Prefix-Suffix Naming Tables

"Oh hi Mark." - The Room (2003)

    For years I've struggled with an easy way to name NPCs quickly at the table, even more so to have them keep a similar naming convention. It was while digging through the UESP that I found an easy solution to come up with possibly thousands of names quickly.

In the games Arena and Daggerfall the game randomly generates names by selecting a prefix and suffix from a large table, sometimes adding a middle vowel depending on race. This makes it very easy to roll, as two or three dice and a glance at a table can produce decent fantasy names.

For example from the UESP;
The 12 prefixes for male Dunmer names are: 
Azar, Cas, Ereb, Hel, Nis, Shal, Shur, Tur, Ul, Vanik, Zan, Zir

The 12 suffixes for male Dunmer names are:
ain, ath, far, ien, ik, il, imal, imar, kan, on, par, seth

    Now all we need to do to generate a Dunmer name is to roll 2d12, In my case a 5 followed by a 6 to make the name Nis-il. When I roll on these I take it as being the phonetic sounds that make the name and will rewrite them to be easier to remember how to pronounce later. These two d12 lists gives us 144 unique names, if you used a d20 list you would make 400 names. Add in a middle to the names such as an extra "ah" or "eh" to introduce variation and you would then again multiply the possible results. The reach of these tables are only limited to how wide you are willing to make them. In Daggerfall the Redguards have names comprising of 51 Prefixes, 5 Vowels, 26 Suffixes, and 37 Second Suffixes for a possiblity of 251,940 names!

We can take the top 10 most common baby names in the U.S. and create a similar table by splitting the results nearly into two syllables. The names we will use are Liam, Noah, Oliver, William, Elijah, James, Benjamin, Lucas, Mason, Ethan, for the male names and Olivia, Emma, Ava, Sophia, Isabella, Charlotte, Amelia, Mia, Harper, Evelyn, for the female names.

Male Prefixes; Li, No, Oli, Wil, Eli, Jame, Benj, Lu, Mas, Eth,
Male Suffixes; am, ah, ver, liam, jah, s, amin, cas, on, an,

Female Prefixes; Oli, Em, Av, So, Isa, Char, Ame, M, Harp, Eve
Female Suffixes; via, ma, a, phia, bella, lotte, lia, ia, er, lyn

    Rolling three Male names with 2d10 gives us Ethcas (10,8) Etham (10,1) and Olis (3,6). Three Female names gives us Amelotte (7,6) Harpvia (9,1) and Olia (1,3). A tip is to use the male prefix and female suffix to create surnames for your NPCs. A few more rolls gives us Willia (4,7) Willotte (4,6) Benjlia (7,7) Masia (9,8) and Noia (2,8). We can arrange these names together and get some NPCs

Cousins of a split family Ethcas Willia and Etham Willotte
Brother and Sister Olis Benjlia and Olia Benjlia
Her majesty, Amelotte Masia
The bar maiden, Harpvia Noia

    Just that fast we have interesting names for your campaign. These may sound silly at first, but after you say them a couple times in play they won't be any weirder than how clearly we think of the names Smeagol, Drizzt, or Fafhrd.