[Eberron] The names in Five Nations are pretty bad

[Digital Archon]

I was looking through the names lists by nation in Five NAtions and stumbled upon such gems as Rave (male Thrane) Sede (Thrance female) and Beaf ((Breland, female). Beaf? The firs thing that popped into mind was "beef". Can you imagine introducing a female NPC to your group as Beaf?

Leaving aside the questions of "Who comes up with this crap?" and "Why do fantasy names suck in general?", i'd rather explore "theming' the names of the Five Nations.

I'll explore the general problems of the name lists first:

There is no real difference between an Aundairian name and a Brelish name, and there isn't any significant difference between a male name and a female name (Where does Heken come from, Breland? Cyre?). Admittedly, whoever came up with the Karrnath list sort of mixed pseudo-Latin and pseudo-German to give the list a bit of flavor, which is cool.

Leaving Karrnath aside, as it's generally themed, what kinds of themes would you see in the other four of the Five Nations?

I kind of see Breland as a bit like England, but places like Cyre and Thrance are stumping me a bit.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

What's wrong with "Sede?"

 

[Crothian]

Looking at any name list even real world ones there are always stinkers. As for the theme of the countries I think the book did a great job of spelling it out.

 

[Arkhandus]

Whizbang: It would be pronounced 'seed' most likely, that's what. Or 'seedy'.

Crothian: I dunno, the Hero Builder's Guidebook, while not terribly useful except for forming occasional character concepts, is also fairly useful for character names. It has some really decent lists, with only a few that seem too silly (and even those, I think, are old Gygaxian names from previous editions). None are as bad as the ones mentioned by the OP.

Digital Archon: Well, for one thing, the nation you keep mentioning is Thrane. You keep calling it Thrance. As for Cyre......I dunno. Maybe Welsh, Irish, or Scottish? I can't remember if I've read any mention of what Keith had in mind for it, and I can only remember a few Cyran names (and my few Eberron novels are in the big stack of books in my closet, where I put stuff after I've read it and don't feel like letting it pile up on the desk anymore; so it'd be hard to find any of them for reference right now).

 

[Merkuri]

I kind of see Breland as a bit like England, but places like Cyre and Thrance are stumping me a bit.

If we're trying to "assign" real world countries to the Five Nations, I always found Breland to be more American than English (very large country, its people aren't very religious and pride themselves on being open-minded). Thrane (not "Thrance", though that makes me think you think it's like France) always made me think of a more medieval (or earlier) Italy... the whole Holy Roman Empire thing. Karnaath seems to me like Russia or Germany. Aundair I thought of as English. I wasn't sure what to make of Cyre, since they don't actually give us much info about what it was like pre-Mournland, but the little bits in the Five Nations book made me think of France.

 

[Digital Archon]

Digital Archon: Well, for one thing, the nation you keep mentioning is Thrane. You keep calling it Thrance. .

Yeah, typos at 1 AM. Thanks for pointing it out, though.

If we're trying to "assign" real world countries to the Five Nations, I always found Breland to be more American than English (very large country, its people aren't very religious and pride themselves on being open-minded). Thrane (not "Thrance", though that makes me think you think it's like France) always made me think of a more medieval (or earlier) Italy... the whole Holy Roman Empire thing. Karnaath seems to me like Russia or Germany. Aundair I thought of as English. I wasn't sure what to make of Cyre, since they don't actually give us much info about what it was like pre-Mournland, but the little bits in the Five Nations book made me think of France.

*sigh* You screw a word up a couple of times and people won't let you live it down.

I always thought of gnomes being Italian for some reason, i dunno. I get a serious Leonardo da Vinci vibe off the little buggers.

Anyway, i'm not looking say people Breland have names exactly like Æthylthryth (Anglo-Saxon) or Paul, though Æthylthryth is kind of cool. Personal names generally evoke places of origin. Majujuboo evokes a random name generator. The names in the Five Nations do the latter, not the former because there is no rhyme or reason (or sanity in some cases) to them.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

The Five Nations were one nation (called Galifar) until about a hundred years before the campaign starts. I think it makes sense that you would have mostly the same names.

It's like Smith and Schmidt being common names in England and Germany, even though they've been somewhat isolated from each other for a thousand years or more. Galifar has been split for one tenth that time.

I have to admit, I think Beaf is a silly name though.

 

[NewJeffCT]

Go through a phone book and look at some of the names on just one or two pages, and I'm sure you'll come up with some unusual ones. Or, to be a bit quicker, if you work for a large corporation, the email directory is often a fun thing to go through for name choices.

 

[Crothian]

Crothian: I dunno, the Hero Builder's Guidebook, while not terribly useful except for forming occasional character concepts, is also fairly useful for character names. It has some really decent lists, with only a few that seem too silly (and even those, I think, are old Gygaxian names from previous editions). None are as bad as the ones mentioned by the OP.

I don't have that one to look through but I do have Trolllords's book of names and while a great resource also has really bad names in it. It is a purely subjective thing though.

 

[Merkuri]

Majujuboo evokes a random name generator.

Actually, that sounds African to me. If you replaced the Js with Ls it would sound very Hawaiian.

My suggestions for places weren't from their names for the most part, but just from other setting information. For example, Thrane felt like Italy/Holy Roman Empire simply because it's a theocracy... and not only that, but a pseudo-Christian theocracy. Cyre brought France to mind because of something I read in the Five Nations about how every Cyran would know something about wine. That struck me as being very French.

You can change the names, if you want. In my current game, we're in Aundair at the moment. Our DM thought that Aundair felt French, and all of his NPCs have had French-sounding names. Like (Psi)SeveredHead said, though, the Five Nations were one nation for centuries. Each region might have names that sound unique to that region, but overall they probably have a lot of common names that, rather than being Aundairian or Cyran, are simply Galifarian.

(And I think people picked at your typo because you did it several times, and it sounds like an existing country. Since you're talking about comparing Eberron nations to real-world nations, it sticks out. )