NAMING CONVENTIONS - CHARACTERS, SPELLS, AND MORE

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LouisCyphre
can't make a bad game if you don't finish any games
4523
Do the names you use in your games carry any meaning?

Are there recurring names in the vein of Biggs/Wedge of Cid throughout the games? Are your spells Lightning/Lighting II/Lightning III, or are they translated into Spanish or Latin? I, basically, want to hear what conventions recur in your names, between games or within individual ones.

As for me, I've abused the name "Victor/Victoria" in a lot of my games, usually as the Team Mom, that keeps the younger, less experienced/disciplined characters in line and out of trouble. "Ariel/Umbriel" often come up as day/night type of twins, and main characters' names - or at least the first playable member of the party - will almost always start with an "A".
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
I use what sounds cool.
i'm from that (apparently) nearly non-existant school of thought that every spell skill should be useful throughout the entirety of the game, so making Fire 1, Fire 2, etc, seems kind of redundant to me... I think it must be a jRPG thing.

As far as naming goes, I'm kind of working on a mock-rpg so its a mix between cliched things and things that don't really fit the mold.
I have a tendency to name my items and equipment off of old Dragon Warrior NES games, so I'll have spells like Return and Outside and Radiant and Firebal (only 1 L) and Bang and Hurt, and copper swords and falcon blades and etc.. etc...

Plus, you can never go wrong with Medical Herbs for healing.
For the most part I just make up shit, but sometimes I'll use anagrams of words that describe the character, tranlate words into either latvian, italian, or german, stuff like that. I also make characters that either have the same name as my friends of an edited version of it. Like taking my name, Nick, and making it Nikolai, or Zack to Zaccheus.
Shinan has been overused in a number of things I've done. Though since I'm Shinan nowadays I've used him more and more rarely. Though once he was a character that ran around a lot.

I also tend to have a variant of Jake/Jacob/Jack in things I make. The same with Mikhail, Mikael, Michael (but not really Mike for some reason). And Samuel (after Samuel Vimes of Discworld fame, but also after my not-at-all brother Samuli)

For town I oftentimes go with Germanic sounding names. Though also stealing from my own Swedish. Town names that end with Stad/Stadt or Borg/Burg are very common. The same actually with last names. "von Whateverenelleng" or one of my favorite characters ever Edward Düsseldorf :D

And then there's just the creative ways to spell general things. The usual things such as replacing Cs with Ks and using double-wovels. (So Creative could become Kreetev, which is a nice eastern-sounding last name. Though you can go a bit west and make it Kreetef, which reminds me of the Swedish word for Count (greve) so it could be a title... Kreetef Haerluntun of the Society of Arts... Haerluntun was taken from Hurlundun which sounds like something you say when you can't come up with something else. Some letter magic later and it almost sounds like something properly fantasy)

The Ae-letter combination can be used for great effect too.
Every once in a while, I'll drop in a name that has a background, like "Azra'il" in one of my games, a name mutation of Azrael, the angel of death. Obviously, a bad dude.

I'm also a fan of spells being useful for the duration of the game instead of being trumped by later variations. And a spell called "Hurt" is awesome.
harmonic
It's like toothpicks against a tank
4142
I just scan morrowind or oblivion's amazingly huge list of obscure NPCs and find something I like.
I often, though not always, use name-generating programs to get ideas for character names. Many of them can work from different datasets to give different regional flavors.
I normally use real-life names with a tendency towards the outdated/odd (my game/s atm are roughly based on the Victorian period, so my big list of common Victorian names (see below) helps, really), but occasionally for some reason just make up a nonsense name like Asnor or Ritian or something, because it seems to fit...

There's a lot of biblical names here. I think this is possibly more American-wild-west, actually

edit: also, just registered this is about more than just characters. For 'spells', I use latin words for FIRE, LOTSOFFIRE etc. from a similar list of basic latin terms, but as this is technology, put this down to the inventor of the techniques having a dramatic flair.
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
I still use what sounds cool.
I mostly name my characters names that either probably haven't been used more than three times in the history of mankind, or just a name that is very obscure that I like a lot and think suits the character. As for places, they're mostly just random meshes of letters that sound cool. Yeah.

Most of the time my names (for characters) sound like last names, but it seems to fit pretty well.
I favor an international approach. You can find a lot of interesting name variations by looking up a fantasy term on Wikipedia and finding out what its foreign-language articles are called. Let's use the griffin as an example. Greif, Grifon, Grifo, Gryf, Grifone, Gryps, Grifas, Griffioen... Aarnikotka? (That's Finnish. Too cool-sounding NOT to be used, if you ask me.)
My spells are google translations from english to galician. (whatever that is)
Anyway, the spells sound pretty kick-ass.

Curamos Lotes Forte!
Lume Abrasador!
Xeo Esfolados!
Trono Crecendo!
Terra Esmagando!
i use names that only not many people have, such as "Lucian" for example. not many people have that name.

as for spells.......i stick to the generic Fire 1 except that i replace the number with roman numerals so now it becomes Fire I.
post=94078
I normally use real-life names with a tendency towards the outdated/odd (my game/s atm are roughly based on the Victorian period, so my big list of common Victorian names (see below) helps, really), but occasionally for some reason just make up a nonsense name like Asnor or Ritian or something, because it seems to fit...

There's a lot of biblical names here. I think this is possibly more American-wild-west, actually


Ooh, that list helps me for my game quite a bit :) thank you.
For names I'll just use whatever comes to mind, they're usually names that are completely made up but every once in awhile I'll slip an actual human name in there. I try not to use foreign language words because I feel that the player will get annoyed at a game if its filled with names that he can't easily make a guess on how they should be pronounced.

for spells I try to use synonyms for the same basic idea, using more intense sounding words for more powerful variations of the spell (Cascade, Waterfall, Tsunami) I feel the FF-type spell naming method is a bit lazy and generic, but that's just me
For names I tend to stick to normal names with fantasy names mixed in there somewhere. So i can have both Alex and say... Alturo in the same game. Oddly enough... It doesn't feel out of place...

post=94411
for spells I try to use synonyms for the same basic idea, using more intense sounding words for more powerful variations of the spell (Cascade, Waterfall, Tsunami) I feel the FF-type spell naming method is a bit lazy and generic, but that's just me


This, all this.
Also one thing i noticed that was funny a while ago.
My fire spells are Burn Singe and Incinerate.
In DQ8, the descriptions for Frizz, Frizzle and Kafrizzle say burn, singe and incinerate.
For some reason, the multi-enemy electric attack I've always called Tesla...
Guess I just thought it sounded cool.
I broke my tradition for my first actual programmed game though. :'(

EDIT:
Heal
Healmore
Healus
Healall
Healusall
Gotta love it. :P
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