Names
Popular First Names by Decade (or Year)
These lists of American names are sorted by decade (or individual year). There are also lists for some other countries, but only going back to 1998.
Story Games Names Project
Lists of names:
- American names
- Directory of contemporary names
- Directory of historical names
- Directory of humorous names
Random Names
- Random Name Generator that works from census data, and lets you specify how unusual you want the names to be. With obscurity set to 1, I got names like Nicole Friesen and Lawrence Lippert. Setting it to 99 gave me Noella Haggstrom and Tuan Lingbeek.
Non-Anglophone Names
- Stars Without Number (free edition), a free science fiction RPG (sort of a cross between D&D and Traveller), has tables in the back for coming up with names (Arabic, Chinese, English, Indian, Japanese, Nigerian, Russian, Spanish).
Old-Fashioned Fantasy Names
Y'know those old science fiction or fantasy books where characters have made-up names that sound almost sorta-kinda like common English names? Use this Random Word Generator, and feed it names from some other source. Like for instance, I gave it the 100 names from the Top Baby Names for Boys list above, and it gave me back a list of 100 names that included stuff like Aarker, Bristan, Coltopher, Gabric, Jamuel, Jase, Tristia, and Leviego. Wouldn't any of those make good names in a fantasy novel? "Jamuel Thornweaver." "Coltopher Stormkin." "Gabric of Greenhollow."
Works for place-names, too. I fed in a list of municipalities in Massachusetts (grabbed off of Wikipedia), and got a list of stuff like Amheld, Attsford, Darmont, Fitchbury, Metham, Nateree, Pitchbury, Saughton, Shrewton, and Sominston.
