Names are important and have more power than we generally give them credit for. Just ask any demon or member of a faerie court. Well, don’t actually ask them because they tend to get a little persnickety when people try and find out their true names. Either way, making sure your NPCs have appropriate and evocative names is just as important as describing the setting. It goes hand-in-hand with creating the world your players are exploring and can be a deceptively effective way to bring the setting to life.
About a decade ago, I was looking to get back into gaming after a way-too-long dry spell. I’d found a group online and though the GM seemed a little odd, he had a lot of passion for the game and from what he said, had apparently put a great deal of work into the campaign world. Entering the game for the first time, my little Halfling cleric made sure to stop by the local temple to pay her respects. When asked what the name of the head priest was, the GM stared at me blankly for a moment before shrugging and saying, “Bob.” I quickly discovered that this was not a fluke. Pretty much every NPC, other than the main antagonist, was named Bob, Joe, or Joe-Bob. The female NPCs didn’t even warrant a name. Mind you, this was a high fantasy setting. There were several times I literally face-palmed during that game.
There were other issues with the game, but the name thing was the first neon sign that the GM’s understanding of a good game was very different from mine. Ultimately, it didn’t matter how much work he had put into creating the world or the main antagonist; every time he called an NPC something so real-world mundane and normal, and frankly careless, it ruined any hint of verisimilitude. If you’re making any attempt to draw your players into immersing themselves in your game world, failing to put any forethought into the names of your NPCs is probably going to undermine any other work you’ve done.
It is admittedly a tough job to come up with names for every single NPC the players meet through the course of a game, let alone a campaign. Some key NPCs can and should be planned out ahead of time, but the players are always, ALWAYS, going to take interest in some random side NPC you never expected them to care about. There’s a recurring ogre NPC in my Pathfinder game that took on a life of his own because he caught the attention of the players during the fight where they first met him. In those inescapable moments, it’s crucial to be able to come up with an appropriate name for the NPC on the fly.
Put some thought into names appropriate to your setting. Picking just the right names for your NPCs can really help evoke the feel you’re going for with any given aspect of your game. Coming up with styles of names for the various cultures in a game should be a standard part of world building, but I’ve often seen it overlooked or shuffled to the bottom of the pile. Settling on a good theme for the names of the NPCs in the various cities, towns, cultures, or races your players will encounter can help set the mood easier than any elaborate prose description of the group.
Research if you’re unsure of what names to use. Luckily, we live in the age of the Internet, so scads of research is at your fingertips. Whether you’re trying to find historically appropriate names for a Victorian Steam Punk game or ethereal sounding names for some ancient elven elders, a little searching can provide plenty of material. Whether you look at a baby name site or a random name generator, there’s plenty out there to provide names for you.
Keep a list of theme appropriate names. Once you’ve settled on a style of name for the NPCs in your game, you can name the NPCs you know will make an appearance, but also put together a list of names that you can pull from when your players want to know who some random generic NPC is. It’s especially crucial in games where the names are unusual, but even in a modern game it can be incredibly handy to have a list of names to pull from. Back in my college days, my Champions GM would consistently forget to name his villain’s henchmen and would default back to the same name every time. Tito really got around and must have had awesome health insurance considering how many times he got beat down.
Say the name out loud before presenting it to the players. It may sound dumb, but once you’ve decided on some names, say them out loud. This is especially true for non-traditional names. It can be very easy to find something that looks good written down but has problems when spoken aloud. This can be anything from confusing pronunciation to unintentionally sounding like another word. I recently and narrowly avoided this myself when running a game and had to quickly adjust a name to keep a PC’s cousin from sounding like a naughty word for a body part.
There’s so much more I could say on the subject of names, especially if you bring the wide variety of genres we play into the discussion. I’m going to save that for some additional articles, though, where I’ll give some more concrete examples on theme evocative names for different types of games.
What role have names played in some of your games? Have you ever had an experience where the lack of thought put into names killed the game, or the exact opposite, where it elevated it beyond what you expected?
Guess you’re not the only one who had that experience with Bob-Joe. 🙂 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE6kLeUG87s
Community aside, what I did when some players had to create characters or if I were improvising on the spot, was to let the players come up with names. This did a couple of things.
First of all, they set the bar. If they wanted silly names then I wouldn’t mind using them.
Second of all, just by doing this simple thing as create a name, you make the player(s) create a bond so when you pick a name for a NPC from the list, the player(s) will be invested from the start.
Finally, by using something that the player(s) has made up, you will make them feel appreciated. This goes with everything that the players does. If you use it, then you will acknowledge them. It’s an easy non-mechanical reward.
Having players create some NPCs ahead of time is a good way to get them invested in the game as well, in addition to taking some pressure off you as the GM when it comes to names. 🙂
I know as a player, I love it when NPCs from my background make an appearance or become part of the plot.
I agree with your post, though I have a different way of looking at it as well. For my campaigns I research words/names that are coherent/related for races/cities/cultures. This gives a sense of realism.
What I run into a lot is that my players forget names. When they make names into other names/words they tend to remember the names better. Sometimes I use the tactic to give names to NPC’s that sound like other names or words to make sure they remember the NPC!
Oh yes, the dreaded name replacement. I have one player who is particularly notorious for this, to the point it’s become a running joke in the group. In a supers game, they went up against a guy who called himself ‘Rhino’, but for some reason, my player couldn’t remember that and the character became known as ‘Hippo Boy’ from then on out.
I keep a list of game-appropriate names in each campaign notebook because I’m guilty of Bob-naming when I don’t have time to think. Behind the Name is a great site for real-world names from different cultures. And don’t overlook Google translate. I wanted an NPC named Spider, but didn’t want it obvious (like Arachna). I plugged ‘spider’ into Translate, then kept checking different languages until I found one I liked. And thus, Lord Aranya came to life.
That’s a good trick, finding a word in a different language to use. My only worry with that is getting a mistranslation and calling an NPC something ridiculous or inappropriate and not realizing it. No one may ever know, but it still worries me a little. 🙂
I’m a bit of a mythology buff and linguistic nerd, so I do a lot of studying/reading on other languages and cultures. And I pull a lot of names from them, as well as pepper dialogue with foreign phrases and words (googling phrase books can be quite useful).
Of course, I tend to obscure things and use mythology and languages the players aren’t as familiar with. Which led to one of my players commenting on my putting a lot of work into NPC names that they just don’t pick up on. I sort of disagree, as most of the names are pulled from memory, but sometimes it is disheartening when they miss the “obvious” ones like a child mage named Mahou or a dragon in disguise named after the Latin for gold.
As for worrying about getting it wrong, who cares. I mean, we take English names and words and distort them already, so why worry about doing the same with another language? No, Herstein is not proper German, but it’s a Dwarf name, so why would it be (apparently it’s an actual surname, now that I google it)? Or you can just straight up steal names from other languages, like Elke, Dagmar, and Ewald (again, names I’ve used for Dwarfs).
I too am guilty of bob-naming minor NPCs if I don’t do my research ahead of time. A name list is among my few “must haves” in even an improv heavy game.
It’s interesting to see which players do the same for their characters. Some settings have a good feel for character names (like Star Wars)–you can tell what fits and what’s funny or mundane.
If I haven’t prepped enough to have a list ahead of time, I’ll usually quickly scribble down a name or two in the margins of my notes before the players get to the NPC they’re headed towards. Having a list is a far better alternative, though.
As far as player names, I’ve had to learn to let go of my own prejudices and go with the flow. I’ll only put my foot down and say no if the name is completely ridiculous. The name where I finally learned to accept player choices was a supers game where a player made a materialistic minded telekinetic named ‘Iona Lott’.
Sometimes naming NPCs ahead of time doesn’t pan out.
Even the good Star Wars GMs make a mistake now and then.
For who can forget the Dark Lord “Ethan?” Ethan wasn’t the NPC’s actual name nor was it his cool sounding Sith name but once the players had dealt with a force wielding computer technician/spy named Ethan and had defeated him, none of that mattered. It was just plain old “Ethan” from that point on.
When the players laugh at an NPC name and the NPC isn’t designed to be comic relief, you know that you messed up. 🙂
I love the Story Games Name Project book for this. Before I owned a copy, I would snag lists of baby names from the internet and print it out. Having that at the table was very handy, you can even use Google to find French names or Egyptian names or whatever culture you are basing the names off.
I understand the blank look a GM gets when asked for the name of a unimportant merchant. But please don’t blank and just pull names from fantasy works into sci-fi. I don’t want to be in a Star Trek game and run across Neville McGonagall. Sorry, my suspension of disbelief crashed because you watched the Harry Potter movies this week.
I don’t know… if done right, I could see Neville McGonagall being a kickass engineer. “Sorry Captain, but a Slytherin has jammed up the left nacell!”
I do totally get what you’re saying, though, even if I can see a Neville working in engineering. It’s very important to keep genre in mind when naming characters, both as a player and as a GM.
Genre is important, but for me it is more about the name being strongly associated with something other than the game. Not to harp on my current GM, but we are playing a Star Wars game and ran across a character Sansa Lannister. I could almost here my suspension of disbelief breaking. Really? Sansa I could let slide. But Sansa Lannister, that was too much for me. The others in the group made similar comments.
That would make me cry, but for different reasons. Sansa already has it bad enough, no need to punish her with the Lannister name.
Then again, sometimes I think she’ll be the only one to survive the entire series, simply because she’s too unlucky to die.
In one of my friend’s games, there was a dragon NPC that he foolishly named ‘Smokey.’ This was corrupted into various incarnations, such as ‘Belchy,’ ‘Burpy,’ ‘Smelly,’ etc. He got very frustrated at us, but the more he got upset the funnier it seemed to be. I feel bad about it every time I think of it, but I still can’t help smiling. And this was a character that he had intentionally named and worked on.
In contrast, in my current wild west with monsters game, the party was dealing with a head rancher with a zombie problem. The party then requested a guide to lead them to the scenes of the recent attacks. I had not anticipated this. Thus was born ‘Jonny,’ named on the spur of the moment (no pun intended), and intended to just be a throw-away ranch-hand… but I never was able to get him away from the party. I’d either forget he was there, and combat would occur, whereupon the party would ask what he was doing, or it just wouldn’t make sense for him to leave (like when the zombies were surrounding the house the party was in).
Thus, Jonny developed into a likable and even useful character. An easy-going, former rustler, former gambler, former gunfighter, zombie-killer in training. Funny thing is, he’s a party favorite. And one of mine as well. All that from a throw-away name…
My Eberron game has an ogre like your Johnny. In one of their early fights, they fought a petty crook and his thugs, one of which was the ogre. They cast some sort of dispiriting spell on him and so I said he started to cry. That one act suddenly made the PCs interested in him. They bailed him out of jail and got him a job working as a bodyguard for their tavern-owning friend. Having to come up with his name on the spur of the moment, I called him ‘Debris’ because he thought it was pretty.
Ahhh, Names!
*smiles*
I tend to spend a lot of time creating character names when I play, but admittedly have spent less time with NPCs etc when running a game.
WAY back in the day, in the ~ahem~ mid 80’s I ran a game that started as a one-shot because the group’s current DM was busy. One thing led to another and we played that for probably 6+ months (of 2x/week 6-8+ hour sessions). I had Lot of NPCs to introduce, quickly, and wanted to create a feeling for them… So….. Many of them took names from comics and other places…. it helped Everyone keep track of who was who… (The Mage in the Wizard Academy in charge of Planar Travel was named Reed Richards. There were a few groans, but -everyone- (Especially me, even now!) remembered what He was in charge of. (not to mention that he was in absentia, much to the consternation of the party.
It was a period of life, where that sort of thing could be gotten away with. And I think it could be used in a more judicious fashion even now. But not often. And not… Bob…
Ah, those were the innocent days of gaming… Sometimes I miss them. Sometimes I want to punch the people I would have played with back then. 🙂
One trick to help players remember the names of important places and characters is to use a different initial consonant sound for each. For example, in my current campaign, I made the mistake of naming one NPC “Hester” and another one “Hannah” and the players, quite understandably, mix them up in discussion (they’ll hear Hester when I say Hannah and vice-versa).
Really you just need the names to sound distinct, but unique initial consonants are an easy way to do this. Plus if you use different starting letters you can just use their initials in your notes which lets you jot things down quicker.
That’s actually a really good point. Years ago, I started playing with a new group and made the mistake of naming my character something that started with an A. For the first two months of knowing that group, they couldn’t keep my name and y character’s name straight.
I have a low tolerance for silly names – especially if it’s on the part of the players. The problem with joke names in particular is that after the tenth or twelfth use, the joke is long gone. (Assuming there was a joke to begin with.) So I have a semi-official Naming Policy for players with the understanding that I don’t succumb to the Bob-syndrome. (As if!) So no profanity, obscenity, famous person, no names from books (eg, no Gandalf or Drizzt), and no geographic place names allowed.
The idea of being confronted with multiple NPCs called Bob or Sue is just horrible.
On a personal level, I am very strict about names, but I’ve made a concerted effort as a GM to not be quite as picky. I will veto certain names if they’re too silly, but they’ve got to be really way out there.
(I don’t know about the ban on geographic place names… then you’d lose out on Indiana Jones 🙂
I once played a game where the major villain was called Elbat.
Great points in both the article and the comments. Thanks!
I’m a philologist by training, so names are a fairly big deal for me. I happily wrack my brain for the perfect name for every important character I prep. Of course that would bear more fruit if I wasn’t too lazy to prep very much. Hence a number of systems for improvising names:
– take the first name that pops into my head, change the spelling and pronounce it in another language; this makes for memorable names that are still somewhat familiar.
– look around me for objects with text; take the last syllable of one for the beginning of the name, the first syllable of another for the end of the name, then fill in phonemes until it’s pronounceable.
– if I still end up with a generic, forgettable name I slap on an epithet or obvious nickname; this buys me enough time to come up with a reason for said name, which in turn adds background for the character.
– when naming settlements I usually just ask myself “What distinguishes this place from its neighbours?” This makes for realistic place names that bear a frame of reference with them.
Also, when running a campaign I find it useful to immerse myself in genre-related media in an attempt to internalize the settings aesthetic, with names as something of a priority. So for medieval fantasy it’s Tolkien, for cyberpunk music videos and porn.
I take my cyberpunk research seriously.