Nomatophobia

As a dungeon master I have hundreds, nay, thousands of non-player characters to portray in my Dungeons and Dragons campaign. Sure the players' characters might only meet the lowly beggar in a back alley of the port city Dragons Eye, sure they might only be staying at the Angry Treant Inn for one night and the innkeeper might be a little surly towards them, sure they might kill the bandits after their mid-fight banter; but all those NPCs, no matter how short-lived, need names.

Have you ever tried to think of a dozen names for NPCs in a fantasy setting of your own devising while your players stare at you hungrily from the other side of the table? It's not all too easy.

So once again we have the Internet to thank. Now, while I'm typing my notes away, if I have to think of a name for an NPC I haven't premeditated very much (the head monk at the monastery, the thieves guild contact in Maplegate, the deputy sheriff of Greyford village) I just open up Google and search "baby names". There are dozens of websites aimed at users of a maternal/paternal nature just waiting to be found. Many of them include Arabian, Hebrew, Sanskrit, and Greek names to name but a few so you can pretty much always find unique, esoteric names that your players haven't heard yet. If you can search for the meaning of a word, even better!

Actually, for a WFRP campaign not so long ago I played a wily thug called "Schurke". Keep in mind that the Empire in Warhammer is loosely based on a late-medieval Germany and see what you can find through a German-to-English translator. I thought that was a pretty authentic sounding name, the great thing was that it fitted the character pretty well too.

Anyway, there you go. And if you're stuck for dwarven, elven, gnome, or halfling names then I suggest taking a look through Races of Stone and Races of the Wild. There isn't that much material that I've used in my campaign; useful articles include the notes on the races' languages and name meanings, halfling caravans, and that's about it. The items are either totally min-maxing/munchkin or totally retarded, check out the "elven bow" - it's practically the complete opposite of what you would expect. The new races didn't strike me as very attractive either; Races of Stone gives you a PC race that acts as if it was one size category larger than normal, while Races of the Wild gives you a PC class that can fly. Yeah I think I'll skip those chapters. But the name tables for elven and dwarven names in particular were pretty good. For my human NPCs that don't hail from a noble or middle-class family I generally give them a surname made of two words strung together either representing a meaning lost in time (Dorian Weathersmith, Rita Thinwhistle, Harbold Redvine, Ascolec Greylock, etc.)

This way I find that names don't cause so much of a problem for my D&D sessions/planning and the world feels more coherent because the NPCs have names that sound similar and believable.