she wants to meet her fate but travel by free will

Fantasy names that won’t give your readers a headache

probablygoodrpgideas:

pomrania:

Step 1: gather a bunch of normal names

As always, “normal” is highly subjective. Here, it just means names that you and your readers would recognize as “names”, and know how to spell and pronounce. For examples here, I was going to use the names of my classmates in grade school, except I realized that I couldn’t remember most of them since I’ve tried to block those years from my mind; so instead I’ll be using my extended family.

Step 2a: remove a letter…

Arnolda -> Arolda
Brian -> Brin
Chris -> Cris
Clarice -> Larice, Clarie
David -> Davi
Donald -> Donad, Donal
Emily -> Eily
Henriette -> Henritte
Jack -> Jac
Jamie -> Jame
Linda -> Lida, Lind
Michael -> Michae
Natasha -> Nataha
Nicholas -> Nichoas
Paulina -> Palina

Step 2b: …or change a vowel

Audette -> Aidette
Barbara -> Barbora
Brian -> Brion, Brean
David -> Devid, Davud
Emily -> Emely
Eric -> Aric
Henry -> Hinry
Jack -> Jeck
John -> Jihn
Linda -> Londa
Mark -> Merk
Michael -> Michaul
Natasha -> Natesha, Natashe

Step 3: if it’s for a major character, google it

I’m serious here. You can get away with the name of a minor character being accidentally ridiculous, or the same as that of an anime protagonist; but not an important character.

Step 4: relax

Boom, you’ve gotten a name that looks slightly exotic, but like an actual name and not a keysmash with some vowels added.

This also works for RPG characters.

If you want to use any of the names I gave here as examples, feel free; I don’t own them.

Dark elves are british in my setting (long story) and when I had to name a dark elf, I used online generators to generate a random name, the result was Noel, and I just rearranged the letters a bit and so No-Le was created

(via lurkerviolin)