At 10:30 30/12/01 +0000, Sally wrote:
<grin> and that brings us to another point, names. How do people go about picking/creating names,
I get most of my fiction (and RPG) names from the Onomastikon, which can be found at:
http://www.flick.com/onomastikon/
I have found the following sections particularly useful for B7:
http://www.flick.com/onomastikon/England-Firstnames/Coinages/index.htm
http://www.flick.com/onomastikon/England-Surnames/index.htm
The Surname sections on Patronymics and Matronymics have some good names for the 'is it a surname or first name?' feel that some B7 names have.
I would also recommend the Fantasy Name Generator at:
The basic generator is fun, but it's worth taking the time to get to grips with the rules for using the Advanced Interface (follow the link to 'Instructions', in the Advanced Interface box). It's nowhere near as intimidating as it looks, and it allows you to very simply automate the generation of names using a set of rules such as the ones from the Le Guin book. This may be more handy for RPGs than for fiction, but if you want to create a strong flavour for names for a group of people, then this is a good way to do it.
It's also reasonably easy to set up a generator to create names 'like' some previously existing names, provided that you have a large enough sample to allow to estimate the average length, frequency of particular syllables or letters, etc. It's possible that the existing set of Federation names is large enough to allow that, although I've never tried it.
love Anna