Starcraft Names

[Nissa]

Hey y'all, fun little thread here. So I'm writing some Starcraft stuff, and I was just wondering if you had any suggestions for Starcraft-y names. Names in the game (note:SC/BW only) tend to run on themes. Human names tend to be grizzly/redneckish, things that imply both normalcy and toughness (Raynor, Duke), or are in some way hard/aristocratic (Mengsk, DuGalle). Protoss names, on the other hand, tend to be Greek inspired. "Protoss" itself is a greek word, though I forget what it means. Except for Aldaris, which is Latvian for "Brewmaster." I haven't quite caught the Zerg theme.

So have you guys ever come up with some really cool names?

[Sheliek]

Zerg characters and groups, even in StarCraft II, tend to be given mythological names. The SCI and related broods were all named after mythological creatures (except Balrog, which might as well have been one by the time the setting takes place).

Cerebrate names were a combination of various mythological (real and fictional) roots. Nargil, of Fenris Brood, was named after a Mesopotamian deity and -raq, as in Jormungand's Araq, is a common phonetic feature in many Hebrew deities and demideities, for instance. Other zerg names are inspired by Lovecraftian (or Lovecraft-esque) names and roots (-oth appears in several names in SCI and SC2, and is also incredibly common in Lovecraft's works, for instance). Zurvan and Dehaka are both names of ancient Middle Eastern deities as well. Rule of thumb for zerg names is take a monster for Broods (or name the Brood after its leader when it is the zerg describing their organization), and characters are generally ancient Arabic, Semitic and Mesopotamian deities with some phonetic features of Lovecraft's entities. I can go into more detail with this claim if anyone wants me to :P.

Gradius made a protoss name generator, it is post #8 in this thread. (http://sclegacy.com/forums/showthread.php?1922-Protoss-Naming-Conventions) It's good; like all random name generators, it's very hit or miss, but it'll always come up with good names if you let it create 20 or 30 at once.

Terran names are generally modern names, common and uncommon, or linguistic corruptions of modern names from various cultures. The names are either directly equivalent to modern names and spelled identically, or incredibly similar as would naturally happen after hundreds of years. Blizzard is good at world-building, and let's leave it at that.

[Nissa]

Nah, I think the characters in vanilla craft were named very well. That, and the name generator is gimmicky. Playing around with actual Greek names is way easier than that.

Also, I have no objection to thread necromancy, provided we have something to talk about.

[Sheliek]

Nah, I think the characters in vanilla craft were named very well. That, and the name generator is gimmicky. Playing around with actual Greek names is way easier than that.

Also, I have no objection to thread necromancy, provided we have something to talk about.

I never said the names were bad. Second part makes no sense in context unless I'm missing something?

I disagree with that gimmicky comment since you literally press a button and boom, names. Fiddling around with Greek names is considerably more time consuming, and the name generator uses the same conventions as the protoss names.

[Robear]

It's hard for me to tell now if they might be a bit cheesy, but as a kid I was really impressed with the Augustus/Angus/Arcturus family line of names. One Latin, one Gaelic (but for me with Texan connotations, especially with his son being a prospector), one Greek, but all with that a/us structure. Seems like the sort of naming scheme a family concerned with lineage would do. And I really enjoyed mythological names given to Zerg broods as well.

I wouldn't have characterized Mengsk or DuGalle as aristocratic names by themselves. Think DuGalle was supposed to make you think of Charles de Gaulle, who I guess was upper class? But I think it was just meant to have a military connotation. Then of course Kerrigan was probably just taken from Nancy Kerrigan. For regular terrans, I bet '90s athletes are a good source of last names.

Blizzard loves using Civil War-famous and or biblical place names, which was a bit weird when they gave some to the Protoss. Like, Raynor's homeworld being Shiloh, a biblical city and civil war battlefield, fine. The Protoss having a province called Antioch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antioch) on Aiur? Less fine, but I guess they decided to transition to more made-up stuff after '97.

Then the bad: "Nova Terra."

[Nissa]

I dunno, "DuGalle" sounds aristocratic to me. It's a name you'd expect to go along with authority. Antioch is a Turkish city, part of which belonged to ancient Greece. Turkey at that time also apparently had a large Greek population. Which it might still, although apparently some ancient Byzantines adopted greek as a language, confusing the ancestry a bit. Or so sayeth the internet.

And no, Muspi, playing with Greek names is more inuitive than simply pushing a button. You're more likely to get something that sounds nice that way. The thread necromancy was referencing the thread you linked to.

[Sheliek]

It would've been necromancy if I posted in it, yes, and we did have something to talk about.

Anyway, you have a method for the protoss that works for you, so that's good. And yeah, the terrans, as robear said, definitely have a War of Southern Treason/War of Northern Aggression vibe going, when they aren't doing the linguistic corruption thing they've been doing lately. Zerg characters are as I said, taking Lovecraft and Middle Eastern mythologies and mash them together until it looks and sounds good.

Sarah Kerrigan is openly admitted to be named after a pair of skaters who got into a conniption around the time they were writing. It is a lucky coincidence, then, that Sarah is a Hebrew name meaning 'princess' and Kerrigan is an Irish name meaning 'dusky' or 'darkness'.

EDIT: I just remembered 'linguistic corruption' is an out-dated as shit term for 'linguistic change/evolution'. I suppose my first linguistics textbooks being written in the 40s or so might have coloured my word-choice over the years.

[Robear]

Sarah Kerrigan is openly admitted to be named after a pair of skaters who got into a conniption around the time they were writing.

Well, not really the pair of them, they didn't name the character "Tonya Kerrigan." :P Side note, what a despicable thing that was. I wonder how intentional the sarah kerrigan name meanings were, that does seem a little too good to be purely coincidental.