I need one of these for foreign names. :)

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Depending on what kind of foreign names, this might help:

http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/

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I love LJ. *Chuckle* And I can even order in bulk.

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That's the one I was going to suggest as well. :)

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I now have over 600 Unique French Female and 300 Unique French Male names. Let's hear it for the Excel Filter Feature. :)

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I don't think I'll ever forget Lyndon Flywheel, and the sacrifices he made for us.

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Wonderful resource! I also am getting quite uesed to the convenience of having wifi/laptop at the table. The Hypertext d20SRD alone has saved us hours of looking things up.

Lyndon Flywheel would be proud!

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VERY useful - many thanks!

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Thank... you... sir! This is going to come in very handy. It would be cool if it had an "era" selection as well to get common names based on the era the game is taking place in, but this will definitely be added to my bookmarks.

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I had a go and the first rare name it came up with was Rob Bohl, the name of one of my LJ friends!

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Oh yes, this puppy will see lots of use. You, sir, are the man!

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Never again will players at the table know an NPC is unimportant because she has no name...

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While it's in dead tree form only, have you heard about the book of names called The Story Games Names Project? It's got a pretty good preview on the website, and I personally don't ever go to conventions without it anymore.

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Terrific.
Thanks for the good linkage.

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I have one good link for American first names by year: http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/

For names from all over the world, Kate Monk's Onomastikon is useful. Not a scholarly source, but great for fiction: http://tekeli.li/onomastikon/

I could keep going, but I have a *lot* of name-related sites bookmarked. You can look through them here: http://del.icio.us/coeli/names

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I find this strange from the gent who famously advised us all (in Ribin's Laws of Good Gamemastering) to *prepare* a list of names, appropriate to the particular game setting, for use at the table.

Surely it's quicker, more setting-appropriate, and less obtrusive mid-game, to look it up on such a list?

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Well, you could use the online generator to make the list.

I did just that and printed out several pages of Elven, Dwarven, Orcish, and "Generic Fantasy" names for my D&D game years ago.

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> in Ribin's Laws of Good Gamemastering

Dang. Probably not a good idea to misspell the man's name on his own journal.

That should, of course, be "Robin's Laws of Good Gamemastering".

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My point is that Robin has indicated he's *not* following his own advice. This indicates he's not using a prepared list, but instead is using a laptop to access the site during the game:

> This will be my new best friend for gaming purposes, now that I’m playing with a wifi-enabled laptop at the table. Coming up with decent names on the fly is even tougher than doing so for a work of fiction.

So, is this a case of Robin saying "Do as I say, not as I do"?

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Paper lists are so twentieth century.

@Robin thanks for posting this!

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> Paper lists are so twentieth century.

If faster lookup, better setting-appropriateness, and less obtrusiveness is "so twentieth century", then so be it.

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I usually use this one:

http://www.kleimo.com/random/name.cfm

which does basically the same thing, but lets you fine-tine the results a little bit more.

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Great resource, especially since players will see you consulting the laptop and think you're looking up an actual NPC instead of somebody you just conjured up.

Once in Call of Cthulhu, my players became convinced the mayor of the town was involved in the evil shenanigans. The mayor wasn't even meant to be in the story -- I just happened to mention him and they got fixated. When the time came for them to break into the poor man's house and ransack his belongings for a Secret Cult Altar, I flipped to another part of the scenario book and found a house floorplan from a different adventure entirely to use, impromptu. Of course, what the players saw was me flipping pages in the book and then running the house break. One of them even said after the break-in went pear-shaped, "But the mayor's house was in the book! We have to be on the right track!"

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> players will see you consulting the laptop and think you're looking up an actual NPC instead of somebody you just conjured up.

As opposed to consulting your notes on paper, where you have Prepared to Be Spontaneous with a setting-appropriate list of names?

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