Creating Characters: What's In A Name?

"My name is growing all the time, and I've lived a very long, long time; so my name is like a story."

          -Treebeard, The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien

I've been told that I'm very good at coming up with names. Having given names to dozens of MMO characters, and more than three times as many characters, creatures, and places I have written about -- I suppose that's a fair statement. This entry is a (generous) handful of my favorite character names and how I came up with them.


Let me be clear about one thing right off the bat: I borrow words and names and alter them to become my own, to better represent an image I have in my head. Often, when it comes to a person I am creating, the personality and background come first and in the course of knitting together their story a name steps forth and declares itself. You don't have to love these characters I'm sharing. I only want to help inspire others to be more confident in their naming of things!

Sabelle Jadewing

Currently, Sab is a level 88 Lore-master on LOTRO's Arkenstone server in the Legacy of Narsilion kinship. Once upon a time, she was a roleplay character in the old AOL chat rooms. She was the only child of a wealthy merchant and his wife. The wife died a grisly death, and everyone assumed it was some kind of vengeance upon the merchant. The merchant's mother-in-law discovered that the merchant had killed his wife in a fit of jealousy, not wishing other men to have her or even look at her. She paid a witch-woman for a spell to curse the merchant and laid a trap in his home. Unfortunately, it was her granddaughter, Sabelle, who tripped the trap and was cursed. She was transformed into a raven with green wings. Her story continued as her grandmother helped her find a cure for the curse (the witch-woman had vanished) far away from the merchant. Sabelle forgave her grandmother and vowed some kind of vengeance against her father. In the end, she wasn't able to completely rid herself of the curse but was able to compromise with having to shapeshift into the raven form at night. I was inspired to make Sabelle into a LOTRO character when I discovered the Raven Festival Mask and Cloak of the Raven in the Fall Festival.

Dallidaur Silverdagger

Currently, Dall is a level 40 Minstrel on LOTRO's Arkenstone server in the Legacy of Narsilion kinship. Once upon a time, he too was a roleplay character in the old AOL chat rooms, but didn't get much time to grow. He was a thief who developed a conscience and switched to the bardic profession. I repurposed him for a would-be novel about my first roleplay character, Liana. I set him up as her first companion on her quest who would be obliged to help her for various reasons and serve as a one-sided love interest. That project has been on hold for a while, so when I decided I wanted to try out the Minstrel class in LOTRO I felt Dall was the best persona to use.

Kantri

Currently, Kantri exists as four characters. She is primarily my main character on RIFT's Faeblight server and is the leader of the Spectral Gryphon guild as a level 67 Rogue (Blade Dancer build). She is the character I was playing when I met my husband in the game! I was both filling an officer role and leading the roleplay for a previous guild, but I also had a complex personal story for her that involved her not being an Ascended like everyone else, and there being Lords of Fire that wanted her dead. She did eventually die (admittedly so I could sever an in-game attachment that was off the rails) and was reborn as a true Ascended. Not long after, my not-yet-husband and I departed from that guild and started up Spectral Gryphon.

I also created a Primalist Kantri on another RIFT server who is a guild of one, but I actually can't even remember what server I put her on. I think she's only a level 12? I also have two Kantris in LOTRO, both of whom are elves, though the first is a level 38 Warden on Arkenstone, and the other is a level 16 Minstrel on Landroval who takes third place to two other Minstrels. The name 'Kantri' is borrowed from a book series, though it wasn't a person's name. It was the race name from Elizabeth Kerner's Kolmar series (beginning with "Song in the Silence") for the dragons. Yep. I named my character after dragons as a species.

Gedri Gilthilt

Like Kantri, Gedri is taken from Elizabeth Kerner's Kolmar series -- it's the race name for humans. It sounded like a good name for a dwarf in LOTRO -- and he currently exists on the Arkenstone server as a level 31 Champion. Going with that, I thought about what would be a fitting surname and decided I wanted some alliteration. I had made Gedri into a weaponsmith for his craft vocation, so I thought of "gilding" and weapons. This became "Gildhilt" at first, and then I decided the rhyming thing would really secure the sound and changed it to "Gilthilt."

Fylgja (Lostigr)

The original Fylgja exists on RIFT's Faeblight server. I created her as a roleplay character to fulfill a purpose in a storyline I was heading up for the guild I was in. She is a level 65 Mage (Leafblade build) and my secondary character leading the Spectral Gryphon guild. She is a dark-skinned kelari with vibrant colors, and personality-wise she is an intellectual type obsessed with planar elements. I came up with her name by thumbing through a thick book I own called The Element Encyclopedia of Magical Creatures. I basically looked for a word that looked like a great name, and then looked at the descriptions to see if it would fit my theme. In Norse mythology, a Fylgja is an animal spirit that accompanies the soul of a person. The name is also used of the 'fetch' or spiritual-double of a person. Since my Fylgja character was meant to be a messenger and helper, I went with it.

There are 3 other Fylgjas among my characters. My second one is a Norn character in Guild Wars 2 (because they are a very Norse-based race), with the last name of Lostigr. My third is a level 59 Elf Rune-keeper on Arkenstone in LOTRO, and the fourth is a level 120 Elf Guardian on Landroval in LOTRO. The LOTRO variations don't get a lot of game time for various reasons. The Rune-keeper is actually the character that helped me come to love the Rune-keeper class.

Yfandia/Yfandiel Duskrose

I shamelessly morphed a name from Mercedes Lackey here. One of the Heralds of Valdemar, Vanyel was known as the Last Herald-Mage, and his Companion (a magical spirit familiar in horse form, for lack of a better explanation) was named Yfandes. Yfandes was spunky and didn't take lip from anyone! So naturally she was a character I thought of when I made a rough-and-tough Bahmi Warrior in RIFT -- I just tweaked the name a smidge. I used the name again for Elf Guardians on both Arkenstone and Landroval, but altered it to Yfandiel to sound more elven.

Birle Harmon

This one is three-part. The first Birle was a Mage on RIFT's Faeblight server, and I had intended to use her to learn how to tank. I leveled her up a bit, but never did learn the tank build. The second Birle is a Devoted Cleric in the Neverwinter MMO who wasn't played much. And Birle is also my main character on LOTRO's Landroval server. I wanted a short, simple name to be my main character, and one of my favorite fantasy characters was Birle from "On Fortune's Wheel" by Cynthia Voigt (which I've just learned has been renamed to "Tale of Birle"). She explains at one point in the book that she was named for the stone, beryl -- which is an important type of stone in Middle-earth lore. She saves a runaway prince from certain death, helps an outcast find safety, and learns herbalism in order assist and later sustain her own livelihood. Lore-master seemed like the right class to choose for this sort of character, and it put me in mind of an NPC I had created for an older story about an even older character of mine. The elderly, herbalist/sage lady had the surname of Harmon because she was the grandmother of another character mine had known in her youth. So I married the two names together to make Birle Harmon, The Wise.

Aumai Goodness & Bleshur Heart

Having moved to Mississippi, I wanted to get a little tongue-in-cheek when naming some of my less-than-serious characters. "Oh my goodness" was courtesy of my husband (though he was insisting on it being "goodna" to be really southern), and I later added "bless your heart" after hearing it a few too many times from people at work. Both of these characters are Hobbits on Landroval -- a burglar and a hunter, respectively. I have used Aumai as a creative writing subject and written her into an experience of the Yule Festival for the amusement of others.

Harimad

This one sounds a bit out there, doesn't it? Well, it is. There's a fantastic book by Robin McKinley called "The Blue Sword" and it's about a girl, oblivious to her heritage, being kidnapped by a King of a desert people and discovering she is actually one of them and destined to be their heroine. She is fondly called Harry by the people who know her, and she reveals to the King after being kidnapped that her given name is Harimad, in the fashion of the desert people's names. She is a strong character who becomes a channel for some incredible magic power from an ancestor and the titular Blue Sword, so I decided to use the name for my Tiefling Control Wizard in Neverwinter.

Pompilidara

Oh, my dear one. This is, by far, my favorite character I have ever made. I built and shaped her in layers even though she was originally only meant to be a fill-in NPC type role for leadership. Surprise, surprise... interaction with other people helped her blossom into a strong personality that I don't regret in the slightest. The original character was meant to replace a, er, corrupted leader of a pirate group. Arachnia had given herself the title of Admiral, even. So, given that she was a spider-y name... my replacement character intended to usurp the power was named after a family of wasps that prey on spiders, pompilidae. Pompi was part spiritual technomancer and part mercenary, so she had these glowy purple spirit wings that could manifest and exude power. As a result, her mercenary handle was The Spirit Wasp. I have only recreated Pompi once outside of her original run in Second Life, and that was this past year on LOTRO's Landroval server where she is a steadily-growing level 72 High Elf Champion. She's the reason I actually enjoy the Champion class now.

Carregaur Tywynnu

Last fall, my husband asked me if I wanted to learn another language with him using Duolingo. We made the mistake of trying Greek, but that er... we soon abandoned. But at the same time I also started in on Welsh. I am happy to report that, as of today, I have a 206-day streak going. Given that, I've been beginning to use some Welsh vocabulary to create names for things in my character creation and in my personal writing. (Did you notice that my character for the Hunter class Learning LOTRO entry was named using Welsh?) I decided that I'd use Welsh to make my first Stout-axe Dwarf character in LOTRO: carreg = stone; aur = gold; tywynnu = shining. Since adjectives come after the noun in Welsh, his name translates to Shining Gold Stone. It gives his name a different sound since his subrace was subjected in Mordor, but upholds that mining/crafting pride of all dwarfs.

Eha Palve/Linnulaul

The first iteration of Eha exists on the Faeblight server of RIFT. I was creating a secondary RP character in a guild that has since disbanded. It had a darker bent and was meant for individuals that were interested in obtaining power of various kinds. I knew I wanted to play a Cleric with a focus on the Death planar element, so I went looking for words in other languages via Google Translate. My answer was found in Estonian with Eha Palve = Dusk Prayer. I didn't get to play Eha much, though, before the guild fizzled out.

I took the opportunity to recycle the name in LOTRO when I wanted to make a Minstrel character modeled after my first roleplay character, Liana Song. That first name was taken, however, so I tried to look at it from a different angle. Liana was a shapeshifter and her primary animal form was a nightinagle. So, Eha returned but with a new surname, Linnulaul. The new translation being "Dusk Birdsong." I'm happy to report that this Eha has had a lot of game time and is presently a level 81 in Rohan.

How do you name your characters? What do you think of my choices and methods? Let me know in the comments!