SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.

A few years back now I read a book that was part of the history of The Lord Of The Rings. I can’t remember which volume it was. I also read a bio on the author as well. So the following is probably a mash up by my poor memory. But between the two books I remember that whilst writing The Lord Of The Rings the language and names used by Tolkien were based on Old English (his speciality). The reason for doing so was to give a feel of a history, an authenticity when read.

I want that in my D&D sessions.

You saw a snippet of that (or an attempt) in yesterday’s post where I created Sealby. I tried (and those that know better will decide how successful I was) to create a name for the settlement that felt authentic, given the Norse influence.

Luckily for names we are pretty well supported in D&D, and to be fair these can be used in other systems as well.

For starters there is Gary Gygax’s Extraordinary Book Of Names. This book is amazing. It has name lists from a really wide range of cultures and languages (past and present) from around the world. Plus tables and methods for creating more. So “to get names from the book, simply assign names from the lists, or generate them using the tables.”

Naturally my focus at the moment with this book is Norse names but when my campaign moves to the more traditional D&D Western Europe medieval fantasy influence I’ll switch over to Anglo-Saxon names.

The next handy source is an appendix in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. Appendix B is character names, organised by non-human and human names. This is great as a handy tool to create quick names on the fly using the lists provided. Roll a d100/percentile, then look at the appropriate table (based on race and gender) to get a name.

There are also numerous websites that will also generate names for you randomly at the click of a button. Just google some, play with them and bookmark your favourite.

I used google to also find some handy sites that talked about the Norse influence on UK place names. But do I really need to tell you about this? Surely that’s a given these days.

My preference is the first two sources. With Gygax’s tome it’s very detailed, I’m learning at the same time. And is ideal for preparing my campaign, when I have the time to indulge in this sort of depth. Whilst Xanathar’s is ideal to have on hand for that on the fly moment when you need to name an npc.

How do you generate authentic names for your campaign?