Naming!

 

Sundered has asked how people name things in their games and paracosms, and many have answered the summons with good and useable advice.

I get quite weird about names - I didn't use them in my fiction at all until quite recently (maybe in the last two years) and defaulted to the old anonymising technique of referring to characters by letters and job titles. You can see this legacy in Barony - there is I think exactly one (1) place name that is not simply descriptive (Rantine). I think it has something to do with my great hatred of canon and nailing specific things down too much.

Nonetheless I DO have names in Barony, and I DO have a process for generating them, it's just nearly wholly vibes-based and as such not really scalable like the methods that a phlox or a loch would use. I don't have the history or anthropology training and interest that many of the glogcrew do, but do I intuitively know the correct and incorrect answers to questions like 'What is this adventurer called? What would they be called is they came from the Southern Steppe or the Northern Hinterlands?'  

• In the first instance, I enjoy using simple and common names - in the Barony mostly period English names. There are lots of Thomas' and Rosemarys and Ellas and Charlies in the Barony.
• I like non-name names: Tuesday, Range-Finder, Zero, etc.
• I like plays on common names that sound vaguely derived from them - Selinae/Selanon, Pheltigor, Perin, Tinter, Bellagratis, Gloran, Greysin. This is by far the majority of names in Barony. I don't really have a method for them, I just try combinations and permutations until something fits. 
• I like stealing names wholesale: Executioner Smaug, Rom the Strangler, Beren (the useless camp follower), Ajax, whatever. Steal names. 
• I like throwing sci-fi sounds into this mix: Syrax, Tenser, Pentax, Cyclon, etc. etc.
• Fun titles. Dame the Vivisector!

This mix is the one I use for the Barony proper. It it modulated, by not wholly supplanted, as you move North and South. As you move South, they get a little more French/Welsh, and Arthurian sounding (one of the funs things about the current campaign has been formalising this with stuff like Ysolde and Gwynnfainn - I think the Southern Nomads use the very French Stuff, and the Northerners use more Welsh mixed in with Baronial classics. Lots of culture-mixing on the steppe borderlands). The sci-fi titles start sounding more like villains as well. You'd probably find Southern Mentats called shit like Drax Isabeau or Zardoz. 

As you move North, you get into citizen names - in the White City they all call themselves Citizen, and tend to have short, one and two syllable names attached, which are widely used. You're expected to be able to indicate who you're talking to using subtle context clues, and it's rude to refer to someone by name and allow ambiguity to remain. Citizen names are a little bit Italian/Spanish (Alfon, Pedar, Luza, Marin, Bucet, Primyn, Cresca) - in a reserved and tasteful way, unlike the bullshit fake Italian and Spanish names of the Ape Academics of University, who are called things like Don Remmazzio Delatonarre, or Don Simmoniaccaria Zanzidor.  

Bravos have one word hunting names, that they think sound tough: Shin, Stoker, Thorn, etc.

Mountaineers, angels, demons, and the clergy (and quite a few normal Baronials) use virtue names: Lucidity, Clarity, Deftness, Distinction, Targeter, Courage. 

Old Capital names are fake (and sometimes just lifted real) classical Greek and Roman: Kyton, Bacchon, Aximander, Penelope, etc. 

I think that's it! I once (actually quite recently) tried to write name lists for Barony and it made my eyes bleed - never again.