Naming Gloranthan Characters From Different Areas and Races

[Deanjday]

When naming NPC's and characters from cultures, places and races are there any particualr naming styles or rules taht should be observed? for example what are common names for Trolls? Pavis natives or Sartarites? I can see some common names in the Runquest core book for the different homelands, but I cant see and particualr naming pattern to them.

How do you go about naming your characters and NPC's?

[Sir_Godspeed]

Glorantha isn't really all that linguistically deep or rigid, and phonemes are a little all over the place. You'll mostly be going by gut-feeling. 

Trolls names seem to often be comprised of single-syllable vowel elements surrounded by consonants, like Boztakang, Gash, Gore, Zorak Zoran, etc. This gives their names a sort-of straightforward feel, maybe simple or perhaps even crass. Sounds like b, g, d, k, g, ng, z, etc. appear to be fairly common, as does simple names in English (ie. in whatever human language is commonly spoken around them).

(Old) Pavisites would be originally drawn from Dragon Pass Orlanthi, so I assume they'd have similar names to Sartarites, perhaps with some minor linguistic shift. New Pavisites would be even more similar.

Pure Horse People are likely outliers in Dragon Pass, with their own flair to their names. It seems like Greg used the approach of using a lot of English to render names, (ie. White Bull, etc.) possibly drawing on traditions of translating Native American names into English instead of rendering them in their native languages. This might apply to many Pure Horse People, but clearly not all, at least if we look at the names of some of the Feathered Horse Queens.

I can't comment on some of the other, less explored groups around the Mirrorsea. I assume most of them have loosely similar name traditions, mostly because of their closely shared history, but we know that the Malkioni (Aeolians and probably others) preserve some names that seem to draw on Malkioni mythology. But I'm guessing the fisherfolk of the Rightarm Isles, the people of Esrolia, the Heortlanders, the Sartarites and possibly the Caladralanders all have loosely similar name traditions, due to loosely shared mythologies and interconnected history (especially so for Sartarites and Heortlanders, but also Esrolians). 

Orlanthi names are a little all over the place, but many draw on pseudo-Germanic roots (the -rik suffix, for example), but this is more for aesthetics than any deep lingustic reason. My impression is that almost everything goes, so long as you keep the phonemes mostly English-adjacent (so no clicking sounds for a Heortlander, for example). There is one phoneme that seems mostly invented for Orlanthi in particular, and that's the -nth suffix. I'm not aware if it occurs elswhere. -nt might be a variant. Orlanth, Orlaront, etc. 

But yeah, no comprehensive list of sounds or elements to draw from, I believe.

Edited June 27, 2021 by Sir_Godspeed

[jajagappa]

This is a good source for Orlanthi names in general:  http://2ndage.blogspot.com/2015/10/random-sartarite-name-generator.html

Works fine for Sartar, Old Pavis, Heortland, and for the most part Esrolia (you could readily add in name components from the Homelands of Esrolia, Old Tarsh, and Tarsh to get a pretty broad name list across all of Dragon Pass and much of the Holy Country). 

For Grazers/Pure Horse People, draw on the names listed for the Homeland, names found for the Grazers in King of Sartar, and probably blend in some of the names from Glorious ReAscent of Yelm (particularly from the Jenarong era). 

 

[Joerg]

Old Pavisite names may resemble Grazer names when the ancestors were part of the Zebra Tribe, formerly Pure Horse Folk.

[Darius West]

It probably wouldn't hurt if there was more of a naming convention available for the different cultures for new players to draw upon.  I would personally just look at names drawn from the lore of the region, and extrapolate.

[Glyph]

There's a name generator here http://www.backtobalazar.com/glorantha-name-generator/ which may be useful