How do you decide your character names?

Finder

All have surname Wyvernspur after the “nameless bard” Finder Wyvernspur from the Forgotten Realms novels.

First names:

Bastian: the kid in The Neverending Story (sorc)

Armand: One of the vampires from The Vampire Chronicles (Vamp NB)

Jareth: The Goblin King from Labyrinth. (DK)

Jacob: Werewolf from Twilight (WW Warden)

Gaius: Gaius Balter from the 2004 Battlestar Galactica (Templar)

So basically I name them after sci-fi Or fantasy characters I like.

klowdy1

My brother has dark hair and features, his name is Sonny. I have light hair, and very Norwegian features, so my cousins always called me cloudy. I chose the name Klowdy back in the very early 90s, and have used it in every game ever since. I have a few deviations, last names mostly, and a few others I use often that just came to me, and stuck.

ArchMikem

Ka'atali
Dehyesha
Ta'azanni
Tsa-Zee
Blue Blizzard
Teva Hlaalu

I make names that can be believable in the setting. First three are Khajiit. Then two Argonians, and last is obviously a Dunmer.

Sylvermynx

Finder wrote: »

All have surname Wyvernspur after the “nameless bard” Finder Wyvernspur from the Forgotten Realms novels.

I love you. I spent SO many years playing FR, from pencil and paper to CRPGs - starting in the mid-70s. So many years of fun!

Vermethys

I usually draw from my pool of names that I find nice (often from TV shows and movies), and then look for a lore-friendly family name to avoid the "name is already taken" thing ^^

Taleof2Cities

My characters’ names are mostly a hybrid between Ayleidoon and common Elvish tongue ... or straight up from prior Elder Scrolls games:

For example:

Áhliaselia = Áh (crafty or sly) + lia (mistress) + selia (hall)

"sly mistress of the hall"

ZaroktheImmortal

I usually use a name from somewhere either a book or a game or something I'm interested in or I just make up a name that I think sounds good.

Tasear

LeHarrt91 wrote: »

All my characters are named in the same process, concept/ theme of class, plus Harrt

Dragon Harrt - DK
Storm Harrt - Sorc
Divine Harrt - Templar
Wild Harrt - Warden
Winters Harrt - Warden
etc..

and soon to add Cursed Harrt (Necromancer)

Simple yet refined I like it.

Siohwenoeht

I try to make them tend toward lore friendly. Only exception is my first character:

Siohwenoeht: Argonian dk tank (I've had the handle Siohwenoeht since LAN party days for original StarCraft and SC brood war lol)

Quanaera: Altmer Templar dd
Julaena Augustinia: Imperial stamsorc dd
Telraeva: Dunmer dk dd
Revels-in-darkness: Argonian NB dd
Tysiba: Kahjiit warden not sure on roll yet.
Cylothia Winter-bringer: Bosmer warden tank.

Faulgor

Skayaq wrote: »

I look at https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Names for common letter combinations for my characters race and mix them until I find a name I like.

What I was going to say. Only one of my characters has a name you won't find there (Conlaoch Cripple-King, a Reachman/Breton).

Funnily enough, you'll find Faulgor on the list of Bosmer names, yet I don't have a single Bosmer. It's just a good name.

MartiniDaniels

Hmm, it's quite complicated.

My usual nickname is Martin, but of course it was already taken, so I adjusted it to Martini. To continue with beverages logic, I used Daniels (i.e. Jack Daniels) as second name for my main.
My second alt was a healer and i was OW player at the moment, so character was named Mercy Walker (Mercy - signature healer from OW, Walker - i.e. Johnny Walker, for alcoholic logic). After some time I realized that this combination doesn't fit healer at all and sounds banal. I have no other choice to buy race/name change token to fix this, I changed name to Amari, which is nickname of Ana, other healer from OW, and I changes second name to Owlker because it sounds almost like Walker, and there was nice new year skin to Ana with owl mask... so that's my logic

Darkhorse1975

My character names encompass themes Ive enjoyed in life. I have a few named after caracters from shows such as The Big Labowski, Monty Python, Firefly/Serenity series. Also music song names from Led Zeppelin, Oasis or alternative female singers names (Mogli, Fever Ray, Agnes Obel, Mazzy Star, PJ Harvey). Also map location, such as Zzyzx in Cali or maritime place names.

Mayrael

LeHarrt91 wrote: »

All my characters are named in the same process, concept/ theme of class, plus Harrt

Dragon Harrt - DK
Storm Harrt - Sorc
Divine Harrt - Templar
Wild Harrt - Warden
Winters Harrt - Warden
etc..

and soon to add Cursed Harrt (Necromancer)

Very similar to me just different order.
My toons:

Mael Stormfist - MagSorc
Mael Ironfist - MagPlar
Mael Firmhand - StamNB
Mael Nightshadow - MagNB
Mael Stormeye - StamSorc
Mael Dragonscale - StamDK

etc.

Turelus

For most of my characters I have a naming convention of T***** V***** with a few exceptions for old RP character names or fun names.

I generally head over to the UESP lore page and check names before making a slight change to them to make them my own. This is normally the addition of "us" to the end of name following the history of how I got Turelus.

HappyLittleTree

Skayaq wrote: »

I look at https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Names for common letter combinations for my characters race and mix them until I find a name I like.

Same. Or like my new warden i just was thinking about bob ross and based my argonians backstory around a breton artist who adopted the new hatchling.

Siohwenoeht

HappyLittleTree wrote: »

Skayaq wrote: »

I look at https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Names for common letter combinations for my characters race and mix them until I find a name I like.

Same. Or like my new warden i just was thinking about bob ross and based my argonians backstory around a breton artist who adopted the new hatchling.

Big 'fro, bell bottoms and painting landscapes. Bob Ross and PBS were awesome back then.

mairwen85

I use Celtic names and words (usually noun or place for surname), Gaelic or welsh, and put a Tamrielic spin on the spelling. See if you can guess the races of the following 5:

Yffette Sant-Carreg
Caris Ceirael
Cariad Melyssen
Mair Dar'ethi
Annwyl Anheim

Danikat

It varies. I like my characters names to at least appear lore friendly and I like them to be relevant to the character, even if only I will know that. So that's my starting point and then I go looking for something which meets that criteria and sounds good to me.

My bosmer was the easiest. Apparently bosmer names don't mean anything, and when I was making the first version of the character Sayel came into my head as a possible name. It was available so I used it.

For my dunmer sorcerer I looked up dunmer names on UESP, none of them really inspired me but they kind of reminded me of Welsh so I went looking for Welsh names and settled on Ilorwerth. I wanted it to sound grand, and apparently Ilorwerth (or Iorwerth which is the more common spelling) means 'fair lord' so it seemed appropriate. But the common nickname is Iolo - pronounced Yolo - which also seems appropriate for someone who suddenly decided he could achieve more out in the world than continuing his studies and he's going to go sort out the Worm Cult himself. (Although he'd never let anyone call him that.)

Others are a bit more complicated. My nord dragonknight's first name was easy because she's the latest incarnation of a character I've used before who is always called Ember (which is a nickname, her real name is Eleanor but she doesn't let anyone call her that), but she needed a last name, both because Ember was taken and because part of her backstory is that she's from an important family and wants everyone to know it. I wanted it to be related to one of her ancestors achievements, which then became the family name. I played around with different options and finally settled on Wolf-Bane.

Probably the strangest is my crafter, an Imperial dragonknight. I wanted him to be a retired soldier, and after giving him all the scars I could in the character creator I then got silly, hopped on Google translate and came up with Sagittam Ad Genu - Latin for 'arrow to the knee'. But unless you know Latin it probably just looks like a random Imperial name. (And seriously, how many people know Latin these days?)

xenowarrior92eb17_ESO

I close my eyes...I smash the keyboard with my fist and I press ok when im done.

Maotti

I actually use my real name. I'm norwegian so the name fits for my main and copies of him.

When i create other races i try to use lorefriendly names.

pandoraderomanus

I either prefer Pandora *Something* as my usual nickname or I use some of my favourite songs as names, for example:

Touches-Your-Tralala - templar (Ohh you touch my tralala by Gunther)
Sheer Heart Attack - templar (Queen)
Stone Cold Crazy - warden (Queen)
Fat Bottomed Orc - deleted sorc orc (Queen)
Superstar at the gay bar - deleted DK (Electric Six)

My future necro will probably be Dazed and Confused (Led Zeppelin) or I will find another Queen song. Haven't decided yet.

Leeched

I usualy spend hours or days coming up with new character names since I prefer real names and most of those are obviously taken by now. I also like using fantasy names to some extend but I am very picky about those.

Fluke.Slywalker

Mine are always something that amuses me:-

My Tank - Tank Lampard
MagDK - Burnt Reynolds
Healer - Dr Healgood
MagSorc - Lionel Richtea
StamDk - Fireman Stam
Stamden - Flash Warden
Stamplar - Stablo Picasso

Can't think of the others lol.

DaiKahn

The names usually come to me or I make them up somehow. Some of them take ages cause they look/sound/feel wrong when I first write them down

Like one of my toon names [male] I made up came from the Predator language from one of the Alien vs Predator novels 20-odd years ago

One of my other toon names [female] is musical and sang itself in my head

VDoom1

I am very picky to make sure names are lore friendly. Most of the time I look at a name generator, or I check Skyrim NPC names or another Elder Scrolls game if I liked some name there.

If I'm making a Nord for example and if I liked the name of a Nord in Skyrim I pick that. On occasion I look to other sources like names of elves from other games or movies.

dan958

'Sir Dan'.

I'll be honest, I didn't put too much thought into it.

Coatmagic

Probably because most people's names have 'reasons', the one character that I literally pulled the name right out my tail is the one that gets asked, 'Who is that then?' xD

zaria

Bit of an funny story, use Zaria as general name for caracters since I wanted a name for an Bosmer back in Morrowind.
Kind of used it often for caracters in TES games. So used it as ESO user name, main is an Khajiit who I named Zariba as its more Khajiit, made an Bosmer named Zaria, she looked horible so replaced her with another Khajiit with the same name.
Afterward all caracters start with Zar....
Just to increase confusion.

Faulgor

mairwen85 wrote: »

I use Celtic names and words (usually noun or place for surname), Gaelic or welsh, and put a Tamrielic spin on the spelling. See if you can guess the races of the following 5:

Yffette Sant-Carreg
Caris Ceirael
Cariad Melyssen
Mair Dar'ethi
Annwyl Anheim

Ooh, hm

Bosmer? (Yffre > Yffette)
Altmer? (-el suffix)
Breton? (just a hunch)
Dunmer? (-ethi suffix)
Imperial? (reminds me of Anvil, could also be Breton)

Robo_Hobo

I always check UESP's site for the names of every character for the race of the character I'm making, and look through all of the examples there, and then try to make a lore-friendly name based on that style, that I like.

It usually takes me a long process, and even after I make the character, I usually remake them again a few days later a couple more times because of wanting to tweak the appearance or change the name, a name might sound good the first day but after the second, I realize it's not what I like.

I don't often use last names for my characters either so it's difficult to find a good lore-friendly name that I like that isn't taken, unless it's for a Khajiit because I still use the Khajiiti honorifics, which make the name-finding process a lot easier because the chances of someone using the same name with the same honorific is much slimmer.