What's in a Name?

Names are important.  They help people understand the setting and they tell you what people look like.  If a person has a name like Björn Shwartz, automatically one get the idea that the person is German or Swedish.  If the person is Hirohito, instantly your perceptions are changed to that of someone of Japanese extraction, Ezra, Jewish.  Names have power and they had more power in the past when people knew what they meant.  Green Psychopomp sounds cool, but it means something.  A psychopomp is an entity that moves a soul to the underworld.  A green psychopomp is more like a mover of souls to a environmentally friendly state.

But when I give a name to a character in a plot of a story, I like to give it a meaning that might give insight to the character.  For instance if I were to grab three characters and weave a plot around them I might start like this:

Aaron is a distraught because his family has been murdered and his household destroyed while he was away in another city trading his wares.  He seeks out his good friend Abagtha to find out what happened, but the terror of the situation, as it was he who broke into the Aaron's house when he saw the fire, has caused him to turn to drink.  He tells Aaron that his family was brutalized and his wife was only able to leave a name, scrawled with her own blood, Abaddon.  Aaron vows that he will see this Abaddon pay for his crimes . . ..

Aaron, seeker of justice

Abaddon, the destroyer

Abagtha, father of the wine-press

But I like to have the character already made up and then I find a name afterwards, often a little trickier, but it can be done.

A friend wanted me to run a game for him and a couple of mutual friends.  He had a character made up, Vallus.  His character was very detailed, he gave me the names of his family, his mother, father, sister and two brothers.  He told me that he went away to fight in a great war that lasted for seven years and in this time he did not get any word from his family.  After the war, he went back home and discovered that in the course of the war his village had been attacked and the population enslaved.  Distraught, he through himself into the only career he ever had and became a mercenary.  After nine long years of fighting in small border wars he gained a great measure of esteem and the Unconquered Sun, recognized him and Exalted him above others.  With his new powers as a Dawn Caste Solar Exalt, he was able fight the unfightable horrors that ravaged the lands, but in doing so he began to wonder about his family that he had lost so long ago.  (So ends his description and starts my story)

With his new powers he was able to revive the scent of the trail that had gone dead fifteen years in the past and he was able to track down where they were sold.  After a year of tracking and searching he found the three kingdoms where they were sold.  There were troubles in these kingdoms and a dreadful curse.  Once there was only one kingdom ruled in the First Age by benevolent Solar Exalted, but the underlings overthrew them and murdered them.  The Usurpers abandoned the old Capitol and split the kingdom into three.  But that was fifteen hundred years ago . . ..  

After fighting the curse and meeting with the three present day rulers, Vallus sets up within the old ruined Capitol, because he is in fact the old reincarnated ruler.  (fate and destiny play a big part in this game). In this time after he meets a young woman, and he falls madly in love with her.  (let the record show, I merely introduced this sixteen year old hottie, he is the one that decided that he should marry her). She was gorgeous and she was perfect, exactly what he could have wished for.  Beauty and brains, plus a kinky playful personality.  She had a strawberry mark shaped like a star on her left ass cheek.  Her name was Niënor.

Much later after months of play, twenty sessions, over one hundred hours, he tracks done his father, he died the day before he entered the village and a year before he knew that his father lived there, his two brothers and his sister.  Lastly he finds his mother who is still alive and is a trusted servant of the King to the South.  Vallus tells his mother that he has found all the family members and wishes to reunite them.  His mother surprises Vallus with another tale.  After the slavers captured them, near seventeen years before, she had been pregnant, but had not announced it to the family.  When they were herded away they were separated and sent to different kingdoms to be sold.  Before she was sold she gave birth to a girl who was sold off separately after a week together.  The only identifying feature was a star shaped strawberry mark on her left cheek of her bottom….

A few weeks before, my friend had called me saying that he had been in a book store and had thumbed through a Tolkein book and saw in the back Niënor and saw that it meant Dawn.  He thought it was cool that his game girl friend's name meant the same as his Caste.  He thought that that was cool.  He did not buy the book, he did not read the story where she was featured.  Turin the great warrior heads off to a great war and unbeknownst to him his sister is born.  She sets off to find him when she is old enough, but falls a foul of a very evil dragon who causes her to forget who she is.  The girl meets the hero Turin falls in love with her and they marry.  As the dragon lies dying at the hand of Turin the dragon simultaneously lifts his spell from Niënor and tells Turin what he had done and what Turin had done with his sister.  Both separately kill themselves. 

Naming characters should taken as carefully as their importance to the plot, which is why I have difficulty picking names for characters in stories.