Playing the Name Game ...
Playing the name game with my characters, from Artemis to Zazuqualiatra!
Naming characters is fun. Or at least, it’s fun for me.
I know plenty of fiction writers and Pathfinder players alike who stress over choosing a name to bestow upon their creations. “Ugh can you just pick a name for me?” is a request I’ve received more than once as a Game Master. And while I’m always suuuuuper willing to name your character for you — Ser Jeremiah Q. Hulkington, liberator champion of the Fuscia Freedom Force, I presume? — I can’t help but feel pity for the misery you experience when forced to do something I find so enjoyable.
Here’s my one piece of brilliant, foolproof advice for naming a character:
Keep trying until you hit on something that feels right.
Easier said than done, I know. And yet, two functioning adults agreed that “Benedict Cumberbatch” was the best they could come up with and stopped there, smdh.
Below I’ll share the naming backstory for every Pathfinder character I’ve ever created, which makes this my most self-indulgent post since I delivered a round-by-round analysis of the playtesting encounter I ran between 4x PCs that I created vs 3x custom monsters that I invented. Yes, this is a thing that happened.
(If you’re looking for the unsubscribe button, you’ll have to defeat my emperor shark penguins in mortal combat to locate that precious bit of treasure.)
Before we get to the gory details, here are a couple useful resources:
The Internet is full of fantasy character name generators, but my favorite is fantasynamegenerators.com which has engines specific to the canonical Pathfinder versions of aasimar, fetchling, kobold, and even Tian humans
Fiction is another resource to mine, especially for weird human names: grab a paperback and mash together some firsts and lasts from such notorious namers as Charles Dickens, Thomas Pynchon, Tom Robbins, and David Foster Wallace
Any new parent knows how ubiquitous baby naming websites are: I consulted them all when my daughter was on the way and remain a big fan of Nameberry, but don’t sleep on the US Social Security Admin’s index of registered baby names
On the topic of fandom, please earn yourself a Hero Point by clicking that heart button up top. I have no idea what it accomplishes, besides making me feel good!
And now, on with the show:
Saimei (male tengu rogue, “Jade Regent”) grew up in the Red Light District of Kasai, capital of Minkai — a vaguely Japanese-ish region of Golarion — so I crafted this name from multiple real cultural references: the sai stabbing weapon; saimin, a ramen-ish Hawaiian noodle dish; and Pai Mei, the kung fu master from “Kill Bill.”
Circha Okean (female aasimar time oracle, “Shattered Star”) felt to me like a vaguely Irish name for my bronze-haired peri-blooded angelkin, with an odd spelling twist for a very odd girl. The name’s sound also taps in to “circa,” which seemed fitting for an oracle who spent the campaign playing with the flow of time.
Dag (male nagaji skald, “Strange Aeons”) offered a clipped gruffness for my hulking green-skinned nagaji, a race of anthro snake humanoids descended from nagas. A gentle giant who formed a punk band with his sisters Ayla and Kyla called the “Spitting Nagas,” his name also winked to Dagon, the Lovecraftian god of the Deep Ones.
Ndari (female changeling hunter, “Strange Aeons”) joined the adventure when Dag went insane and abandoned the party; she was a human-looking girl from the hinterlands of Qadira who was actually descended from the evil NPC night hag Quaveandra, so I gave her a vaguely Mediterranean sound (think Italian nduja sausage) that rhymed with “Atari.”
Quintly Fleetsparrow (male halfling cleric of Kurgess, “The Dragon’s Demand”) presented my first chance to name a sing-songy halfling; his portmanteau surname comes from worshipping Kurgess aka the god of physical prowess, making him a speedy little gym rat. His first name is a twist on Quentin (not the last Tarantino name I’ll cop to stealing).
Bente Bensik (female dwarf monk, “Age of Ashes”) came along shortly after my daughter was born, and they both got the initials BB. Bente is a Dutch/Danish girl’s name that felt vaguely dwarven, and her surname connects her to Golarion lore: clan Bensik hails from the Five Kings town of Davarn, led by mayor Ranti Bensik aka Bente’s mother.
Professor Zazuqualiatra Teeth (female gnome enchanter wizard, “Age of Ashes”) turns naming fun up to 11 as my first gnome PC: these little First Worlders own the silliest names in all of Golarion, and Professor Teeth aka “Zazu” of the Alabaster Academy in Kintargo was a kooky old lady who liked to control people with creepy enchantment magic.
Salia Starstrider (female halfling aberrant sorcerer, PFS) owns a sweet name that belies her moody aberrant darkness, her mind having been torn asunder by cosmic Lovecraftian forces. She’s styled after the actress Kiernan Shipka (Sally Draper in “Mad Men,” Sabrina the Teenage Witch), though I didn’t make the Salia-Sally connection until later on.
Takashi “Kash” Nobu (male tengu cleric of Hei Feng, PFS) began life as a shipwrecked jinx-eater in the Shackles, then was a boisterous bartender in Port Peril, before gaining divine powers from the tengu god of hurricanes and drunken passion. His catch phrase, when he’s sober enough to utter it, is: “Call me ‘Kash’ — it’s short for ‘Takashi,’ but I’m tall for a tengu. Ho ho!”
Fizzik (male silver kobold investigator, PFS) is etched on this obsessive maniac’s office door, where you’d find him if he wasn’t out working a case — and they all tie back to her, don’t they? The broad who infested my life after I was called in to clean up that mess, the fun girl rooted to a magic casserole plan, the missing fungus leshy seeding my dreams … Chanterelle.
Artemis Tamaru (female half-elf giant barbarian, “Strength of Thousands”) inherited her given name from my baby search: Artemis was near the top of our shortlist, so I was happy to give it a second home here which fit her backstory: she’s the daughter of near-royalty from Kasai: her father was the Tian human court mage Daisuke Tamaru, and her mother was my wife’s elf barbarian from our “Jade Regent” campaign, who went on to helm the temple guard after we completed the adventure.
So that’s where my character names come from. And one more fun fact: the elf barbarian I referenced above, created by my wife for our first Pathfinder adventure nearly a decade ago? Shares a first name with our real-life daughter, who was born the same week Pathfinder Second Edition launched in 2019.
Turns out some names are just too good to be confined to the realm of fantasy.
THE MINI AND THE DICE
I complained last month that I was running low on minis and dice. Well, Santa delivered! Not actually Santa Claus, but my friend Rusty who’s recently been hosting our in-person PFS games and also owns a 3D printer.
I designed a miniature on Hero Forge for my above-mentioned PFS character, Kash Nobu, and purchased the STL printable file (stands for “stereolithography,” speaking of cool names) for the low on-sale price of $3.99. Then Rusty fed the STL file into his printer, and out came this white plastic model of my sword-and-board tengu warpriest. Now, to get him painted.
The ethereal light blue mini dice by Metallic Dice Games are a sweet Christmas gift from my daughter, who picked them out on her own (don’t worry, accompanied by an adult) at our local FLGS. Hard to tell exact proportionality in the photograph, but I assure you these are the tiniest dice I’ve ever seen: the d20 is roughly the size of an M&M. Truly adorable!
NEW FROM THE WAREHOUSE
The biggest TTRPG news story of 2023 is a brewing copyright clash between D&D owners Hasbro/WotC and every other swords-and-sorcery game created over the past two decades using something called the OGL (Open Gaming License). Understanding the legal nuances of this fight is beyond my pay grade. However, I did notice that Paizo Inc., the publisher of Pathfinder, is fighting back by doubling-down on its open source values.
How does this impact you, dear reader? Well, until MIDNIGHT PST TONIGHT you can claim a free pdf of Pathfinder’s Lost Omens World Guide which brings to life the fantasy world of Golarion. This rich campaign setting for all of Pathfinder’s published adventures is probably the single coolest feature that’s kept me a loyal Pathfinder player for the past decade. Freedom!
LISTEN TO THIS
An important update to my previous post about composer Trevor Morris — aka the house band for so many of my Pathfinder gaming sessions — who was my most played Spotify artist of 2021, and my wife’s most played Spotify artist of 2021, and another friend who games with us’s most played Spotify artist of 2021 …
That’s right: the mighty Trevor Morris has been dethroned. He was only my SECOND most played Spotify artist of 2022, falling just short of a little Indie Rock band that perhaps you’ve heard of before: The Beatles?!?!
Heavy is the head that wears the crown, Ringo.
Hey, we’ve reached a full year of posts since I started writing this newsletter last January. Wow! And so, as I say at the end of every Pathfinder module I run: this has been Ambush Tactics. I’ve been your Game Master. I hope you had a fun time.
Adventure!
Great post. I’ve always been curious about the background of other people’s character names, and especially the ‘algorithms’ they use in creation (I’m thinking now of our mutual friend whose names are all foods that start with “G”). My character names all have something of a story behind them, some more interesting than others; this makes me want to go back and document them all before I forget. Especially “HopFrog Knickers”!