Character Names

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Here's a quick way to randomly generate a name for your character:

Roll a d20 twice on the table below. Combine the two halves to form your character's name. Some results offer you an optional longer version - in these cases, choose whichever sounds better.

d20 First Half d20 Second Half
1 A- 1-b (or -bert)
2 Be- 2 -ff
3 Co- 3 -g (or -gory)
4 Da- 4 -gax
5 Do- 5 -gh
6 E- 6 -larthen
7 Ga- 7 -ll
8 Gre- 8 -lric
9 Gy- 9 -m (or -mas)
10 Je- 10 -n (or -nald)
11 Kee- 11 -nan
12 Keo- 12 -ntz
13 Ku- 13 -rey
14 Lo- 14 -rneson
15 Pe- 15 -rren
16 Po- 16 -ry
17 Ro- 17 -therland
18Su- 18 -ve (or -vid)
19 To- (or Tho-) 19 -well
20 Xy- 20 -wry


Some examples

 - If you roll an 8 for the first part and a 12 for the second, you get: Grentz (sounds like an evil cleric to me)

 - If you roll a 6 and a 3, you get: Eg or Egory (I would probably go with Egory, but both could work depending on the character you have in mind)

 - If you roll a 14 and a 17, you get: Lotherland (perhaps a good name for a Conan-type barbarian?)

 - And if you roll a 20 and 6, you get: Xylarthen! (the name of a wizard, of course)


Accepting or adjusting results

There are over 400 possible combinations.

The first three of the examples above (Grentz, Eg/Egory and Lotherland) were rolled randomly as I was writing this post. 

For the last one (Xylarthen), I cheated and just picked the results I wanted (as you could too). Shout out to the original magic-user Xylarthen.

While it is possible to roll a cool and novel name with this table, many (most?) of the resulting names will give off utterly silly old-school vibes. This is supposed to be a feature, not a bug. It can be fun to just roll with a wacky name and see how it colours your game.

What is a bug, however, is that some combinations will result in mundane names like Dave or Gary. In these cases, I suggest rerolling the whole name or just the second half.


P.S. As the attentive old-schooler can guess, the name halves were taken from the authors and illustrators of OD&D and Chainmail (see Sources) as well as a couple other names mentioned in those books.

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