The Power of Names || D&D with Dael Kingsmill 

I came up with a fairy name that I'm really proud of. A fairy was asked what it's name was, and so it looked around and named the first thing it saw. "Nighttime". I love the idea that this creature looked around and instead of perceiving anything in the scene, it saw the time of day. It's just a little alien to think as the time of day as an object at hand. And then my players used Nighttime like a name for 4 sessions, and it was cool

After gaining the favor from an Archfey she promised she’d send some help at a time the party needed it. He showed up without introduction and someone asked “are you the help?” And he responds “sure that name works, I’m The Help”

Every "Mike" Dael has ever hung out with just asked themselves "am I the one with the annoying laugh?"

I love how most of the Monarch’s Factory videos I’ve seen are just an idea that Dael can’t get out of her mind so she has to talk about it.

I'm posting a second comment because I love this topic so much and I can't be stopped. When it comes to True Names, in my setting I have it so speaking a devil's true name gives you power over them, and speaking a demon's true name gives them power over you. Speaking a demon's true name once makes it aware of your presence, twice opens your heart/soul to its influence, and a third time gives it permission to cross the planar barrier and get to you. As a result, demonologists refer to specific demons by epithets rather than their true names. And typically more notable demons have very, very long times. Like, names that take several minutes to pronounce correctly, which is what cultists are chanting when they're trying to summon or worship a fiend.

That MCDM True Name isn't just any old sheet music. It's the opening riff to For Whom the Bell Tolls.

12:27 When one of my cousins was very young she very solemnly told me that when you are naming a cat, it's important to remember that they have magic.

My favorite part of giving Dragons loads of titles, is having the party learn about 5 dragons and then it turns out they're all the same one.

Tiefling "virtue" names is one of my favourite aspects of all DnD lore

Can we request a supercut of you doing gnomish names in that high pitched gnome voice please. 😂

The bit about a Tiefling parent naming their child Sorrow reminds of Wednesday Addams, who was, in universe, named for a nursery rhyme line, "Wednesday's child is full of woe." Like, her mother looked at a baby and was like, "yeah, this kid's gonna be troubled."

Just this morning a co-worker and I were coming up with an archfey antagonist for my campaign world who was exiled from the Feywild by his peers for exceeding his ambitions, and he was attempting to harvest joy from children in order to reconnect and return to the Feywild. It was decided that his name was the Duke of Dour Gloaming.

I have an English name and a Romani name in addition to a Romani nickname, so this is a favorite topic. Growing up, my impression was always that names had a power over the fae because humans are the only ones with the power to name things. Name a dark forest and we gain power over it. Name a monster and suddenly it seems more coherent and understandable. Might be cause the idea goes back to Genesis and the Garden of Eden, but I have always felt like 'naming' was the one supernatural humans have that gives us an edge over the misbegotten strange things in a more magic world. Naming (and semiotics) is OUR one and only true magic. The experience of the world getting less magical or smaller as we expanded our understanding of it through history, as we name every last square mile on the planet, is just the natural outcome of that supernatural gift given to humankind. Fae (and demons or devils and all the other things) do not protect their names because their names are inherently powerful on their own. Fae protect their names because their names have power *in the hands of a human*, even if that power is merely a diminishment of the named thing's own strength.

I keep telling my boyfriend about your "email this to your grandma" line because I think it is the funniest outro. I have of course made it more and more impossible for him to appreciate the hilarity in the line with every explanation of its brilliance.

Talking about fun naming conventions in D&D lore and also the Jellicle Cats, Tabaxi names are my personal favourites. So poetic and tied to the character. Brook in the Vale, Mist of the Morning, Dew on the Window

PC: WHY DO YOU CALL IT RAVING RIDGE? NPC: *confused, dancing, points to the river* River: *rave sounds* Also "Tall Mike" makes me think of Fa...-bulous Neil from Community. Faerie name: Fair-wind Nancy, Bottled Bill, the Delightsome Tower

Me: "Wait, did the back-" Dael: "IT'S NOT IMPORTANT RIGHT NOW!" Me: "Ok, let's talk about names, then."

1:05 Ah, yes. The legendary Gnomish blacksmith. Shrinklilly, the Swoll.

the concept of true names being a musical tune gave me goosebumps, thats so cool!

Halfway through any of Dael's videos I'm always astonished at HOW MUCH stuff there is in them. So many little ideas and glimpses into process. And then the poetry starts. Love. It.

My favorite D&D names are Kenku names, 'cause they come in the level of "specific sound effect that only Kenku can replicate" and "how everyone describes that sound in Common." So we can have our pirate bird named "[the sound of the hammer being pulled back on a flintlock pistol], or Pistolclick to the rest of you," while our librarian can be "Pageturner... well, [the rustling of someone rapidly flipping through a book to find the right page] to be precise."

❤❤ As a Brazilian, what a joy to see you referencing a relatively small city in the northeastern corner of our country… and using Brazilian Portuguese as a template for naming places in a fantasy setting. You ended up with a beautiful name. Thanks for another precious video.

Dael Kingsmill inadvertantly being inspired by mythology!? Truly no one could have foreseen this. 😜

I love the idea of true-naming an NPC fairy after a player at the table and having them get really nervous whenever there's table talk.

I love the idea of feys "creating" complex names and languages to throw off mortals from finding their true "simple" names

I have a fairy that regularly helps people in exchange for strange favors and the like, almost a reverse Hag in the sense that it’s helpful but never quite what you asked for. His name is “Next Tuesday” because the first person that he helped he told to come back in a week and the person thanked him and then said see you next Tuesday, as a declaration. He mistook that for a goodbye and he was so touched that a mortal gave him a name that he kept it.

I love the Wee Free Men's 'Not as Wee as Wee Davey but not as big as Medium Davey Davey' for pure silliness but also descriptive flavour. I also like the idea of using this fairy naming approach to Brownies, because surely you'd just wind up with "Hungry Joe" or "Jane of the Cookie Jar." "Milkjug Henry" and "Felix Spindleturner"

Ajax, the Wizened Red Wizard. Boom. Send it. A BBEG the party would never expect

The Doctor and the Master etc are viable methods for naming Fey, with or without a proper name added to the beginning. I like the idea that different areas of the world might give them different given names. Isaac the Doctor is Doctor Wong is Jamal the Doctor, thus to those that know them in several places they are 'the doctor'. Kinda fits with stories like Lugh petitioning to become a member of the Tautha. they already had a smith, and a healer, etc. and he became the sage by asking if they had ... well honestly a know it all. lol

I LOVE the idea of a true name being something like a tune.

Damn ! I'm finalizing the prep for when my players will enter my version of "neck deep into fae territory". This timing is incredible thank you. I love the idea of fae simply saying "you may call me *this*" and sharing a simple given name

My favorite naming scheme of Forgotten Realms’ dragons is when they have a crazy name that gets reduced to common, which then becomes a regular word. This is how the word “inferno” became a word in common, from the ancient red dragon “Imvaernarho.” So fun. Also easy to work back from; find an evocative word in common and bastardize it into something close but strange enough to sound like a name

Grouping names for "normal folk" by primary ability score is genius, I never would have thought of that. Having specific conventions for highly unusual or magic creatures like dragons or fairies doesn't feel like a contradiction of that great idea

As usual, Sir Pterry Pratchett provides: Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sised-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock. The Wee Free Men have excellent names that really help explain some of their culture and philosophy

Your uncle , Mr kettlewell, a teacher in Australia put your videos on in my elective history class

I hope Dael doesn't take offense to this, but I have a rule in my D&D campaign world: every gnome character and NPC must be named by throwing two darts at a map of Australia. Seriously. It works. Every Australian town sounds like the name of a gnome. Try it! Marla Ravensthorpe. Leonora Cocklebiddy. Roxby Downs. Barkly Opalton. Wagga Wagga Wollongong. Derby Drysdale. I challenge anyone to prove me wrong.

I once joined a DM friend’s Witchlight campaign as a one-session guest player. I was a creepy fae character simply introduced as “a friend”. A mossy satyr/goblin type little figure with a wide smile that had far too many sharp little teeth in it.

I came up with a naming convention that I consider to be quite good for Kenku. It takes the Kenku Mimicry and runs with it. Kenku have two names: their Kenku name, and their Common name. The Kenku name is a literal sound that the parents heard when they were born, while the Common name is the description of that sound. My PC was born to a family that lived near a collection of ruins on the edge of a city that sat perched on a wind-blown cliff top, so he was called Wind-in-Ruins by his party members and the actual sound of wind blowing through ruins at night by his family. I thought it was a really neat thing that leans into part of what makes Kenkus unique.

Making a simple naming language might be THE most underrated strategy in worldbuilding! Following a guide, you can create a faux language for your setting in just an hour or two. No grammar or dictionary necessary - just a list of sounds and how they legally combine. Here are the advantages: - Your world will feel real, because people and places will have unique names like in the real world (instead of English names like they often do in fiction) - Each culture gets a distinct naming convention which is wholly unique to your setting - You can show off relationships between different cultures through their language - You can design your language to subtly evoke real-world cultures without being an obvious clone - You can easily come up with personal names using the constraints imposed by your naming language - It sets up an "iceberg effect," where your players will believe that the world is far more fleshed out than what you've shown them Given how easy it is, I think it's totally worth the time. Worldbuilders spend way more time freaking out about much smaller things.

i laughed a little at the references to MCDM's "naming conventions" because anytime someone asked matt on stream about his naming conventions and how he comes up with names his answer is basically "is that how things are named? with rules/guidelines? i dont think it is."

I am reminded of the fun Neil Gaimon had with the Jacks of all Trades in his "Graveyard Book"

This reminds me of the Witchlight Campaign that I was in. I played a Warforged. A lot of Warforged had names that were their purpose. The intention was that mine was the same. But then they got lost in the Carnival, and then lost something of great importance. Whenever someone asks their name they respond "My name is gone, you cannot have it." The party called me 'Gone'.

The first Fey my players are going to encounter is going by the name 'Carlo Poletto' - as a subtle reference to Pinocchio.

A couple of things I came up with/adopted from who knows where for my homebrew setting: 1) Elves pick their name (and gender) at the age of majority. I picked this one up from Ann Leckie's Provenance. Since elves who live in mixed communities often feel the need to 'graduate with the class,' as it were, you have a whole subset of elves who opted to become adults at 18, instead of 50, and go through a sort of protracted adolescence. 2) Dragons have names, but also titles, and are always 'the' something, because no dragon would accept an indefinite article. 3) Devils collect names, which are the tool by which they forge and enforce deals. Closing enough deals earns new names and promotion to higher orders of devil. Breaking deals takes away the names they are sealed against, demoting the devil. The higher the name they seal the pact against, the greater its power and the more they stand to lose if they are somehow forced to renege. I think I borrowed the basics of this from the webcomic Kill Six Billion Demons. 4) Demons collect names. They just pick them up and start using them to take the mick out of devils. 5) Any name a faerie owns eventually becomes its name, with some or all the baggage that entails, so the fey prefer titles or descriptors to names. Names are things they pick up and put down circumstantially. Jack of the Bracken is likely only Jack of the Bracken for his dealings with one specific human or small group of humans, to prevent the name sinking into his bones. To others, he would be the Duke on the Heath, the Lost Boy, or Whistle-Down-the-Wind. Conversely to dragons, a fairy known as Jenny Greenteeth is likely not *the* Jenny Greenteeth, just *a* Jenny Greenteeth.

On the topic of Virtue Names, the actual play podcast The Wizard, The Witch, and The Wild One (from Worlds Beyond Number by Brennan Lee Mulligan, Aabria Iyengar, Lou Wilson, and Erika Ishii) has something similar with the Citadel Wizards of their setting. In the first episode, during a scene introducing Suvi’s - Aabria’s character’s - parents, Brennan asked Aabria for a single word that described each of them. The mother became Stone, and the father Soft - both names taken on by them as Wizards of the Citadel. There’s also names like Pain and Morrow. I really love the idea of these sorts of names, ones that describe aspects of the character plainly.

I like giving dragons a name AND both a complimentary epithet and a derogatory epithet, and then a title: Kathridris Dreadflight, the Tyrant, the Beautiful, the Butcher, the Infinite, He Who Rules the World

I once had a hummingbird aarakocra character. First name was Flooty, after the wind instrument, and the last name Hum, from his tribe/family. Parents were also renditions of things like Oboe and Clarinet.

Midway through the fey section, the name Robin Swallows took center stage in my brain with a very heavy emphasis on the homonyms Many thanks for this new danger bird of an npc

I love different name lore in dnd! gnomes collect names (I like to think they trade names and bequeath them in their wills too), kenku names are transliterated into descriptions of a sound central to their identity, elves chose their names as part of their coming of age, tiefling names represent a destiny or aspiration whether chosen by the individual or their family, firbolgs come from a culture that don't use names, dragons see their names as reflecting their importance.

3.5 fairy name I came up with recently, a "petal" (1.5' tall, 3 lb. winged fey with hair and wings the color of flowers and wearing tiny leaves woven or sewn into clothing) named Noddin Rose, so called for the rose-red color of his hair and wings and the fact that he often nods to himself to emphasize what he's saying. Someone called him Nodding Rose but he didn't like the "g" sound, so he dropped it when he tells mortals what they can call him. Most petals are NG, and act as mere servantsm messengers, and attendants for more powerful fey, being 1 hit die, sometimes advancing to 2 or 3 hit dice due to surviving long enough. Petals are known for helping travelers get a good, comfortable, and long night's sleep, whether they want it or not, and they do so by singing lullaby and sleep magic. Noddin Rose however is a rare petal who was fascinated by more arcane and eldritch magics, was blessed with superior abilities, and has mastered several levels in both bard and warlock classes, and while he seldom acts the part, has essentially become a significant member of the Seelie Court...

Oh man I'm SO PUMPED for a new arc I thought of bc of what you said about humans! BBEG is a mortal trying to find their true name to unlock their true connection to magic. Please y'all let me know if you gravitate to one of these motives more than the others or have another idea! -Perhaps they are trying to give all material plane beings their true name in order to make the plane dominant? Somewhat understandable motive and could easily have a great backstory for them. Sparks a planar war? -Perhaps they are seizing enough power to cut the connection between all beings and their true names because they believe it to be too much power for any being to possess. That would cause SO much chaos if the party doesn't/can't stop it (hehehehehe end of campaign and start the next one dystopian 100 years later?) -Perhaps the previous point but only cutting the connection of, say, Devils. Their spouse entered a faustian deal to safely deliver their child without the bbeg knowing about the deal. She tells them before dying after childbirth but ..... heheheh fine print...... the child survives the birth but dies 6 months later. Now bbeg has sworn to destroy all Devils -Perhaps they angered some deity who punished them with an Eldrich-style moment of understanding of their true name before it was taken away again. Now they will tirelessly, senselessly, mercilessly, search for their true name because they feel nothing anymore.... less than empty without it. Do they go for the deity afterwards? Do they get driven further into insanity once they learn it bc mortals are not meant for that connection? Is their body possessed by another being (maybe the same deity) as an avatar on the material plane (queue Calamity)? Soooo many possibilities so few campaigns!!!!

I love the idea of magic from knowing your true name Sorcerers know it inherently, but that brings risk of sharing it, especially with a fae. Wizards are working to learn theirs. Clerics have been gifted the knowledge of their gods true name,druids the land they protect, and warlocks have stollen their patrons. That last part needs work, and I don't know how to work in half casters

As the Party marches southward, past Covered Brook Town, a gentle flute plays a series of Cs and Gs, and everyone looses their weapons from their scabbards; cautious that Knucklebone Henry, the Pan-Player of Pity lurks nearby...

Your approach to attribute-based character naming is really compelling, and it adds a unique depth to character creation. Applying the same principle to locations, using names that symbolize their role or significance in the setting, is a fantastic tip that I'll definitely utilize. The concept of adapting T.S. Eliot's 'naming of cats' to characters-assigning them a common, dignified, and secret name-strikes me as incredibly ingenious. This could add a new dimension when creating characters for the Faewild; the secret name could potentially act as their 'true name.' Love the thoughtfulness that's been put into these ideas!

I came up with a sea hag villain for my pirate campaign named captain Jill salt eyes. She collect sailors lost in the sea of the feywild to join her crew called the neverdead, imagine davy Jones’ crew mixed with the lost boys from peter pan. Jill was a name given to her by her crew so they had something to refer to her with, and salt eyes was a nickname given to her by her victims because her face is horrifying enough to bring salty tears to your eye, or maybe she got it because people who saw her ship thought that they where just seeing things because they had salt water in their eyes. Also she like to mutate her crew with magic. Like she made one guy infinitely grow teeth to use as amo in his gun.

Vague and evocative is something I bring beyond my DnD games, but into all my other performances. Truly brilliant.

Oh, THANK YOU for reciting Eliot's "The Naming of Cats"! I do so love Old Possum and all his feline verses. (And we shan't talk about Mr. Lloyd Webber.)

I created my own fey name generator to replicate Susanna Clarke's names. Some of my favourites: Lib Seen-Dimly, Cheesebrass, Pinch-Tuesday, Donkeyshadow, Sir Hugh Ivymilk and Giacomo Tuppence

Fairy name: Let's see. Start with a less than common name from one of the more than common races. Then mush it with something about the being since it's an outwardly given name. Maybe an event or place they frequent. Ooh, I've got one. Dael Kingsmill fits the criteriia

I really enjoyed Brennan Lee Mulligan’s lore about names in Worlds Beyond Number where the more names/titles a “great spirit” has, the more powerful it’s meant to be. Was terrifying to learn after the party met a spirit who had 3 names/titles.

Well done! There is magic in humans who choose their own names, and some of us have our hidden preferred names usable by a select few.

I once made a Dragonborn path-of-the-beast barbarian for a one shot who was raised from hatching by pixies , so his name was Jellyfrost. The juxtaposition of the name, which represented his personality well, and the animalistic nature that came out when he was angry (usually when civilization was doing bad to the natural world) was a big hit.

In this video I just learned how the city of Marseille got its name.

The burly gnome blacksmith "names thread needle" The party "thread needle?" Gnome blacksmith shrugging"the folks were tailors"

I don't have a faerie name but Ghlower Craghwind the Black sails on massive leathery wings, haunting the entire southern coastline. Her reputation(read: legend) stretches along the winding road from the township of Shoreway to the decedent gardens of the capital, Coronation.

My weirdest trick for naming things-the artists on Magic the Gathering cards. I have a bunch of piles of MTG cards over there and sometimes when I'm prepping, I just write down a bunch of first or last names from MTG artists. Last week in a new city the players met Kasia Zielenska, Miklos, Magali, Terryn. To be honest, that was the first thing I figured out about the characters, and it let me build them out from there. Zielenska is such a sharp and foreign name that to me it made sense that she was the guard captain. I guess my advice is to find names of real people, take pieces of them, and let it inspire you when you're missing that inspiration for a character.

My favorite NPC was a fairy with the stage-name Brock Honeybug. He was a world famous bard that talked like Dusty Rhodes and had a variety of nicknames (the Dean of Desire, the Earl of Ecstacy, the Leprechaun of Love). The party desperately wanted to learn his true name, and when they found out it was Gildy Cabbage and confronted him with it, the fairy lost all of his power and became an emo artist going through an existential crisis. Of course this lead to a Quest into the feywild to return Brock to his old (and much less obnoxious) self. So much fun!

I love figuring out names for the characters I create, and I have done everything you mentioned. One of my favorite rules for Gnomes is long, ridiculous, hard-to-pronounce, and multisyllabic for men, but easy names for women.

I enjoyed the cat names bit, thanks for discovering that poem to me! Also, great video as always)

I love your "Cooking not Baking" approach to naming cities. I made a city that I literally had no map for that I called "Eastharbor" and just in the name we found out a whole lot out of it.

I'm minding the background. This is what an evil Dael Kingsmill video would look like

Matt Colville: Dragonborn have these weird names and ways of speaking. Also Matt Colville: I need a name for this Man-dragon that betrays the king... I have it! Mandrake the Betrayer! (Which is a great name to be honest)

Oh my goodness, names are like the top thing I obsessively think about when it comes to worldbuilding. I have been in the process of writing a multi-part blog series on naming all kinds of things, hopefully some day I will finish and post them. I love the idea of having premade lists for personality traits. I think I subconsciously grade character names according to personality when I do a vibe check for specific characters, but it isn't something I tried to specifically sort out before - I'll have to try that! And I agree so much with the place name tips. It's funny you listed Fortune as an example, I have a pirate town called Port Fortune.

When you talk about Fae names, I'm reminded of Tad Williams' Tailchaser's Song and the notion of binding your True Name inside a Taken Name in the Skulduggery Pleasant series.

Oh almighty algorithm! Shine your light upon Dael and her creations, för she is a source of much joy and inspiration.

I’ve always liked quality/virtue names for tieflings. Some of my favorites have been Exoneration, Temperance, Heaven… especially for true-breeding tieflings in cities, these sort of names tell you so much about their place in society.

Dael's right. Susanna Clarke's absolutely nailed unsettling fey names.

Literally did this for a greek-inspired campaign. Read a travel book on the Greece islands and started smashing words together: Lefkeplos, Pelagos, Kantosa, Ephisaem, Patrasae and so on.

My favourite dragon name is, naturally, Vermithrax Pejorative - "The Worm of Thrace which Makes Things Worse" And, speaking of dragons, the slayer of Glaurung - Túrin Turambar - called himself Agarwaen son of Úmarth (Bloodstained son of Ill-Fate). I always liked the idea that Ursula K le Guin used in her Earthsea stories - that knowing the True Name of something gives you power over it

I run my games as a series of oneshot adventures but it's always the same party each game, so I do have a vaguely defined overall plot (like quest that relate to PC backstories or a 3-4 session long BBEG plot). Because of this often I'll end up creating places unique to that adventure as a result it's become a bit of a running joke in my games that I'll give these places and the establishments in those places silly names to signify that these places aren't important beyond that adventure. Some examples are; Some Town You’re Never Coming Back To, So I Didn’t Bother Coming Up With A Clever Name. There's was a small cluster of villages with the names: This Town, That Town, Your Town, My Town, and Their Town. A trading post named Something Important Sounding, But Not Too Important Sounding. A run down tavern, where the sign on the door read Withered away by time. That being said, the places that I know the party will be going back to a lot like the main hub town have more sensible names as the players may need to remember these location as they will be going back there when we touch upon that vaguely defined overall plot. *edit* When it comes to naming npcs, I generally don't have any race or occupation dependent naming conventions I just name them what ever sounds right, with 3 exceptions: Gnomes, Kobolds, and random npc's that have no story relevance the party want to know the name of. Gnomes always have cute silly names like Gooseberries Mopolopeles no mater their occupation (in my game instead of orc herds I have Gnome herds which makes this quite funny). Kobolds are named after onomatopoeias ie, Bonk or Thud. and those random npc's are given what ever 3-4 letter long name fist pops into my head.

I had a fey pact warlock player whose entire family were named after precious stones. Their patron was an anise hag called Granny Snaggletooth. She regularly played cards (using a deck of many things) with the BBEG, an archfey called Madam Magpie, the jealous sister of the Raven Queen.

"Boom. Easy. Doneso." is how I will end every good point from now on.

Another amazing vid from Dael. I yelled (at a reasonable volume in my head) when she said Brutus, as we just had a strong NPC by that name die during a sending spell *gasp*. Aside from that, fascinating content as always, thank you!

I arrogantly thought I already knew a lot about naming in DnD. But of cause, Dael had some great points I never thought about!

I once ran a one-shot adventure (that took 4 sessions to play :P) where the party were caught up in a conflict between an archfey and an ex-warlock of his. The gimmick of the whole shebang was using names to gain power over each character. Everyone was referring to the NPCs in jumbled acronyms and the conflict arose when the warlock learned his master's true name. Both sides tried to appeal to the party and they had to decide who to align with. It was very fun!

Good to know I'm on the same page as a you on a lot of this stuff. My personal homebrew fantasy setting is centered around a massive magical metropolis called Amalgam, where humans, elves, and dwarves live alongside monsters, undead, and outsiders. The major factions vying for power and control in the city all have simple, easy to remember names (the Battalion, the Sewer Rats, the Ancients, the Freakshow, etc.). As do most of the neighborhoods (Seven Hills, the Towers, the Grotto, the Foundry, etc.)

In the game Rain World has some excellent names for their bizarre ancient beings such as: "Droplets Upon Five Large Droplets" "Six Grains of Gravel, Mountains Abound" "Looks To The Moon" "Five Pebbles"

Two of my lore-building names I'm proud of actually follow two of the principles you mentioned! Naming a place after a word/quality of the place: the biggest independent city-state on my continent, which prides itself on its populace's diversity and locale's beauty, is named Mosaic. Giving a person a name yourself because they won't or in this case can't: I once played a Kenku who was adopted by Halflings as a baby who hadn't yet heard any speech and could really only mimic one or two sounds. The first sound her adoptive parents heard her mimic was cricket calls, so they named her Cricket, and it stuck.

Cannot wait for Ben Byrne's rebuttal to this and how it relates to necromancy amd grim dark fantasy hahaha. What a great video again Dael!!! There is so much you can do with names in a fantasy campaign

I had a lot of fun naming spirits in my world of darkness game. I like the idea of an aspect to non-human sentience being that others can manipulate who you are at a deep level. The faeries who repairs shoes, for instance, probably did not start that way, but their interaction with some hero of the past changed their nature to be helpful. So, my favorite name from the new world of darkness was a spirit of a botanical garden named Six Trellis Climber. A group had formed a temporary cult with the goal of transforming this Spirit into something more dangerous that they could control. If the players had not stopped the cult, I would have had the Spirit take on a new true name.

In my current game, the king accidentally pronounced the PCs the "Winter Champions" because they won a midwinter tournament. THE Winter Champion, a powerful fae knight, appeared to accept the challenge and wrecked the party

One excellent source for fey names is the 13 Yule Lads of Iceland. A lot of them boil down to "Noun Verb-er", like Candle Stealer, Door Slammer, or Spoon Licker. A few break that convention, like Stubby and Gully Gawk. They were a big source of inspiration for me when DMing some campaigns for Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures, which is a lovely little OSR game with a lot of importance given to True Names. I love the tone and aesthetic of the setting, and one thing it does is give all fey, demons, spirits, elves, dwarves, gnomes, etc. a true name, and there are specific mechanical benefits to learning an entity's True Name. Also, gaining a True Name unlocks the system's equivalent of feats for player characters. There is a lot to love about the system and I recommend it. Anyways, I came up with some fey names, both True and not, that I enjoyed a lot, like Takesies Backsies, Minister Nicholas, or just stealing Yule Lad names.

I got a hag shopkeeper named Marcella Crittercackle in my DnD campaign who tricks adventures into the nearby swamp by offering to pay them handsomely for random ingredients, and them ambushing them and selling their stuff from her store.

The most significant group of fae in my current homebrew campaign are a series of river spirits (because classic Greek mythology has permeated so much of D&D's base assumptions, so nereids are fey) known collectively as the Daughters of the Rille, after the lake that the rivers all flow into or out of. The party has wisely(?) never asking any of them for their names, so I tend to refer to them by honorifics tied to their river, such as Lady Par for the spirit of the river Par, or the Lady of the Roar (the paladin's fey patron) for the spirit they meet at a waterfall. Also, for dragon names: the Dragon Shout syllables from Skyrim work beautifully to construct names with. So you gets names like Rahgolsu'um, Paaroblaan, and Grahkrest.

The gnome named Sue would be a super buff brawler with an absent father.

For my first Tiefling character, I took inspiration from a local homeless shelter. I don't remember the exact wording, but the shelter's name was meant to be like Mercy House, but it became known as the Misery House. I ended up naming my Tiefling character Misery, but, in game canon, he was supposed to be named Mercy.

When looking at names of dragons, they always felt so hard to pronounce. I had never thought about the differences in mouth physiology! I love the idea that dragons talk differently because of that. Also, your poem about the Naming of Cats was so good! I loved it!

Just want to add something here from my actual life. At one point I was in a department where 5 Jessicas all sat together. We got annoyed with everyone coming over and just saying "Jessica" and catching all of us off guard. So one of us got to be Jessica. Another went by Jess. And two of us went by our last names only. I think sometimes people avoid reusing names in RPGs, but in the real world these kinds of things happen OFTEN. I've been able to execute this idea in my RPGs before - 2 shopkeepers in nearby cities had the same first name. They sold DRASTICALLY different things (one was an herbalist and the other a map maker). People mixed them up all the time and the players loved making jokes about it. Sometimes another NPC would annoy them and they would send them to the wrong shop keeper on purpose. But yeah, tl;dr give multiple NPCs the same name and enjoy

Names are a great way to do world building without exposition dumps. Try this: Write out the history of a battle; then translate that story into place names, and personal names (for example here in America alot of people are named Washington and Jefferson because of both freed slaves and people who served under them when they were generals.) Then by looking at the names players can figure out the history.

the cat naming and fey naming systems are coolest thing ever