Writer's Fallout Shelter

Haha. I agree mostly, but you've left out the people whose names are pronouncable, but way too akward. I guess you represented that well with your example, though. The name Belran, for example, is something entirely pronouncable, but an utterly unpleasant mix of two fairly common english words. When saying it, one almost wants to rearrange the letters and make it Brelan, which is much nicer.

I guess it's Tolkien's fault, although he was alright, because he was a linguist long before he was a writer, so his languages and off-color words made sense pronunciation-wise. It also made sense conceptually, because his books began as an experiment on language, so each word and each name had its own etymology behind it.

As a suggestion to Silence, I wouldn't fall into the trap of merely modifying an English word, unless it somehow describes the character, and if the base word sounds good on its own. If the character was an angel, for example, you could modify the word 'zephyr,' which is a light breeze, on which an angel might fly, and the word is uncommon enough to almost seem strange and exotic on its own. One could use Zephyra or Zephara to make it sound more feminine, or Zepheron to make it masculine. Also, note that the words sound grand enough and regal enough so that they might fit with angels. If it was a farie or some sort of other small trickster, one might shorten it to Zep, a name quick and simple enough for something you might imagine as being here one second and gone the next. Of course, maybe your faries are grand and regal, in which case my original examples may be apropriate.

I actually find fantasy names easier than regular names precisely because of tricks like this. I did say that one shouldn't use common words for a base in general, but there are tricks around that too. I would suggest, for you fantasy writers, that you look at just the names in a book where the author was good at that sort of thing, and simply study those. Look at the qualities of the character attached to the name, and figure out which sounds are appropriate for a character of that type. Tolkien, for example, used guttural words like 'Ugluk' for his orc names, which evokes a kind of brutal animalistic quality. Once you consider it from this point of view fantasy names actually do become quite easy. Just make sure they flow well enough to be easily pronouncable, as a favor to the rest of us.