How do you come up with names?

[Ai-chan]

I've been thick in the weeds with coming up with names for characters, places, etc. for my fantasy world Treyidal.

Just curious, how do y'all come up with names? Do you do what I do most of the time and just smash sounds together, do you assemble some underlying rules? Or do you go full Tolkienesque conlang and make a language with grammar and history?

Allow Ai-chan to introduce you to one of the very first threads on scribblehub where Ai-chan provided the Syllabel-based Name Generator for free. Even Ai-chan uses this to this very day. Using this name generator, Ai-chan can get 205,962,976 combinations for 5 syllable names. Ai-chan wanted add the feature for meaningful Japanese and Chinese names as well, but since nobody was interested and Ai-chan didn't have need for it, Ai-chan didn't bother.

https://forum.scribblehub.com/threads/author-tools.22/

In the case of mermaid names, maybe

Yamaw
Yaewa
Agesa
Yosu
Iwo
Nayon
Chisu
Fuma

 

[bananapink]

G-Google... >//////<

 

[MoodyFoxCat]

I came up with mine through many things, generators, searching on the internet. Sometimes I get ones that just stuck out of sudden in my head as if it was from a memory, and it sounds well to hear too

 

[Kilolo]

i'm still waiting for someone to share a recommended name generator site, honestly.

 

[Milk.Milkan]

When dere s a need to write da name - me write something random.

 

[bigbear51]

i'm still waiting for someone to share a recommended name generator site, honestly.

Well, for anyone here writing a story with Japanese characters, like myself, I find this site to be pretty good. A random generator and I can click on the name to see the meaning if that matters to you. Personally for me, meaning has gotten less important the more I've written. As long as it sounds good and isn't too long since I'm going to be writing them over and over then it's good for me.

Japanese Name Generator | Over 1 Billion Name Combinations & 100 New Names Every Hour

Explore over 1 billion Japanese name combinations with kanji meanings, updated every hour with 100 new names. Customize by gender, initials, and specific text using the Japanese Name Generator at JapaneseNames.info.

japanese-names.info

 

[Daitengu]

i'm still waiting for someone to share a recommended name generator site, honestly.

Fantasy name generators. Names for all your fantasy characters.

Countless generators for countless names. Some say it's the best fantasy name generator site around, which is very humbling to hear.

www.fantasynamegenerators.com

Got everything from Zelda and Tolkien to Halo and Eve online.

Sure D&D might not have say, merfolk, but you can RNG up something similar with the DC Atlantians, or Zelda's Zora name generators.

 

[WasatchWind]

i'm still waiting for someone to share a recommended name generator site, honestly.

There is the site donjon that has name generators, as well as map generators and many other fun things.

 

[Saileri]

My mind just spews names like a generator but with filters and causality. Tell me the first letter and I'll get you tens of them. Add some backstory or something about the chara and we'll go even deeper.