Seven Names

Surely we can do better than Savira Winnowerth.

A few months ago, I had to come up with an entourage for the mayor of an important town in my long running 5e game. The players had misled her to believe she was meeting another powerful npc, and she would need bodyguards and advisors to ensure her safety. I needed some stat blocks, and some names. The mayor was called Savira Winnowerth and had been since pretty much the start of the campaign a few years ago. Her companions were unlikely to be around for much longer than a session, so they needed something a lot closer to nominative determinism. Introducing:

• Gersch the Skull, a bone clad cockney bastard with a massive club.
• Mulch Gibbins, a slow talking ogre with a flair for cooking. These two were her bodyguards.
• Emirp, Thousand and Jiffy, 3 recently graduated nerd wizards who served as intern-vibed advisors. Emirp was the smartest, but had a big ego, and Jiffy was weirdly quick.
• Mother of Iron, a forge cleric and religious advisor to the mayor.

As the campaign's gone on, I've definitely tended a lot more towards simple names which are both easy to pronounce (no more elf name generators) and impart a very obvious personality. The epithet 'the skull' tells you you're getting bashed, or perhaps necromanced. Mulch Gibbins is just a bit gross in a very fun way. The party ended up fighting and defeating Savira, but Mulch was convinced to join them which was great, because I loved her name, and she took Gersch's armour to become Mulch Gibbins the Skull. Emirp is mainly in reference to a book series I read as a kid, where the protagonist is able to determine someone's password from some worn down keys and the correct guess that of this combination of numbers, they couldn't resist choosing the emirp (prime number that's also prime when written backwards). It feels a very natural flaw to give a wizard, and hopefully the name suggests that personality without the reference. We have a joke about things called '-iffy' in this campaign, hence Jiffy the fast wizard. Mother of Iron is immediately cool, and nicely lets you know a hammer's heading your way.