Interview: Finding Hope And Healing In Tranquil Forests With David Anthony Hall

So I'm trying to write a fantasy story, and I'm a bit hung up on one element of world-building. Language and names. I admit I'm not sure how one goes about coming up with fairly usual sounding names that aren't either a jumble of random sounds or just names from real-world languages. Since I'm not trying to write something with the scope of Lord Of The Rings I obviously don't need to invent new languages, but I'm still unsure of how to proceed. What would you recommend?

Oh man I HEAR you I am shit at names. Total shit at names. I’ve been referring to the names in my Nano story as ‘bullshit fantasy crap’ because I’m sure they will have to be tweaked later. If names are holding you back from the for-real writing stage, make a note that they’ll be changed later and charge on.

In most real world cultures, names have a very important context and are very carefully chosen. Even without that context, most parents spend a great deal of time choosing names for their kids. If you want a fantasy culture that is reflective of Chinese culture, for example, you have to research on what goes into naming children in that culture. Your naming conventions in your story are going to reflect your worldbuilding. Is there a particular religion that’s predominate? Names could stem from that. Or they could reflect on where someone is from, or a syllable is added to show which generation they were born in.

That’s all good and well, but actually creating names from scratch is the hard part. If you’re not a master at creating fantasy foreign languages and names, here are my recommendations

Go for nice, pronounceable sounds. Don’t smash syllables together randomly in order to make it look cool, say it out loud to be sure it’s actually something people would use. Xisdhijbur is lazy keyboard smashing, try to avoid it. If you’re at a true loss, pick a real name (Maria) and change it until it seems both different and believable (Maerai, for example).

Steal blatantly from real life. If you want to get in depth, look at a list of the most common or popular names in different languages and see what they have in common (how many syllables, how common are certain vowels, etc). You can make up different cultures based on these different naming trends.

Avoid excessive grammar in names. There are real languages that use pausing and glottal stops (often indicated by ‘), but please don’t make names that look like Ti’pi’la’b’un. It looks silly and sounds even sillier. If you’re not confident you can use this in a way that would make sense in a language, I would avoid them.

Consider nicknames. A lot of American nicknames favor the ‘ee’ sound - Charlie, Christy, Katie, etc. In Chinese, the most common way to make a nickname is to repeat a syllable - Mingming, Pingping, Xiaoxiao, etc. Anastasia can become Ana, and so forth. If your characters have long, grand names, a nickname is often going to be used (depending on their personality). One thing I’ve almost never seen in fantasy is the tendency of people to often share a common name. This is a good way to do that.

For more:

The Art of Fantasy Names

What’s in a Name?

How to Chose Names for Fantasy Fictional Characters

Avoiding ‘Normal’ Names

Fantasy Writing Guide

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