You’ve began your new game, either WIP / published, you get to the MC’s name section…you chose to input your own name…and then you spend the next hour looking up name ideas and working out the right name for your MC because you wanted to be different and refused to pick one of the perfectly good suggestions the author gave you to chose from.
No, you chose to input your own name, but now are struggling to think of anything good. The author had the creativity to write this whole game, while you struggle to string two brain cells together to think up a good name, when all you can think is “Bob”.
You stubbornly input Bob anyway…
Nowadays, I’m a bit quicker at actually finding good names now that I’ve discovered Behind the Name and that I’m a bit more practised at googling the right terms to find a reliable source of names.
Names matter, if I pick a name then as I get further into the game, the name I chose suddenly doesn’t seem to fit into the context or fit with the NPC’s names, I restart the game.
If the game isn’t something modern, then I like to have a name that seems to make sense with whatever naming scheme or world building is going on, and I want to use something that isn’t one of the default options
Normally I just pick one of the default options, especially if the setting is fantasy or something similar. I only try typing one myself if I really don’t like any of the options available.
I kinda have the same mindset like yours but not as deep like having it reach some level of perfection. I tend to choose names that fit with the settings (time, eras, etc) and I have to have different names for different PCs with different personalities in different routes just because.
I usually tend to pick from the default list unless I’m really not a fan of the names. For some reason having it come from the author directly makes me feel like my character is more connected with the world.
I tend to pick from the default list because I don’t like coming up with names, the default ones are supposedly pre-thought to be fitting in the world and presumably cause no conflicts, and if I end up restarting every five minutes typing is just a waste of time. I don’t really care about the names that much, I’ll just headcanon it later to a different one if I feel like it (and it’s not a series, in which case I might need to replay after I do have a name in mind).
I have a name for both medival times and mordern. I use Libtech Mk for mordern and Leexius Markae for medieval times. No matter the genre or anything else those names does it for me.
A quick way to choose a name without using the same one each time: Anagram the title. That’s why I always playtest The Eternal Library as Larry the rebel Tian.
I have a list of names in Google Docs. I’ve had it for a long time, even before I started playing IFs. I just like collecting names. They are also divided into categories, so there’s almost always something suitable for a given MC.
i have a name bank of sorts but i can adjust if there are naming conventions to be considered (for example: looking up a Kurdish name for A Tale of Crowns or looking namesakes of a specific color for my dragon in Ashenmaw)
