Because we’re going to be down for a few hours, and when it comes back up a lot of us will be creating new toons, just wanted to make a thread on picking good fantasy character names. My wife will create a character and sit there for 45 minutes trying to think of a name, only to find it’s taken.
When WoW hardcore Classic came out and I realized I’d be making a lot of new characters, I started a list of good names, and that’s been my go-to for fantasy character names in WoW and other games. Heaven knows you’re going to use it if you’re a gamer!
I like to do searches on Google for topics that interest me and find rarely used terms that would make good names. I’ve found science and math has a fair number of interesting-sounding fantasy terms and names that are usually not taken yet.
Some that I’ve used in the past (and yes, help yourself) are:
Frustum (A cut out section of a pyramid)
Meniscus (Crescent-shaped)
Quanta (Packet of information)
Planck (Max Planck, Physicist)
Locations are great name sources, too. My long-running priest in Retail is Monongahela (A river ending here in Pittsburgh, PA). Pemberton, my first toon, was named after a street in Toledo, Ohio I walked down once.
Kind of depends on the race, right? So elves would not have physics names?
And a panda would be Chunlee or Fistdragon and not Chadcheeseburger.
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Ngl, I use fantasynamegenerators for the ideas of my names. Zihkari was a combination of parts of two “wow orc” names on the site.
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It’s too late now, but in the future what you can do is reserve a name by making a random character with the name you want and then deleting them as soon as the actual character you want becomes available.
As far as how to pick names then that is entirely based on the person. Some try for realistic names based on in game lore, pandaran are chinese inspired so something chinese for example.
Others attempt to use some version of their own name or at least an internet moniker.
Some try for something funny, that will get a laugh out of anyone that encounters them.
Finally, some pick a name that is a reference to something else they enjoy. Example being, someone’s character named Luffy is probably a one piece fan.
Making a list can be very helpful incase things you or you’re wife wants are taken.
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Same I’m terrible with making names
I already pre-made my panda monk name Pawcifist
I have some amazing names picked out
Chickenfriedrye - anther boomy
Jackiechan - monk
Thats what I did here.
Chinesepanda - some random panda class
Pandaxpress - Anther panda
My go-to for naming going back to original WoW has always been to use the handy Google translate and other translation sites to find English words translated into more obscure languages which sound good.
This name, for example, is the closest I can get without apostrophes available to the Cheyenne word for mountain lion, Nanoseh’hame. Mountain lion seemed like a good choice for a feral druid.
I’ve found that translating words connected to your class or other things about your intended character then translated into languages like Lithuanian or Hungarian or Xhosa or Swahili often sound better to the ear than just trying to come up with names on my own.
But my preferred hangout is always RP servers, so my expectation and choices in names can be different than for other people.
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