WHAT'S IN A NAME?

I admit that I expect character names to have a bit of reality to them. Reality in the sense that, based on their time, location, and setting, they make sense. I do feel that a lot of factors go into creating names. For example: Historically/Geographically set names; I honestly like the aesthetic that goes along with a game, if set in Ireland or a fantasy world similar to, whose characters have Irish names. Or, names that could pass for Irish. I for one get really irritated when things, such as names and languages, don't mesh together.
My view is practically the same as yours, Tanakayuuji. One game that I am currently thinking, one of the main characters is French. So the world surrounding this character have french names, or names that could pass for French (at least I believe they could).
Another thing I also love about names are names with meaning. You know, a hero whose element is fire happens to have a name that means fire in another language. Or something like that.

I usually look up baby names for a given gender and geography/culture that corresponds roughly with the culture that that character comes from in my game. And then I might take some creative liberties with the spelling.

The other thing I do often is lift names directly from books I enjoyed reading.

Right, you are correct. When I said realistic names don't have meanings, I meant they don't have... accurate meanings. Their meanings do not actually match the person they're given to, as a rule. Just because someone is named Alfred Smith doesn't mean he is a member of an elven council of blacksmiths, in real life.

Edit: Not that it's bad to give people thematic names. Just don't trick yourself into thinking Squall Leonhart is any more realistic of a name than Zell Dincht. It's less realistic. People give their kids weird names all the time; my grandmother made up my mother's name (I can search for her first name alone on google and she shows up on page 1).

Well ever since VII, FF seems obsessed with naming their main characters after various weather situations. CLOUD. SQUALL. Zidane maybe not so much.. but TID-us. Oh and don't forget LIGHTNING. But this could be thematic. Maybe they're building up to a very weathery game and these names won't seem so weird after all!

But Locke is right, and I don't think people should trawl through name meanings to find something absolutely perfect because it's not realistic or necessarily accurate (for NPCs it'd be fine because I don't think anyone would analyse it too hard if the guy's name was Arnold and he repeated one line about tree stumps over and over). You can't give birth to a kid and THEN name them when they're 20 because they were strong of will or something, so maybe the best way to name people realistically is to just think of fairly memorable names (especially if it's a realistic world) that you would give to your own kid, then develop your character from there. Names do often affect how kids grow up, just like if you call your meathead character 'Sebastian' then he might get picked on a bit. Just don't call your irritatinly plain hero EDGE MAVERICK or something, because that is a hideously forced name that makes me want to beat his face into the ground.

I personally try not to give confusing names from made up languages, especially things with apostrophes in the middle.. Giving your player a hard time pronouncing things in your game is a bad idea, because they'll also be less likely to remember it (and if your plot is heavily based on it then you're sorta screwed). When I name characters, I'll give them pretty bland and memorable names from the real world more often than not. I might put in an extra letter or change a letter just to give a bit of zest, but names aren't all too important to me. 'Alfred' probably already has some connotations in people's minds, like I will always picture Batman's butler.. but if we changed it to 'Olfred' or 'Elfrid', it becomes something entirely different and zesty while still having easy to pronounce syllables and being memorable.. and kinda cool.

author=Milennin
For main / important characters preferably a name that isn't used in real life, or at least not commonly (like Roth, Thieme, Eldin). For random side characters that aren't important I tend to use real life names (like Bob, Steve, Matthew). I feel my made-up names have that unique touch to them without looking too out of place with the rest of my game world.

As for other games, I'll admit it annoys me when character naming isn't consistent to the theme of the game or other characters. Like games with a main character with a random Japanese name, but most other NPC's with common English names. It feels extremely out of place.

So you admit it annoys you when other games do exactly what you do, but you continue to do it on purpose

This is probably a sign that you are a bad designer, a hypocrite, and a failure as a human being

I'm very bad at names. So I just take names randomly that I think sound okay. In fantasy I like to misspell common names to give them that fantasyesque feel. I mean you can turn a Brian into a Bryaen any day of the week.

Sometimes I theme names too. In Blue every character was named after the colour their box was. So there was Brown, Greene, Whyte, Gray etc. And again I bastardized some of them to make them sound less obvious. I often do that in fact. I once named my main characters after members of Monty Python, but the connection was so vague after the modifications that I don't think they were overly recongisable.

And that's actually a decent way to go about it. You take your character and name him after someone/something that fits ("meaning in names") and then bastardize it to the point it's unrecognisable and then you have both thematic meaning to a name and it's likely few people will be able to tell that your fighter character is named "Fighter" (in the game "Thor Faye")

Also as seen in my Bryaen example. I'm very partial to the ae. If fits everywhere!

author=kentona
I usually look up baby names for a given gender and geography/culture that corresponds roughly with the culture that that character comes from in my game. And then I might take some creative liberties with the spelling.

^ Great minds think alike.

Hey guys, does Artemis sound like a man's name to you? It does sound to me. It was some Greek's goddess name but it's apparently also a man's name (there's also Artemus, which is the masculine version of the name but to be honest, it doesn't sound as good)

But. You do. Roth, Thieme and Eldin are names from one culture, while Bob, Steve and Matthew are from another culture. They do not match each-other.