Café de Nuit

SpiritCaller wrote:

ewancummins wrote:

Nathan of the FoS wrote: Or she took the name as an adult--or, she comes from a long line of paladins.

Most "silly" Ravenloft names I like pretty well, actually.

Sounds like an epithet to me.

I agree. It very well could be a name she was given as praise.

It should also be noted that we come from a culture in which we have to look up what names mean, and rarely pay attention to the original meanings behind names even when we know them. Many, many other cultures are not like that; native Americans are not the only peoples whose names had direct meanings. And in some cultures, yes, a name like that could become a surname.

I second that. Japanese and Chinese games usually have meanings also. Even Portuguese surnames have, most of them, or have had, a meaning before that has been passed down from generations. Most English names do too, like Miller, Smith, Baker, Brown, and so forth.

For instance I once met a family by surname 'Baixinho'. That means, literally, 'Shorty'. And they were all not very tall. Another friend of mine's surname translated to Rabbit, and indeed it was a trait in him, his sister and his mother that their incisive teeth reminded those of a rabbit. Some of these things can go down generations.

For instance, some translations of Portuguese surnames: Dry Fountain, High Tower, Very White Mount, White Castle, Pear-tree, Olive-tree, Bush, Stream, Axe, Days, Rivers, Wolf, (and Dog, for that matter), Camel, Pleasures, etc.

Hi guys, just new here;

Currently making an NPC Crypt Raider for the EtCR adventure

His name; Edward "Louisiana" Bones.

Hope this is silly enough :p

Note that Elena comes from a world where this sort of compound word surname is apparently common:

Alexi, Kateri, Ferran, and Aurora Shadowborn
Lysander Greylocks
Dasmaria Eveningstar

I'd use it.

But if I had my druthers my players would be fighting cyborg bears while trying to board Strahd's airship before it can steal the moon, so what do I know?

Besides awesome, that is.

DocBeard wrote:I'd use it.

But if I had my druthers my players would be fighting cyborg bears while trying to board Strahd's airship before it can steal the moon, so what do I know?

Besides awesome, that is.

I'm totally stealing that idea.

The Giamarga wrote:Drakov might prefer a more martial title to an aristocratic one. He's not a pampered courtier heir, he's a seasoned mercenary leader and a soldier. Thus i find the Kingführer makes some sense.

Noble Types:
Adjudicator, Arbiter, Arbitrator, Arch, Archduke, Archon, Armiger, Autocrat, Baron, Caesar, Chancellor, Chief, Chieftain, Coronal, Coronary, Councillor, Count, Crown, Czar, Daimyo, Duke, Duchy, Earl, Elder, Elite, Eminence, Emperor, Highness, Imperial, Ironfist, Ironhand, Jarl, King, Konungr, Lord, Margrave, Marquis, Mashiach, Melekh, Monarch, Noble, Overlord, Preeminence, Prince, Regin, Reginn, Ric, Rig, Rik, Rikr, Riki, Scion, Sir, Sovereign, Tsar, Tyrant, Unction


Overlord Drakov, (Great and/or Imperial) Tyrant Drakov, his Imperial Majesty Drakov, and (Imperial) Chancellor Drakov all have a certain appeal.

If you are hungarian you might notice:

-Kislova
kis lova - his/her small horse
Kis lova - horse of Kis

-Hunadora
similar to Hunyadvár ( Hunyad castle)

-Vezperm (city from Tapestry of dark souls)
Veszprém (city in Hungary)

Malichko wrote:If you are hungarian you might notice:

-Kislova
kis lova - his/her small horse
Kis lova - horse of Kis

-Hunadora
similar to Hunyadvár ( Hunyad castle)

-Vezperm (city from Tapestry of dark souls)
Veszprém (city in Hungary)

I like the first one, the translation of Kislova. You could use that to flesh out Kislova some, making it a bit of horse-oriented version of a small chunk of Hungary. It needn't have horsemanship nearly as great as Nova vaasa to still be an emerging rival. Hey, you don't have to go through so much to smuggle Vaasan horses when you can buy pretty decent ones (though not as good as Vaasan stallions) from these new people, the Kislovans. Certain Kislovans could be suddenly making good money doing nothing more than what they did all their lives before Kislova got Misted in to RL.

Just a thought.

A PC in a one shot RL adventure I ran was named...

Guillaume Guisarme de Voulge


Yes, his friends called him 'Bill.'

ewancummins wrote:A PC in a one shot RL adventure I ran was named...

Guillaume Guisarme de Voulge


Yes, his friends called him 'Bill.'

Bill indeed.

I haven't really come up with a good replacement for a lot of the bad names so far. I decided to just mix up the consonants a little in "Lamordia" to make "Dalmoria". To Dalmorians, I suppose the name of the land would be Dalmorland.

The worst one is the lord of Ghastria. Ghastria has been presumed to be French or English-French, sort of like Brittany, as far as I've heard. For Ghastria itself I came up with "Gastrois" or "Gasthieu" from the names of French provinces. But the name Stezen d'Polarno isn't French. It really isn't anything, as it turns out. Polarno might be Croation. Stezen is a Polish word meaning "concentrations"! So it seems that this name was totally made up.

So Ghastria may not have been meant to have a cultural analogue at all. But if you want it to be French, I suggest its darklord be renamed Stéphane Poissant or maybe Stéphane Pollet. I haven't decided what I'll do with it yet IMC. I may not even keep it or if I do, I may change Stezen's story to be closer to The Picture of Dorian Gray. The original Dorian Gray story is much more meaningful and resonates more to me.

SpiritCaller wrote:

ewancummins wrote:A PC in a one shot RL adventure I ran was named...

Guillaume Guisarme de Voulge


Yes, his friends called him 'Bill.'

Bill indeed.

I haven't really come up with a good replacement for a lot of the bad names so far. I decided to just mix up the consonants a little in "Lamordia" to make "Dalmoria". To Dalmorians, I suppose the name of the land would be Dalmorland.

The worst one is the lord of Ghastria. Ghastria has been presumed to be French or English-French, sort of like Brittany, as far as I've heard. For Ghastria itself I came up with "Gastrois" or "Gasthieu" from the names of French provinces. But the name Stezen d'Polarno isn't French. It really isn't anything, as it turns out. Polarno might be Croation. Stezen is a Polish word meaning "concentrations"! So it seems that this name was totally made up.

So Ghastria may not have been meant to have a cultural analogue at all. But if you want it to be French, I suggest its darklord be renamed Stéphane Poissant or maybe Stéphane Pollet. I haven't decided what I'll do with it yet IMC. I may not even keep it or if I do, I may change Stezen's story to be closer to The Picture of Dorian Gray. The original Dorian Gray story is much more meaningful and resonates more to me.

No need for a noble-born Darklord's name to closely match the common names found in his domain. After all, plenty of English noblemen have French [Norman] names! Ah, and the current ruling house of England is actually of German origin: Saxe -Coburg ['Windsor' was basically just a PC name change ]. The royals of Greece were Germans, too, as I recall. My point is, nobles might easily have origins in another country. So might commoners, for that matter.

EDIT- I see Ghastria as being perhaps vaguely English, but not a close parallel.

I rather like Stezen as a name, but I prefer de Polarno or di Polarno to d'Polarno. My assumption is that Polarno is perhaps a town or city from which Stezen's forbears had sprung, or which they had once ruled.

Not really a silly name per se, but one of the Kargat top brass in my campaign was named Gunther von Morfenz. There is a town in another domain (I think it was Falkovnia?) called Morfenzi, and this Kargat operative's family came from there originally.

But they dropped the last "-i" from the name.

ewancummins wrote:No need for a noble-born Darklord's name to closely match the common names found in his domain. After all, plenty of English noblemen have French [Norman] names! Ah, and the current ruling house of England is actually of German origin: Saxe -Coburg ['Windsor' was basically just a PC name change ]. The royals of Greece were Germans, too, as I recall. My point is, nobles might easily have origins in another country. So might commoners, for that matter.

EDIT- I see Ghastria as being perhaps vaguely English, but not a close parallel.

I rather like Stezen as a name, but I prefer de Polarno or di Polarno to d'Polarno. My assumption is that Polarno is perhaps a town or city from which Stezen's forbears had sprung, or which they had once ruled.

Yeah, I know what you mean. I've never used Ghastria, but I was thinking of using it sometime because some of the suggestions in the Domain of the Month: Ghastria thread appealed to me, especially about it being an artist's colony due to having beautiful scenery and importing spices from the mainland. Since it was often thought of as sort French-English and the scenery suggestion had come up, it kind of became associated with Brittany in my mind. But I was thinking of changing the name of its only village because there is an actual East Riding in real life. That seemed a little too close to naming a city New York or Barcelona to me.

HuManBing wrote:Not really a silly name per se, but one of the Kargat top brass in my campaign was named Gunther von Morfenz. There is a town in another domain (I think it was Falkovnia?) called Morfenzi, and this Kargat operative's family came from there originally.

But they dropped the last "-i" from the name.

I don't think that's a silly name at all. Many surnames are based on towns and villages like that. That's actually a pretty good name.

It occurs to me that "Levkarest" could actually be a mispronunciation of a two-word phrase from an erotic novel. Possibly involving prehistoric blondes riding cave lions into battle against mammoths. Wielding slings.

Resurrecting - because I'm bored and because I stumbled upon these this afternoon while I was trying to rework Ivan Dilisnya.

• The word borca is Turkish for 'debt'.
  
  Dilisnya appears to stem from the Hungarian word dilis meaning 'crazy' (can't find any reference to the -nya suffix though; the closest in Hungarian is -nyi which means 'full' - so Dilisnyi would be 'full of crazy' which certainly fits everyone's favourite fop).
  
  Strahd has 2 possible origins: the Czech word strád meaning 'be destitute', or the Slovenian word strah meaning fear.

All thanks to Google Translate for this random uselessness.