How do y'all make up "fantasy names?"

[Aysegulyildiz@]

How do y'all make up "fantasy names?" like seriously. Some sounds cool and some ends up being too goofy.
Mind you, I'm NEW to the fantasy world, so I just do normal names.
I write medieval romance/fiction. So, most of my words are of Latin origin--yet they aren't as "Magical" or doesn't really give of that vibe.
So, if anyone has any suggestions, would love to hear it!

 

[pmmg]

My method usually produces a name fairly quickly for me.

I want the names in my story to sound like they have a cultural aspect to them. The easy way to do this was to decide the main culture would have french sounding names, and the another would have Scandinavian ones. But I went further and made some of my own personal rules for it. So, one nation has mostly hard sounds, and another makes heavy use of the vowel U.

When I am stuck, I just go to a name generator and look at some till my brain can morph some of it into something I might use.

For all the main characters, I have names that I spent some effort on. For the minor characters, I might use the name generator ones (with small changes).

I like this one:
Fantasy Name Generator

Sounds complex, but thats how I do it.

 

[Aysegulyildiz@]

Thanks!!

 

[Naruzeldamaster]

How do y'all make up "fantasy names?" like seriously. Some sounds cool and some ends up being too goofy.
Mind you, I'm NEW to the fantasy world, so I just do normal names.
I write medieval romance/fiction. So, most of my words are of Latin origin--yet they aren't as "Magical" or doesn't really give of that vibe.
So, if anyone has any suggestions, would love to hear it!

Remember the golden rule, it's not a fantasy world if there's not at least one character with a 'normal' sounding name lol
(it's not an actual rule but a lot of video games do it)
The realistic named character can be something like bob or jill, but it also can be something more fantasy-leaning like Elliot

A lot of my characters have fantasy names but the main protagonist is just Sinbad, yup, Sinbad, no relation to the mythological character at all.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

I like this one:
Fantasy Name Generator

Sounds complex, but thats how I do it.

That's one of my favs, too. I like to mess around with the generators and then use those names as a foundation to build the cultures on. at least in our Epic Fantasy stuff. Urban Fantasy also gets the generator treatment, but only sometimes.

This is another fav of mine.
Fantasy Name Generator

 

[cornu aspersum]

Traditionally, I just think of random syllables and mush them around until I get something I l like. More recently, I've given more thought to the culture of where those names are from (sometimes borrowing from real-world naming styles), and basing the names off of them, to make the world feel more alive.

I'm not linguist nor am I a historian, so I can't promise anything realistic, but I feel like my choices have been sound so far.

 

[JBCrowson]

Like some of the above I use real world names as seeds for my fantasy names, and use different RW locations for the seed for different cultures. Really old names like some of the gods, demons, I will start with a description of a major feature of the entity, then translate that into Scottish or Irish gaelic, so the dragon queen is literally "lady with a tail of scales" Beanleheiraballscalai, usually referred to as Ban or The Queen when she's not there, 'cos no-one is saying all that out loud.
For names in one city I went on Google maps and picked out a bunch of names of geographic features I liked, then tweaked them to scan the way I wanted them to.

 

[Diana Silver]

My number one advice would always be: don't go overboard. Short and catchy trumps long and obtuse. The important bit is who they are, not what they're called.

As a reader, if I could chose between a story about Jill Fint or one about Averzaphyris Mortaryon, I'm going with Jill ten out of ten times. Leaves more of my brain cells free to focus on the actual story I'm trying to follow ^.^

Maybe that's just me tho.

 

[LordFalco]

If you want one guaranteed to be unique, take words that are unusual to start with and rearrange them. Example: my mythical kingdom of Eolca comes from "eosinophil", a cell type encountered in lab work.

 

[pmmg]

I can safely say none of my names come from eosinophil.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

If you want one guaranteed to be unique, take words that are unusual to start with and rearrange them. Example: my mythical kingdom of Eolca comes from "eosinophil", a cell type encountered in lab work.

You won't like this, but I scanned "Eolca" as "Cloaca," and I'm not even dyslexic.

Not just in reply to this, but Diana is absolutely right. There's a line, a line hard to see sometimes, where we pass from Fantasy Names to Holy Fantasy Names, Batman! That line is often marked by a plethora of apostrophes and sounds that clash rather than flow, making them hard to remember.

Raise your hands if you ever read Mercedes Lackey's Last Herald Mage trilogy. Did anyone else think "Tylendel" was pronounced "Tylenol?" My wife, who is dyslexic, still does it. So, besides the brief spat of insanity where I decided that Irish names would be a feature in our series and so enslaved myself to the Alt Codes, we try to keep the fantasy names simple and with sounds that reflect the general sort of cultures that would reasonably likely to reflect their environments, but still as simple as we can manage. For example, my little sister's name is Meaghan. That's about as far as I'm willing to push on complication. My last name is Vinck. This is not a common name in the United States, and generally 3/4 of the people who attempt it will flub it. It's only five letters, but I guess it reads a bit discordant.

 

[Diana Silver]

LOL
Do you have any work in progress?

What a bizar reaction. As a first post on the forum, no less... Are you well?

 

[Demesnedenoir]

With my brain. It just does this shit. Readers have asked me several times how I make names and languages and I never have a real answer.

 

[Mad Swede]

I use my knowledge of languages as the basis for naming characters and places. In your case I'd look up names from the period and use those as a basis.