and races

[J m HofMarN]

Writing contemporary fiction I don't really have to worry too much about most names, but for the ancient vampires that tends to create a problem. I do a bit of research to the time when they'd have been born to try to flesh out their lives and get names for them, and then sometimes they'll even modernize, for instance Shamhael chaning his name to Samuel.

[SimeSublime]

My method for naming characters in CRPG's I play is to bang my head on the keyboard until something legible comes out. So far, all I've gotten is Ptaa.

[Madam Corvax]

That's a very good questions.

When I wrote my very early attempts at fantasy ( I was about 12 then) I got a map of Ireland with names in Gaelic. Nobdy knew how to pronounce them (example: Baile Atha Cliath is Dublin) and that was the whole point! the readers were imediately impressed. I can't remember many of the names I came up with but one or two were really lovely - Cathair Na Mar or Athlone.

As it happened, one Polish fantasy writer, hugely popular in Poland now, had similar idea - he simply stole the names from lyrics of one Irish band called Clannad. Thus, his books feature guys who are called Eist Tuirseach and Crach an Craite.

Or you can get a perfectly ordinary name and add a lot of vowels and unnecessary consonants to make it look exotic - like instead of Kylie you'll have Kayleigh, instead of Sherwood you'll get Shearrawead etc.

And Civ is right about mixing genres too much. If you go for the celtic look it's a bad idea to have a name like Aellirean Smith or Alec Faoilitiarna.

If you want, you can root for names in foreign languages, surely they look exotic enough, like some names in Polish. They are not so well known like some Russian names - Tatiana, Natasha etc. To may amazement I even saw that one character in Startrek DS 9 is called Jadzia Dax. I wonder if it was deliberate, because Jadzia is a diminuitive from of a Polish name Jadwiga, which is equivalent of the Latin Hedwig.

[Laughlyn]

I'm just plain lazy

http://www.seventhsa...gens/namer.html

Keep clicking until you find something you like.