Inspiration For Your Main Character's Name.

[Inquisitor Cade]

Lord Ruthe: I have a cousin named Ruth and I had a flash back to the scene in swallows and amazons where it is jokes that you can't be called Ruth and be and amazon, as amazons are ruthless. I also wanted to avoid a name like Lord Pious, the puritan, Lord Maveric the radical or an overtly action hero name. I like Ruthe as it hints at the word ruthless. but is also derived from a girls name, so no danger of any of the above.

Sammuael Von Caleb, plundered from the bible.

Triston Anthony, stolen from ancient Rome.

Cade was stolen from a book I can't remember that I read when I was like 10.

Rangovack and Philemon were my brothers creations, stolen from a redwall book and the bible respectively.

Umbrae and Delamore were originaly myfriends characters, taken from the latin or greek for ghost (though the character is ironically quite overt) and from Time splitters 2 respectively.

[Dosdamt]

Landen Dosdamt is based around two things - one, the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice and two, it is an anagram of Lost and Damned.

Euridice, Landen's Daemonhost, is obvious due to the above reason.

Nebuchanedezzar - Neb for short - Landen's wee acolyte, is Ben backwards and is also short for his long name.

-Ben

[Heroka Vendile]

Inquisitor Heroka Vendile - this was basically perverting the word "hero" into a suitable first name for an anti-hero Inquisitor, then finding a modification to the word "vile" which flowed well, to perhaps indicate his constantly in-the-grey actions. To be honest it took me less than a minutes thought and has stuck firmly to the character.

[Daxam]

Johnathan Harker, My inquisitor is based off of Bram Stoker's 'Dracula'. Originally, he was investigating Blood Angels, as they were... Well, you know.

Heklus Koch is based off the Weapons manufacturer Hekler und Koch.

My Ad Mech stuff is all from my imagination!

[Serge]

Inquisitor Vladimir Estragon = After Vladimir and Estragon from Waiting for Godot.

[Macabre]

Magos Emmanuel Cross - is a subtle Christian reference,

Inquisitor Jean-Daniel Devereaux - Jean-Daniel is the name of the main bad-guy from the Bugs series (played by Gareth Marks) and I needed a suitably 'french' sir name, and I was reading Jonathan Stroud's Bartemaeus trilogy at the time,

Inquisitor Richter Kartheim - Richter just conjures up so many images connected with his personality, and Kartheim is just a variation of Vincent Kartheiser's sirname (I was just randomly watching Angel at the time).

Cuiren Bathory (or Curien Nocturne) - Curien was taken from the boss of House of the Dead 2, no prizes for Bathory, but the moniker 'Nocturne' is just a shortened variation of 'Curien the Nocturnal'.

Lucifer - literally used as 'Lightbringer'....

Plus most of my AdMech warband use variation-names of either scientists or classical composers (e.g. my squat engineer goes by the name Holst), except the bounty hunter who goes by the name Jak Deckard (no prizes there either).

[Tullio]

I needed a suitably 'french' sir name, and I was reading Jonathan Stroud's Bartemaeus trilogy at the time

Incidentally, apart from being a great trilogy for some not-particularly-fancy fantasy, this is also great as an occult moodsetter!

Tullio

[MarcoSkoll]

How odd. That's exactly the same surname I gave the character I wanted to have a French name, although I just opened up Wikipedia's list of French surnames and picked one.

[Koval]

although I just opened up Wikipedia's list of French surnames and picked one.

Similarly, I just brought up lists of old French cabinet ministers when I was drawing up the Frankish 12th Armoured -- swipe a surname, plonk a suitably French-sounding first name on the front, bingo.

I will admit that names of French language assistants who have taught me at school and uni also snuck in, chopped-up of course so that one person's surname goes somewhere and the first name goes somewhere else.


incidentally, lists of cabinet ministers probably aren't the best place for me to start, but oh well, to each their own. Personally I think theatrical overblown names get a bit old quite quickly when I use them.

[Aidan]

For me, most names are simply though up with no conscious inspiration, including the names of all my main characters - Viden Kassor, Bastien Hezerus Gerdrict, Adrius Salistur, Asther Raene, Kadev Diturian.

A few other names have biblical/ancient history origins, such as 'Lasarus' and 'Macabee'.

Some are fairly obscure and while inspired by an existing name, it has no bearing on the character, like Mauritus Jaykar, who's first name comes from Prince Mauritz, a leader and hero of the Dutch war of independence.

Some, like 'Gerdricht' are partly to make use of the broad range of vocal sounds being bilingual affords me (that's a dutch guttural 'G' by the way, as is the 'ic')

Viden Kassor's birth name, Johann Pekrin, is an adaptation of John Perkins, the turncoat E.H.M., who turned his back on - and has unmasked, for those who actually read his books - the most powerful system in the modern world. That takes will and guts, and is in a small way reminiscent of Kassor's own backstory.

And there are a few tributes:

Some are to family members;

For a while back in IQ28 I had a snow-themed guardsman named Atto, after my great-grand father who fought and died for Finland in the winter war of 1939. I might bring him to 54mm scale at some point. Similarly, I had a rebel youngster in my first 54mm campaign called Franscis, after a cousin of the family who was tortured and murdered, aged 16, in the 'dirty war' in Argentina. Both of these people were dead before I was born, of course, but the stories I heard of them did inspire a wee bit of reverence.

And some to fictional people.

Stefan Dekster, from Stephen Dexter aka Alfred Bester, one of my '5 favourite sci-fi characters', from Babylon 5, who inspired him - and, in my honest opinion, he's the best sci-fi villain ever.

I've a character on the drawing board, who will be reality in the near future, named 'Vila', after one of those gems of old science fiction.

And there's Hermann 4687, my Skitaarius, well... I'll leave that to others to work out.

- - - - -

Well, my namesake I chose on a whim, much like most of my character names. Tullio is a psyker, who's just gained model form - his name I got from The Subtle Knife, for now real reason... but Terrenon is pinched from A Wizard of Earthsea...

Two of my favourite series referenced in one sentence? Do I detect someone here with similar literary tastes? Funny enough, whenever I saw your name 'Tullio', I did always think of that ill-fated fool in The Subtle Knife , but I assumed you were just a fan of italian names. A weird world.

-Aidan.

[benwagner1988]

My Lead character (a female daemon hunter) is a rough latinised version of my girlfriends name (emily > Aemelius) Not accurate but works!

I have two death cult assasins name Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazerus who Christ rose from the dead in the bible. Become appropriate considering how often they cheat death!

[catferret]

My old Inquisitor character (and old forum name) was Ridley Rider, named after an AC Acoustics song.

Newest Inquisitor is Calo Mors.  Got the name from the random name generator in KotoR and have been using it for computer game characters ever since.  Figured it's good enough for an Inquisitor too.

Names for other characters generally come from song titles or lyrics.

[DapperAnarchist]

One of my characters has a name drawn from my grandfather - he wrote under the pen-name "Andrew Cass" - which, reversed, sounds like Cassandra - the Trojan prophetess cursed never to be believed - so I named a character "Andrej Cass". Other than that, mostly just cobbled....

[Simeon Blackstar]

Simeon Blackstar - Blackstar plucked out of the air by my brother, Simeon from the Bible
Valdemar Tuomas Ove-Kaale - Valdemar, Ove and Kaale from behindthename.com (Norse, Swedish and/or Finnish), Tuomas is a name Marco Skoll should recognise 

All my others tend to have names cobbled together from various sources - Kaden "Barking" Larke, for instance, had his name inspired by "Mad" Larkin of the Tanith novels.  I made up Kaden, altered the surname a bit and changed the nickname to half-rhyme, which in turn inspired the Barking Toad story

[MarcoSkoll]

Tuomas is a name Marco Skoll should recognise

Indeed I do.