Name



Many games ask for a name that has some sort of meaning to it. It's good form to try and use existing languages for these names, rather than randomly making up your own or grabbing something from, say, Klingon. Check and see if the application or webpage lists any name requirements; for example, the Mythos Senshi application asks for characters with Latin or Greek words for their names.

Pay attention to the game's setting. If it's set in Japan, odds are your character will have a Japanese name; if it's set in Germany, in all likelihood your character would NOT. Be really careful about playing a character who's immigrated from another country- unless there's a good, game-related reason for your character to be an import, many GMs won't accept characters from outside the setting.

Always, always, ALWAYS cross-reference words when you're using dictionaries, just to make sure you're getting the meaning right. You never know what sort of weird errors you may be making. For example... say your cool archer character's name means "Bow of Love." You write the name down, send in the app, and you're feeling pretty happy with yourself. THEN, to your horror, you find out that instead of the word for "bow [device for launching pointy things at people]" you've used the word "bow [type of knot]." Minor oops, but an annoyance that's easily avoided.
In addition to making sure you've got the right definition, cross-referencing helps you find any interesting puns that you may want to a) incorporate into your character or b) avoid at any cost. Using another example from Japanese: You've got the perfect name for your Sailor Arachne,senshi of spiders- Kumoko (from "kumo," "spider"). Then, you realize from cross-referencing that the word "kumo" also means "smoke." Citing that, perhaps you could come up with some smoke-related appearance or personality traits. GMs can be pretty impressed by research like that.

Understand a little about grammar. This is especially important in the Oriental languages, which are almost NOTHING like English. The most common error I've observed has been the use of the word "no" in Japanese names.
The word "no" does NOT mean "of." It's more like adding an apostrophe-s to the end of a word to indicate possession. For example, "Sailor Freak no atama" = "Sailor Freak's atama (head)." The confusion in use of "no" comes from the fact that most phrases are given an inverted translation. As an example, let's look at the name of the main character from Sailor Moon.

Tsukino Usagi
Word: Meaning:
Tsuki "Moon"
no (possessive)
Usagi "Rabbit"

The most structurally accurate translation would be "Moon's Rabbit," but that sounds awkward. However, since English is such a nifty language, you can flip the phrase around- "Rabbit of the Moon"- and have it say the same thing. (Namely, "Rabbit which belongs to the Moon.")

Useful Name links:
Dictionaries
Japanese-English Dictionary Server
Huuuuge list of words!
Also shows you the kanji
of a word. 		Yahoo's Language Dictionary Selections
Enough dictionaries to
satisfy almost any name
requirements!
Popular Baby Names
Look up names by meaning,
language, gender, or what-
ever. 		Alfabet Zoope
This doesn't have a search
option, but it's stil a good
source for all sorts of names.
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