Who am I to deny not only a potential bandwagon, but the humble request of a respected contemporary to clarify my rambling? At 3 AM. On a Tuesday. When I have a meeting early in the morning.
Anyway, this is my general flow for how I come up with names for things. If you have any questions, feel free to hit me up at Phlox's.
Step 1. Write Down A Slush Pile of Names / Words / Sounds
This process, ideally, is something you continually keep up as a habit for many years. Whenever you see a name or a sound or a word in the wild and it resonates with you on any level, just write it down on your phone or something. Preferably a plain text list with a name on each line.
If you haven't already been keeping up with this habit or you just need a new big list now, just start by brainstorming any names you like off the top of your head. Don't get caught up on whether its from something or it's cringe or what it means or whatever, just rapid fire the sounds.
Salmacis. Bongo. Târgoviște. Fortissimo. Rom.
Once you hit a wall, you're good. If you really feel like you need more stuff to keep going, it's time to pull from outside yourself.
Crack open a book and start looking at random words. Or Wikipedia, or a map, or a foreign language book, or the dictionary, it doesn't matter. Just collect those sounds that sound the most sound to you.
(OPTIONAL) Step 2. Curate Your List(s)
I don't often do this unless either:
A). The later steps in this process begin to feel a bit stale. Burn it all down for new growth.
B). Whatever I'm working on calls for some very specific vibe / constraints.
I'm not really much for conlangs or what have you, but if you want specific patterns to emerge then it's a good time to curate your list somehow.
Maybe cull out any of the actual names, or only include words from the same family of languages, or only include words that end in a vowel, or only select the top 25 entries that speak to you. Whatever. Trim things up however makes sense to you in the moment.
You also could split things up into multiple lists for multiple different in-fiction groupings of names/cultures/etc if you so wish as well.
Step 3. It's Random Generation Time
Time to move them Markov Chains. NO AI.
I use a badly-coded random generator of my own design, but for a basic and approachable one you can keep local on your machine I would recommend just using this one.
Just download the name.html file, and open it up in your text or code editor of choice.
Locate the section on Line 24 under src_names, and delete the entire contents.
Now we need to take whatever list you want to load in, and format it such that in between the [ ] brackets it looks something like: 'Salmacis','Bongo','Târgoviște','Fortissimo','Rom'
If you wrote your list down as a big text document, you can just Ctrl + R and find and replace all of the line breaks (either \n or just the Enter key or something else depending on your document type) with the separators ( ',' ), and then clean up the first and last entries manually.
(If you wrote things down some other way, you're on your own for figuring out how best to process them words. You're smart though, you got this.)
Once you have your list ready, copy & paste it in and then save the .html file.
When you're done you should be able to open the .html file in your web browser of choice, and click Generate to get a handful of random names.
Of course, in general having more names in your starting list will result in more varied results. However, the more similar names/patterns you put in (e.g. Hal, Bal, Cal) the more likely that a name with that pattern is to occur.
After you let it rip, you're not done yet though. We've ground up our tripe into sausage, but now we need to season that and pack it into the casing.
Step 4. Babble Like an Infant
This is the most important step.
Babies don't babble for no reason. Babies babble for a purpose. They are practicing and learning a language and feeling it with their mouths. So an important part of getting things to feel right is to say them out loud, so you don't find yourself trying to pronounce Totro random generation or keyboard smashes or whatever on the fly. (Not to insult Totro though. It also has it's place and can be used instead with the mouth-feeling here if you so wish).
If a randomly generated name catches your eye, say it a few times. Maybe say it in different voices or as part of different sentences. Envision what you're naming as you say it. Really try it out.
Sometimes, a name will feel just a bit off as you say it.
For English speakers at least, we can try walking around the phonetic chart.
As you roll around a name in your mouth, you can try playing with the sounds. Let's use Scathrix as an example.
- Maybe you should drop a sound or two off someplace? Cathrix, Thrix, Scathri, Scax.
- There is kind of an unfortunate "Scat" at the start there. Maybe it'd be good to swap out one of the sounds with another in the same part of the mouth. Sgathrix, Zcathrix.
- Or swap it out wholesale with something else? Siathrix, Hathrix, Thathrix, Scazrix.
- Or maybe only one part of the name is resonating, like the "-thr-" part. Maybe it'd be good just to roll that around? Thrimble, Thraum, Yothr, Uthr, Athrid.
Or just throw it all out. After all, why waste the time? Hop along to another entry and roll that one around instead.
Whether something feels right or not is entirely up to your gut feeling at this point, but here's some various pointers and thoughts.
- Don't do this on the fly at the table. It's a momentum killer. I often have a list of generic ready-to-use names I prepare using this method in advance for any immediate needs that I pull from instead.
- Read this page on Bouba/kiki if you are not familiar. There's lots of innate patterns and vibes inherent to your culture and/or your language which colour how names feel, which are good to be aware of.
- Similarly, reflect on the classics! Popular names in fiction work for their reasons. Sometimes a Glup Shitto glups shitto.
- You are not beholden to having names fit the exact vibes of thing they are naming, so much as the name feeling right within the world. It's all a chance to get as functional with your world-building as you like.
- There are often more explicit patterns in names. Sometimes its to do with the masculine or the feminine, or with your position in society, or what have you. How does the culture or history of the setting play into this?
- Maybe biologically some creatures can only produce or make specific sounds in the first place. Lips and tongues vs beaks and tongues or suckers or other orifices.
- If every villain is named Scathrix and every innocent wittle puppy is named Bumby, things are blatant and legible but maybe they lack verisimilitude. It's your call at the end of the day.
- But then again sometimes in real life, people are born with names they hate. Or a name feels bad in the mouth. Or the name is just bad.
There's probably more I'm not thinking of but such is the nature of 3 AM writing.
This post by Ro Pham is licensed under CC BY 4.0, and may be used by anyone with proper attribution.
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