February 01, 2011

Fantasy Character Names - Name Generators

One of my favorite (and sometimes least favorite) things about being a fantasy writer is naming my characters. Occasionally I'll take a real name and just spell it differently, but the majority of my names are completely made up. It's great because you have the potential to create some really awesome names that suit your character better than any real name could. Plus it makes your characters very unique. Once in a while one of the really great names will just come to me, but more often than not, I use the aid of a fantasy name generator, at least to get me started. I always make sure to save any names that look or sound cool even if they don't fit the character I'm trying to name. I've actually started a quickly growing fantasy name book for myself that comes in quite handy. There are tons of fantasy name generators available and after trying many of them, here are the ones that I have found to be the most useful.

 

This is usually the one I go to first. Many of my recent fantasy names have come from using this generator. The nice thing is you can pick the length of the name you're looking for as well as some other options. http://www.rinkworks.com/namegen/

 

This is another good generator with some options such as name length and choice of first and last letters. http://dicelog.com/yafnagen

 

Lots of different generators on this site. I have found the Fantasy Place Name Generator to be particularly helpful. The name generators are also very good. http://nine.frenchboys.net/

 

And lastly, here is a downloadable fantasy name generator to use on your desktop. http://jhanson.com/software/namegen.html

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