Need Help with Names for a Game

[Drasha]

So i am making my own game the only problem i am having right now is coming up with names. I need names for people and places the game is based of the four elements earth fire water and air so names that link to them are a plus. there are going to be 4 major city states and i want them each to name people and places in a similar manner i just don't know how i want to go about this. I have been thinking about copying real nations way of naming things but am not sure if i want to go that route if any one has some advice or sources to help me that would be wonderful.

[depricated]

Well you could always use the Fire Nation, Water Tribe, Earth Kingdom and oh wait

Ok for real though here's my advice if you want to go real deep with it.

Grab a couple books on Latin and Greek. Look up words for the elements. Then, choose a language that you feel reflects the imagery you want for each state. Perhaps the cold and ice-hard water people would bring to mind a Slavic people, so a book on Russian. Or maybe you think of them more as living on in tropic islands, and could incorporate some jamaican slang. Fit the words together as they sound good, they don't have to be real after all.

This will pull from a common western ancestry to conjure names similar to what we've known for centuries, but incorporate just enough to be unique.

[jioan]

Pick a country that doesn't speak English. Then all you have to do is look up words from that language and names from that country.

[Drasha]

Well you could always use the Fire Nation, Water Tribe, Earth Kingdom and oh wait

Ok for real though here's my advice if you want to go real deep with it.

Grab a couple books on Latin and Greek. Look up words for the elements. Then, choose a language that you feel reflects the imagery you want for each state. Perhaps the cold and ice-hard water people would bring to mind a Slavic people, so a book on Russian. Or maybe you think of them more as living on in tropic islands, and could incorporate some jamaican slang. Fit the words together as they sound good, they don't have to be real after all.

This will pull from a common western ancestry to conjure names similar to what we've known for centuries, but incorporate just enough to be unique.

The citys are a little more complex then being based of a single element each one is a combination of 3 elements for example one of them is Fire Water and Air its a industrial city that sits in the clouds and is ruled by a mage council responsible for keeping it from falling into the sea. In side is 3 factions based of of two elements out of the 3 that make up the city and they fight over control of the citys government. All 4 citys are technically part of one nation and at peace but they still fight with each other politically and openly but just short of any thing that would cause open war.

[depricated]

So mesh elements together in much the same way.

[Drasha]

I don't fallow your line of thought.

[depricated]

Ok well, for example. . . this is just the method

Lets say you have an arctic village of tribal barbarians(everyone has the barbarians from the frozen north right)

So, first off, lets go off-beat with the cliche and instead of making them Slavic lets make them Spanish. And lets say they're proud and skilled macemen.

They use a specialty mace of their own ancestral design The Hot-Ice Mace(Metal(Earth) bound with Ice and Fire spirits) Hieleña Maza, (from Hielo for Ice and Leña for Firewood, and Maza for Mace)

But that's a little too obvious, so we take off just a little bit to make it more "Fantasy" - it's a Hielen Maz. Their warriors are Hielen Mazador(stealing the end of Conquistador) or in plural, Mazadori(adding in the Latin pluralization)

So. . . who are they? Well what's the name of their Kingdom? What do they value? Well, everyone loves gold. So lets tag the word Oro(gold) and work that in. What other traits do they have? Perhaps they also wear lots of furs - and that's their other value. So lets tag the word Piel(Fur). Then there's the word for Nation: Pueblo. Well, that reminds me of Mexico more than Spain, and we're going for Spaniards. So lets hack that up a little bit. Oro - Piel - Pueblo. Perhaps the Puelori?

So, the Puelori are proud of their Mazadori who use the Hielen Maz. It's a little research but it works out.

[Itzal]

and thus depricated becomes my new hero... When I dm and I'm coming up with name i usually sit there for about half and hour trying to come up with something before giving up and pulling something outta my butt BP

[depricated]

You're welcome to use any of that as you please.

This method is sort of what I suspect 99% of Console RPG Script Writers use.

[chrono]

Well, I'm not sure how constructive this is, but I've always hated "telltale" names because they're way too blatant and a lot of the time give the impression to be made for players/users with subpar intelligence. If your bad guy is named Mordred or the prince is named Valorian this already sounds like a subjective game that the GM will railroad you down and strip all creativity in favor of preconceived morality. There's few more depressing things than knowing you're the good guy and there's little you can do about it. Now depricated's idea is definitely on the right track, since now only the people with superior Spanish will actually get the "hidden" theme. So in effect you can pick a language that's obscure enough so there's a snowball's chance in hell to get a player who speaks it.

I'm not sure how important it is for you to set a theme for each city, but isn't there a better way than names? After all, isn't a name what you get _before_ you're born and have a chance to actually influence who you are (the same goes for cities - they get real reputation and traditions long after they're named)? Personally I get most my character names off random name generation sites (and I usually regret giving them names that I like because I associate them with something entirely different, like other kickass characters). And I positively feel like beating characters like Magico The Magnificent of the Firewielder tribe with the blunt end of a battleaxe until they're nice and squishy.

[Raigne]

If you want to go the route of scouring name generators, here's a couple resources:

Research:
http://www.behindthename.com/

Names organized by location and time period:
http://www.gaminggeeks.org/Resources/KateMonk/

Generators:
http://www.seventhsanctum.com/
http://nine.frenchboys.net/


I use the first two quite heavily, and the last two only when I'm looking for names for throw-away characters, flavor text, etc.

[Drasha]

http://www.gaminggeeks.org/Resources/KateMonk/

Thank you so much i love it

this is a link to the original since the other one is broken in some places.
http://tekeli.li/onomastikon/

[Raigne]

The original's been down quite a few times in the past when I've wanted to use it. I had the one I linked bookmarked forever until it was down too, for almost a week. I have since archived the whole file tree so I don't have to deal with it breaking, and keep it on my hard drive. Thanks for the thought, though

[Drasha]

quick question did you do that manually or is there a program for that?

[Raigne]

I used an archiving program.

[Itzal]

well actually I've been using behind the name for character names for a while but I never thought of doing for my locations the same thing I do for my characters