Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/6013
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Rather than focusing on generating names - a process that's usually somewhat arbitrary - perhaps examine the purpose of these names in your story. There's a school of thought that goes like this:

World building is an exercise whose purpose is to help the writer tell a good story. Correspondingly, the design of a species in SF or fantasy should contribute to the story, and its name should also do so.

The names of characters can contribute to the flavor of a narrative. [Bilbo Baggins](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilbo_Baggins) is a good example. It's a silly, bumbling name, and it serves a good purpose: We underestimate the character, and his eventual bumbling triumphs are the more valuable because of it. [Thomas Covenant](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chronicles_of_Thomas_Covenant) is another good one - the character is serious, dour, important. (You may not want to be this blatant, of course.)

The name you choose for an entire race, therefore, can serve a story purpose.

If you want the story to feel very down-to-earth, then using earth-based names would serve your purposes, unless you want to put an extra layer between your tale and anything earthbound. If you want things to seem truly alien, then you'll want names that feel odd, maybe even a little bit wrong.

There are plenty of etymological dictionaries, name-generating tools, and thesauri. All of these can be good tools in naming your fictional races. But, in the end, just use _something_ and get the story written. You can always make changes later on, when you're clearer on what story purposes your names should serve.

Original score: 12