Naming your character: The Generator

Apr 29 2008

Naming your character: The Generator

Posted by: Mama Druid in Naming Your Character

This is the second installment in a series featured weekly on Tuesdays.

Character customization in WoW is pretty limited to face, skin and hair color, hair styles, and sometimes accessories such as jewelry or facial markings. Some races and genders only have a handful of options, while others have three times as many. Even so, you will at some point run into a character that looks just like yours. The only way we truly can be unique snowflakes in WoW is with our character’s name.

In this week’s installment, we’ll talk about creating names using name generators.

WoW’s Name Generator

If you don’t feel like researching a name for your new character, using the name generator on the character creation screen is certainly a valid method. However, clicking the accept button without any further thought beyond what the name generator spits out puts your character at risk of entering Azeroth as another Night Elf named Whis.

If you use the name generator, try customizing it by switching some of the letters around, tossing in a vowel or consonant, or even switching one vowel for another (i for y). What if it were backwards? Reversing names can sometimes produce interesting results.

Other Name Generators

Let’s say you still don’t feel like doing much research for a name, but you want something more than what WoW’s name generator generates. There are plenty of online name generators for you to mess around with. Following are a few I have used at one time or another.

Behind the Name - A great site for names in general, and it has a generator with a multitude of options. The best part is the results are linked to the name’s origin and/or meaning so you can learn more about the generated name.

As an example, I chose to generate a female Esperanto name and it returned with a first name of Pipra. Sounds like a cute little gnome to me!

D&D Character Name Generator - This one is fun, giving you several input options by asking questions about letters in your own name, gender, race, class, and profession. It seems the letters of your own name are what truly contribute to the generation of a name while the other input options determine descriptions of your character.

Very fun to play with.

Seventh Sanctum - Not only are there many different types of generators here, there’s a list of other generators listed in the right column. This is an excellent resource and I wouldn’t be surprised if you ended up spending a lot of time here.

Out of curiosity, I checked out the Tree-Being generator as I figured it would produce some good druid names.

Brownbirch
Browntalon
Elmthicket
Farhazel
Herbtimber
Limbshoot
Oddweed
Quickoak
Weedherb
Winterfury

Not bad! Some better than others and, if anything, they at least provide a start to your own naming process.

Rum & Monkey - I think anyone can register and submit their own name generator here, so you might have to sift through some distasteful, but possibly amusing, generators. With any of them, you provide the generator with your own name. Be sure to try using any or all parts of your full name for maximum results.

Fantasy Name Generator - This one provides a “simple interface” where you choose from a list of serious, fun, or specialized types of names and click a button for a resulting list. In addition, there is an “advanced interface” for which instructions on how to use it are provided.

Pokethulhu Random Name Generator - 500 names are randomly generated every 15 minutes. I love this generator! While it is quite absurd, you might actually come across an interesting name for an Undead character, of even your hunter’s new pet. If you are looking for a pet, use the find keyboard shortcut (ctrl + F) to perform a text search for keywords such as bird, owl, cat, dog, reptile, etc.

I have actually selected a name for one of my hunter pets using this generator.

I hope the information provided in this post will help you in your quest for the perfect unique snowflake name for your next character!

Next week - Naming your character: Meanings or Keywords

Tags: Names