Ultimate Name Guide for Fantasy/Sci-Fi Writing & Worldbuilding

Coming up with names for your fantasy or sci-fi world can be quite the undertaking. It’s one thing to craft names for a world that is yours and yours alone; it’s another thing to do it when you’re going to have an audience. Are you doing it right? Is there a better way to come up with names for people, places and things? Are you naming too much?

Checkout our logic based name generator, allowing you to rely on several languages to craft meaningful names for our world.

You have an amazing world and an amazing story brewing with unique people, places and things, and a string of letters that form each name. But something has made you question your ideas. Maybe it was friendly feedback. Maybe you’re suddenly hitting a wall when it comes to ideas. Or maybe, you’re just not sure if you’re doing this right.

This 3,000 word guide is broken into two major sections, which are further broken down into in depth subsections. Use the table of contents below to easily navigate through the guide, or read the whole thing:

Advanced Concepts in Name Crafting

Having Fun with Names – Tikki Tikki Tembo Concept
Power and Status through Names
The Evolution of Names
Slang and Nicknames

The Basics of Name Crafting

First, let’s start with the am I doing it right question. The fact is, this is your story, so you are the only one who can govern what’s right and what’s wrong. If you like the name Gofurk and it’s nothing more than random gibberish that came into your head one day, that’s ok.

While right is in the mind of the creator, if your work is for others to see, you may worry about your audience. Will they like Gofurk? Does his name even fit the character? Does his name even mean anything? Can I come up with other names that fit the feel of my story?

Creating Names at Random

Already, we’ve established that randomly coming up with a string of letters and calling it a name or even a word is ok to do in your story. It’s your story after all, and some authors have had a really good time in creating random names. If you have already been doing this, you have probably instinctively come up with naturally fitting names for the people and places in your story. For instance, Gofurk might be a bumbling ogre with half a brain. And Lorella might be a dark seductress. And there is real science behind your instincts.

Nonsensical words can actually seem sensible or not, which is important when you’re considering the reader. If your story is meant to be humorous, then going full “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” style with names like Zaphod Beeblebrox and Slartibartfast is a must.

The problem is the gray areas, when you’re just on the fence about whether or not your invention is going to be accepted or not. You have two good options in this situation: ask for an unbiased opinion or throw it out completely. The last option is probably the best because it’s an act of validating your own instincts.

Aside from ensuring your readers are going to buy into the names you create, the random name generation has another obstacle, which is good idea generation. Already, you’re putting in a great deal of creative energy and research into your story, it’s very likely that the first thing to fizzle is coming up with a long list of fitting words for all the people, places and things in your story. This is where the rest of the guide comes into play by posing logical systems for naming that might help automate the idea and believability process.

Understanding Historical Naming Origins

Historically names of people, places and things have had roots in a descriptor, religious concept or people group. For example, Mississippi means the Father of Waters. If you consider the size and importance of the Mississippi River, that name makes perfect sense. Hawaii means Place of the Gods. France is named for the Franks. Ireland is derived from Eire, the name of a goddess.

There is the story of how Foster Pond, Illinois got its name(our telling is not as compelling): A man by the name of Foster owned a hotel along with a pond. The locals, when setting out, would ask each other, “Is Foster’s Pond Flooded?” If the pond was flooded, in turn flooding the road, they knew to take an alternate route. However, the pond and its status was so closely associated with the area that the town became named for it.

The point is, when coming up with names for people and places in your fantasy or sci-fi story, you can go random. You can even mash together well-known names, or you can really think about your world, the people who reside in it and create names with real meaning.

Borrowing from Current Naming Conventions

If you’re writing sci-fi and need names for buildings, stations and ships, consider current naming conventions. For example, many airports are named for notable people: JFK for President John F. Kennedy, O’Hare for Butch O’Hare. Many Saudi Arabian airports are named for kings and princes.

Therefore, stations and academies could be named for your story’s most notable people. The reader won’t particularly know unless the backstory appears somewhere, but this technique helps for idea generation, uniformity and adds logic for you and your reader.

When it comes to naming ships, you might think about naming them in the same way, after high ranking military heroes, or naming ships after planets, states or countries that exist in your world. However, there is room here to be clever, especially when it comes to smaller ships. Think about cars that are named for races and tracks. If you have a smaller ship known for its speed, especially in a certain type of race, it might make sense for it to adopt the name of the race.

Outside of buildings and transportation, there are other naming conventions that exist in the world around us that can help offer inspiration within your world. Think about the origin of certain breeds of horses or dogs, and how you can apply that concept within your world.

Borrowing from Other Languages

When it comes to naming, you do want to be careful when introducing new or foreign words to readers. Going overboard with it will cause distraction and destroy the reader’s connection. With that in mind, it is still worth it to consider borrowing words from other languages when contriving names for places.

Philadelphia, PA, brotherly love, is a great example of borrowing from another language, Greek. Phileo means to love and adelphos means brother. Combine that, and you have the city of brotherly love.

So maybe you have the city of Eternal Waters, and we’ll borrow from Finnish: eternal in Finnish is ikuinen and water is vesi. Now you combine these two words in a way that flows, Vesikuinen.

Unfortunately, your reader will have very little idea as to the origin of that word, but that doesn’t really matter. Vesikuinen makes for a great city name, and you have your own internal logic on how to create the names of your cities or countries.

Weaving In A Little Conlang?

First, if you’re not familiar with conlang, it’s the shortened term for the concept of language construction. Examples of conlangs are Klingon and Quenya. An incredible conlang resource is Mark Rosenfelder’s zompist.com.

The question is, should a constructed language or even a small vocabulary help in generating names?

This could greatly add to the meaning and quality of your story, but it could easily take away. Moderation is key. If you go too far, it’s going to confuse your readers and remove them from the overall story. If you don’t do it at all, you run the risk of seeming too superficial.

Here is a good rule of thumb to keep you from taking it too far, or causing you to worry about inventing an entire language before you can even start your story:

Keep major geographic landforms in your native language. That means a mountain is a mountain. A river is a river. A valley is a valley. A pass is a pass.

If you need to rename some landforms for the sake of ease and flow, surround this with enough context that the reader will understand. For example, if you change river to hote, make sure you talk about its current and how much it winds.

Avoid redundancy when changing the word for a certain landform. If hote is now river and you’re blending hote into the names of rivers, then the Verdehote River becomes redundant.

When a name pertains to a deity, or religious theme or idea, apply your constructed vocabulary. For example, your god’s name is Eppenhall; if a village is named for your god, it might be Eppenville. Going back to the river example, if you want to name your river for your god, you get Eppenhote (or even Eppenote for ease).

Keep colors in your native language, but use variations of the colors to give more depth to your name. Rather than the Yellow River, you could have Saffron River or going back to hote, you could call it Saffrote.

When you think about these best-practices, you’ll find that just by creatively combining descriptive words, names will emerge on their own without the need for a constructive language.

Deviating From A Naming Scheme

Sometimes there is a name that you just can’t drop. It has utterly no meaning but it’s a beautiful combination of letters and sounds and it is now so closely associated to your character or a particular place, but the name does not follow some naming scheme you’ve created. Can you get away with it?

A lot of times for people names, you will be able to get away with this. Names are so fluid and their origins seem to be derived from so many different languages. As long as you don’t have a very rigid people naming scheme, this should be ok with no explanation. Even using common names in our world is going to usually be accepted.

Getting away with it is also going to depend on the naming schemes you use. If you are borrowing from a lesser known foreign language, then you can probably get away with deviation and almost no reader would pick upon that.

When it comes for places and things, it’s your story, but your audience might notice the naming scheme, and if this name deviates from your rules, it’s going to stand out. That doesn’t mean you can’t use the name you want. You just need to be clever.

Let’s go back to the river idea. If your word for river is hote and all rivers have a variety of hote in their name (Eppenote, Saffrote, Longote, Malote, Tameote/Tamote), anything else is going to distract. So if you’re set on still calling a certain river The Way, then you may want to sprinkle in more of its story and why it is named what it is. Do not make that explanation too long – one sentence should be all you need or even subtle hints.

In sci-fi, this might be more challenging. For example, if you have naming system for colonized planets, especially if you’ve spelled it out somewhere in your story, producing a name outside of your scheme is going to really require a believable explanation. And sometimes, it cannot be done. Best practice in that situation – don’t deviate!

Ultimately, when it comes to occasionally falling away from your scheme, keep it organic, ask for advice and consider your readers.

Advanced Concepts in Name Crafting

The Tikki Tikki Tembo Concept – Having Fun with Names

There are historic and logical reasons behind names. There’s also naming schemes. But sometimes, especially when it comes to naming people, it’s good to have a little fun with naming, especially if it helps paint a better picture of your world or universe.

To have fun or get clever with names, you might want to consider logical yet highly absurd rules people come up with. We’ll call this the Tikki Tikki Tembo Concept. The TTT concept originates from the retelling of a Chinese folktale by Arlene Mosel titled “Tikki Tikki Tembo,” where Chinese families gave their firstborn sons extremely long names to honor them. In the story, the firstborn’s name is Tikki tikki tembo-no sa rembo-chari bari ruchi-pip peri pembo, while his younger brother is named Chang.

“Tikki Tikki Tembo” is a great example where logic plays a huge role in naming but to an absurd point.

Now, you could apply this same concept to demonstrate other aspects about your world that might not be so humorous. Perhaps people born with blond hair are very rare, and as a result their birth is considered something divine – that idea could be applied in your naming system. Likewise, maybe people born with a certain defect are treated badly, and that treatment also shows through in their name.

Using Names to Convey Power and Status

Let’s take the TTT concept a little further. Consider the fact that names can also be used to convey status. Or, just the opposite – people of status make popular names.

When you think of Tikki Tikki Tembo’s name, the long lavish name is a status symbol. You may have proud, prominent figures in your story who would boast such a name if they had it – so give it to them. The same idea can be used when naming places – the names of places can solidify a legend or person’s status – Tikki Tikkiville or Tikki Tikote.

If Tikki Tikki Tembo ever became king or chief, you better believe that name would become very popular. According to this “Wall Street Journal” article, the name Barrack jumped ahead of 10,000 other names in popularity (from spot 12,535 to 2,409). So it might not hurt to intentionally name a character the same name as your king.

While these details in naming may seem subtle, it adds significant dimension to both your story and your world.

Evolution, Regional Accents, Popular Mispronunciations and Misspellings:

Language is not at all static. A variety of things will influence the direction of pronunciation an accents. For instance, if a region is conquered, the dominating accent will be picked up (along with the language but legacy names might still exist). If a new king rises to power and has a different way of saying of pronouncing things, that will influence the overall language. If the people in the mountains are lazy in their speech, they may call a certain lake by a different but very similar name. These are important factors when coming up with names.

Even in sci-fi stories or dystopian societies, the names of places might have a slight change that demonstrates the current generation’s knowledge and accents. The is in St. Louis might be dropped over time – St. Lou. Or maybe the factions conquered other US factions to a point where the Californians spread all the way to the Mississippi – St. Louis in this new era might become San Louis.

Songs have a way of causing words to evolve, too. This happens when a word alteration becomes catchy and popularized. For instance, the ing might be dropped down to in in music to help with flow and rhyme – but over time, that concept could become so popularized that it’s fully adopted within your world.

Remember, not everyone can spell correctly either. Over time, especially in poorer areas of your world, spelling could cause the language to evolve. Consider Vesikuinen, depending on your people’s understanding of phonics and spelling, vesi could become vesy and kuinen could become kuinin. If you read books from the 18^th century, you will spot a lack of uniformity in spelling from book to book, which is a perfect real-world example of the occurrence. One or the other variation will survive and be formally adopted into the language.

Slang and Nicknames:

Putting on the final touches to naming requires you to think about how people communicate names in the real world. This added detail makes your world as believable to the reader as it is to you.

Think back about Philadelphia, often called Philly. Likewise, the Vesikuinen example might be shortened back to Vesi when characters are referencing the city. How about New York City and Chicago; each city has their own nickname related more to legend than a shortened version of the name, The Big Apple and The Windy City. Therefore rather than shortening Vesikuinen to Vesi, you might want to consider its ironic backstory where people usually contract a disease after drinking from the spring (earlier in the blog Vesikuinen was an example of a name for the city of Eternal Waters). Instead, your characters might call it Fatal Springs.

If you wanted to continue with a slang that pulls from your existing naming system, Finnish for the Vesikuinen example, your characters might refer to the city as Vesikuolema (water/death).

The concept of slang and shortened words should not be limited to major people, places and things. Food tends to have nicknames, burgers for hamburgers, booze for alcoholic drinks. Even activities have slang, hanging out. And there’s slang that people can’t agree on, the best example being pop, coke and soda.

Nicknames and slang can also be a great way of pushing an insult or displaying resentment. For instance, Vesikuinen might only be the city of Eternal Waters for a select race. Maybe others on the outside call the people who reside in the city Spring Suckers and therefore the city has a nickname stemming from resentment – City of Spring Suckers.

Be cautious when employing these concepts into your writing because doing it too much or doing it for the sake of doing it is going to throw the reader off. Some tips to do this right are:

Introduce the full name of a city/person/place. Later introduce the shortened version of the name. If you use it interchangeably, come up with a system for how it’s used. Example – a character’s grandma always calls the character by his or her full name, but all his friends choose the shortened version.
If you’re basing a city nickname off legend or lore, introduce the city by its original name at least twice before using the nickname. Introduce the legend without the nickname. Later introduce the new nickname, and only have specific characters/people groups use the nickname.
Make the logic of the slang easy for readers to pick up on
Consider the age of your readers – keep slang minimal for young adult readers
Do not litter your story with slang – if you’re new at introducing slang into your writing, choose no more than four different things to use it on.

If you’re still a little iffy on whether you’re coming up with decent names or if you’re doing it right, just keep reading. Read lots of stories and be very attentive to how other authors are coming up with names. It couldn’t hurt to pay attention to names and their origins for real-world places around you. Strike up conversations about the topic. Ask lots of questions and experiment. Share some of your favorite names or naming schemes in the comments.