# Roman inspired names in a fantasy novel!



## Druico (Feb 3, 2014)

Hi guys,

Right this is my first actual question or ask for a bit of advice on this forum, so bear with me.

Okay, one of the main pieces I'm working on at the minute is a fantasy novel, that comes complete with dragons, magic, orcs, elves, death, betrayal and all the good stuff. Now my inspiration for the novel itself came from the ancient Romans and their Empire. A lot of the elements in the story have been inspired from that period of history and then massively fantasised with my own spin etc.

The main area where I wanted to ask an audiences opinion (you guys) is in the character names. Obviously I want to keep them inspired from the roman latin background, but I also want to make them unique and rememerable from an audiences point of view.

So how could I spin Roman names to suit a fantasy environment? If we look at the standard praenomen (given name) and then basically just a nomen name (clan/family name). I don't want to have to use three names for all my characters, as I think this will just make it confusing and a little to historic etc. The Roman side of the people is only an inspiration and a reference to how they live their lives like in Ancient Rome.

Any ideas or examples would be awesome, I've chosen some names already that suit the character. Tiberius Septimus for the Emperor etc, but I don't want all the names to sound and seem the same, though I know this was how they were. I've tried to tweak some family names to make them more fantasy sounding and not ending in 'us'. But finding it a bit of a difficulty for all characters.

Thanks all!


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## Outiboros (Feb 3, 2014)

Do you really need to use Latin names? It's been done to death. I won't be able to tell Tiberius Septimus from all the other Semptimi, Septimoi and Septims.

I did the same as you, basing an Empire in a fantasy story on the Roman Empire - then again, they're _the _Empire, and they've always been - but not as closely. There was no lorica segmentata or centurions or pila, no Senate or togas, but there was an expansive Empire with broad roads and cities of marble. The names of the characters were mostly based on English or classical English names, rearranged to represent several regions of the Empire that were once sovereign nations it had once conquered or absorbed. The older names, those of the nobility and royalty, were based on a fictional language somewhat alike to Latin. So you didn't get the -us'es or i-'s, but something different that still set apart the common-folk and the nobility.


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## The Tourist (Feb 3, 2014)

If I was a Roman gladiator I would chose the name "Maximus Fluvius Rectus."

Yea, I know, I know.  It translates to roughly "the great diarrhea."  But I would take great pride in being such a vicious competitor that I scared "the bread and circuses" out of anyone I faced.

What's life without whimsy?


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## M. Cull (Feb 3, 2014)

I agree with Outiboros, rather than doing names that are overtly Latin in their origins, why not settle for "Romanesque" instead? Like including the letter combination -ae-: Aeloros, Baldaeron, Cundaera, etc.; or prefixes such as Bene- or  Domin-: Benetyr, Dominirus, Benidrax, etc. Another point is that if your intent is to faithfully reference Roman history in your fantasy, you would actually be at risk of introducing inaccuracies by sticking _purely_ to Roman names. After all, the Roman empire was neither homogenous nor isolated. That being the case, you can stretch your possible naming repertoire to include other ethnic groups' names as well, such as the Celts, Germanic tribes, Spanish, you name it. That may ease your concern about having names that all sound the same. 

Hope that helps.


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## Druico (Feb 3, 2014)

Yeah Romanesque works for me!

Anyone know of any sources for names like this?

Also just to add, I'm not really basing the entire race/empire on Rome. Only the military aspect of their Empire. But for some reason, creating character names has been the hardest part of writing for me!


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## Outiboros (Feb 3, 2014)

Druico said:


> Yeah Romanesque works for me!
> 
> Anyone know of any sources for names like this?


Your imagination? That mostly works. You either use that or you'll have to use internet name generators, of which a simple google search will net you a couple hundred.


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## Morkonan (Feb 3, 2014)

Druico said:


> ...Any ideas or examples would be awesome, I've chosen some names already that suit the character. Tiberius Septimus for the Emperor etc, but I don't want all the names to sound and seem the same, though I know this was how they were. I've tried to tweak some family names to make them more fantasy sounding and not ending in 'us'. But finding it a bit of a difficulty for all characters.
> 
> Thanks all!



Spell 'em all wrong... 

In Weber's "Safehold" series, he throws bucketloads of "ys" at every proper name and adds an odd consonant or three. Why? Well, that way, "Brian Williams" becomse "Bryann Wyllhyms." Then, he dumps titles on everyone. So, the character's full name would be "Lord of Sweaty Pants Island, Bryann Wyllhyms, First Admiral of the Janitor's Closet and Handmaiden to the King"... Or something like that. But, why?

Safehold is a world that has been populated by refugees from Earth after a very powerful alien species decided to make humans extinct. But, the Safeholdians don't know any of this. As far as they're concerned, the first day that they awakened on the planet was "Creation Day" and God put them there, not cool spaceships escaping from cool laser blasts... So, if I may be so bold, I think Weber decided to give them the flavor of Earth names, but wanted to mix in alien theme. So, walla!, he just decided to spell them weird. A very economical mind, that Mr. Weber.

If you're trying to draw upon some Romanesque flavor, why not try the same sort of approach? "Tiberius Septimus" would become "Tybyrryus Septymhus" or some such. His friends call him "Tyb", his troops call him "Immaculate General Septymhus the Grand", his family's name is "Septymhus" and live on the isle of "Septym" and his wife calls him "assyholus." 

This sort of mechanic is not unique, but you might find it effective. Personally, I would try to escape the whole Latin "naming convention" theme you're using and, instead, go towards something that incorporates unique sounds and spellings with conventional verbalizations and, perhaps, even some unique place names thrown into the mix.


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## alanmt (Feb 3, 2014)

You can use Roman or Romanesque names without following roman naming conventions, or you can use Roman naming conventions but make up the names.  If you want a fairly exhaustive list of roman names, google Nova Roma names for the name list of the Nova Roma community.

If this what you want to do, go for it, unless you are altering your writing to maximize your chance of commercial publishing.  Used often? Yes.  As overused as other conventions? Not even close.


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## Druico (Feb 4, 2014)

It's not so much the naming conventions I want to follow, ideally I'll just use a first and second name. I just like the Romanesque names for a fantasy novel. I'm not trying to follow any sort of true historical theme, I just like the names and the way they are pronounced, but obviously names from that era were very common, hence why individuals had 3 or more names to distinguish themselves. That doesn't appeal to me, as I want to mix the fantasy/roman naming culture and create my own kind of theme.

I just wondered how people would look at it, names can always be changed. My characters are pretty much created, and only rely on their final name. But I'm one of those people that looks for a name, gets set on say an 'A' and then before I know it my entire character list begins with a! Ideally what I think I will do is find a PDF list of names and then as some suggestions before add in characters and tweak them to a fantasy sounding name.


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## Morkonan (Feb 4, 2014)

Just to add to my post, above:

Something else that Weber does in "Safehold", which has also been done in other settings, is use "Titles" in dialogue attributions in place of proper names. So...

"I can't put on my boot," exclaimed Sweaty Pants.

This would give the attribution of the above dialogue to "Lord of Sweaty Pants Island, Bryann Wyllhyms, First Admiral of the Janitor's Closet and Handmaiden to the King" as mentioned above. Now, all this can get sort of confusing and, in Weber's series, there are far too many characters running around for a Reader to easily keep up with such naming conventions, where one character might have several different names attributed to them, including their true proper name. But, Weber does it anyway.  I suppose it does help to inflate the "epic" feel to the works, given that the Reader might have to keep a logbook in their head of three different names for the same character... Talk about artificially expanding your cast! 

But, it does serve as an example of what you could do. You could, for instance, give them some misspelled Romanesque names, but only refer to those when you purposefully wished to set up some Roman atmosphere. (For instance, during a political argument where dialogue gets heated and the speakers begin referring to each other by their Romanesque name, instead of their formal title or such..)

What about using some proper names that are not easily associated with Latin and then "Romanizing" them? So, "Harry" would be "Harricus", James would be "Jammicus" or "Jammilar".. etc.. Something else you could do is to reserve those ultra-latin sounding names for a certain range of characters, perhaps nobility or only those characters from a certain region? That would be in keeping with the setting of ancient Rome, anyway.


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## Daivo (Feb 6, 2014)

thing i hate with some books are all the overly complicated names to remember imagine hacing 5 main characters and each one has a chinese name, by page 50 you would be pulling your hair out not knowing who was who..
for a tip bit of advice, look up remus and romulus, the 2 brothers brought up by wolfs, romulus sliced up remus and became the first king of rome or somthing.
both simple names to remember...


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## cdawgxc (Feb 28, 2014)

Look to Roman mythology, there are lots of memorable names there.
Or even look into the Roman versions of Greek tales, they renamed essentially all of the Greek gods, and a good number of the heroes, as well.


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