Naming is a vital part of any fantasy fiction story. Whether that’s a novel, manga, game, or film. The name you give to characters, places, and things in your fictional world can literally make or break it. 

Aside from its level of importance, naming is one of the funnest things to craft for your story. 

It brings up a new depth of originality and creation that excites you as you strive to come up with the best options.

From my experience, when it comes to how to name characters, places, or elements of your fantasy story, there's the easy way and the hard way.

In this article, I am going to show you the easy way. 

If you google fictional naming, you’ll find lots of useful tips out there, mostly for naming characters and places. 

But when you’re creating a fantasy fiction world, there's so much more to name than that. 

You have to develop names for power systems, the powers themselves, groups, concepts, forces, creatures, objects, events, and more depending on what’s included in your story. 

This article focuses on how to name everything that needs to be named in your fantasy story - the easy and fulfilling way.   

Let’s get into it.

Naming should never be treated as an afterthought. 

It’s important to understand why naming should never be treated as an afterthought in your work.

Naming is something to put as much thought and intentionality into as you do developing the power system or worldbuilding.

Here’s why: 

Ever googled just the name of a fictional character and it immediately showed up with reference to the story it was used in?

Then how about when you googled a name and several results come up, none of which refer to the story? Or maybe you found it at the very bottom of a long list of other people or places the same name referred to.  

As both a creator and audience, which would you prefer to be the outcome when googling a name from your film, novel, or manga?

This is the first importance of good naming: searchability.
 

Good names make your world easier to find, easier to remember, and harder to confuse with everything else.

The second is originality. Naruto is not only the name of the anime, but also the name of the main character. Before Naruto and long after it, it's hard to find another fictional character bearing the same name. 

If the names in your story lack originality and uniqueness to your work, it sort of cheapens it. Which is the last thing any author or creator would want. 

And finally, good naming is important because hard names are forgettable. And forgettable names don’t do your beloved characters or rich worldbuilding any good. 

How to create names for characters, places, and elements of your fantasy novel, manga, game, or film. 

As far as the easy way goes, only two things matter when it comes to crafting good fictional names.

These are pronunciation and consistency with your world. 

None is more important than the other. They must both work in perfect harmony. 

Pronunciation 

Pronunciation here simply means that the names you craft must be easy to say within the context of your fictional world and the real world where your audience is in. 

Once something is easy to pronounce, it’s easy to remember. 

Na - ru - to (Nah-ruh-tow)

Smoke (smoʊk)

Gan - dalf (Gan - dalf)

Yennefer (yen - ih - fur)

Fantasy fiction fans love being able to talk about the stories they like. If you give them names they can’t pronounce, much less spell with ease, how can they consider your work as great? 

All the greats you know maintained this simple rule.

Consistency with your world

Below you'll find examples of good naming to give a clear picture of what it means for your names to be consistent with your world. 

Good names fit the world they’re part of. It’s the same way in real life. Names can tell you where a person comes from in the world. Plus, many times, what their parents were thinking when they named them.

Fictional names of characters, places, and elements should be like that too. 

It all contributes to creating an immersive fictional world and making your work truly stand out as well done. 

Examples of good naming: 

Example 1 - Psycho Pass 

Example 2 - Naruto

Example 3 - Sinners 

Example 4 - Warcraft 

Example 5 - ACOTAR

Practical steps- how to come up with good naming in your fantasy fiction 

Step 1 

Understand your story’s world. Naturally, since you’re writing, you should already be immersed in your world and know enough about it. You want to reflect on its culture, mood, and background. 

In that vein, one sweet tip I have for you here is to write down names of characters, power systems, etc. that are WRONG for your story. 

Write down names that you can be like, ‘nope’, doesn’t fit my world. The point of this is to put into perspective that feeling of knowing what would fit your world.

Step 2

Time to generate cool options. 

• First, open up a few fantasy fiction naming generators and AI.  Depending on the culture or nature of your world, search these tools for options. Write down the best ones. 

• Now take these good options and chop them up. For example, if you have an option like - Gwinsberg - as a character name, chop it up, and we have - ‘Gwin’ and ‘berg’.

A prefix and a suffix. Depending on which one fits your world the most, take either one and replace the other part with something that can make it yours.

You can combine prefixes and suffixes across different cool options and see what unique names you come up with. Or you can, at this point, brainstorm and add something original yourself. 

• Another great tip for choosing or crafting the perfect name is to consider the emotions you want the name to evoke. For example, if you’re naming creatures. If the creature is big and ancient, you want a name that gives off that emotion or feel of a big, scary, ancient monster. 

Naming a power type, think ‘What can this power do? What's its origin? Who is in possession of it?' What is the emotion/feel you want it to bring to mind? Look back to the examples above for Suriel and Azeroth. 

• Keep two strong options for the important characters, power systems, or elements in your story.

• Never copy and paste  names from generators into your precious work. These tools are there to make your work easier as an inspo or a starting point. 

Step 3

When you have the names, take them for a spin as soon as possible. What this means is, insert them into your work. Use them over and over again. See how they fit. If you start to sense that a name isn't quite perfect after using it in your work, switch to the second strong option. 

Bonus tip for writing names into your story.

Especially when it comes to names of power systems, places, creatures, and other elements of your story, use them as early and as often as possible. 

This helps your audience to get used to the name, thus making your story all the more immersive. 

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