How I pick fantasy names
Basically I spill letters all over the page, then scoot them around and make them pretty.
When coming up with place names and character names for the fantasy countries in my novels, I try to have something of a system about it, so that there is at least a general sense that everyone from the same region has names with some similar phonetic patterns. Rather than, say, one person being “Gwyneth” and another being “T’cK’lai” and another being “Carlos,” and they’re all from the same smallish country that doesn’t get a lot of immigrants, and anyway this is a fantasy world with no connection to Earth, so why are there Celtic and Spanish names?? Yeah, I’m looking at you, ACOTAR. (I did my graduate studies in linguistics. My brain finds it hard to ignore these kinds of things.)
I also try to make the names relatively pleasing to the ear and approachable in terms of pronunciation. None of this “it’s pronounced ‘Carlos,’ but it’s spelled Khpphl’s, because in this language ‘pp’ is pronounced ‘ar,’ and ‘h’ is silent, and the apostrophe signals a short ‘o’ sound,” which is the kind of thing that will make your readers hate you.
In my Eidolonia books, Eidolonia is a country on modern-day Earth, albeit one I invented, and they do have immigrants from all over the world, so I do get to use a mishmash of existing languages for names. Even then, though, I consider what ancestry each region/character has, and try to skew the names toward those languages of origin.
My book Sage and King, however, is pure epic fantasy—another world entirely. Picking names for it therefore got to be much more random, and I aimed to make the names not resemble any particular Earth language (nor any already existing fantasy-world names) too suspiciously closely. Here I will share with you a section of the notes I wrote when planning out the names for Sage and King, just because it’s so hilariously chaotic and rambling.
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Need more pure-fantasy-world names, less Irish/Celtic.
Col is all right; generic enough.
Tierney won’t work, though. New king name ideas:
Ezen or Esen or Azen or Ayzen
Athen or Athon or Athan
Saya (short for something fancy like Darosaya or Kinsaya) or Zaya (short for Melozaya or Korzeiaya or Eylozaya or such, naturally. Or not. I like King Zaya as an official name, actually.)
Varin
Eylos
Let’s go with Zaya. Go big-fantasy-name or go home, right?
The land is a chilly temperate-bordering-arctic country of mountains and forests – model for now can be British Columbia and south Alaska. Country name: Cladona or Cladonia or Cladonaya or or Kladona or Kladonia or Kladonaya or Kladoya or Kaladon (nope, that’s a World of Warcraft character)? Cladonia is a genus of many types of lichen found in British Columbia. Waterrush. Rainslope. Rushwater. Rushrain. I like that one but it’s a tongue-twister. Lushrain? Rainmount. Watermount. Mountwater. I’m liking Lushrain.
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The ones I ended up using are in boldface. Col is the sage, Zaya is the king, and they live in the country of Lushrain. But as you can see, there were many other directions I could have gone.
Basically all my novels have a few sections of name-babble like this in their notes file, where I’m free-writing to figure out what to call a place or a character. The editor in me, who likes things concise and tidy, thinks it’s a total mess, but at least in an amusing way. For those curious about process, there you go—that’s how the embroidery looks, for my books in any case, when you flip it over and see the loose threads and tangled knots.