I made my own name generator back in June, 2014, and thought I had posted it to my blog, but I can’t find it. So, I am posting this article and will link to the PDF here.

This table uses a couple each of d6’s, d10’s, and d20’s. If you have multiple dice of different colors, you can roll your own.

This table is based on English and treats Y a little differently, giving 20 consonants to choose from. I would mix X and Y, or Q and Y. I am a visual person, so seeing the two letter consonant and vowel combinations helps me to come up with names just by looking at this chart.

One could also make card decks of different letter/syllable combinations and deal out random names that way.

There are also a lot of good online generators. I find it easier to have a long list of names and mark when I have used a name. I then circle back through the list. However, I like certain NPCs to be more memorable and have more unique names.

One could have a town where all the men are Jim, and all the women are Sally, and it is one’s occupation or other feature that distinguishes them. Jim the barber, Jim the butcher, or they just call them Barber or Butcher. Sally the Sorceress, or Sally the Scullery maid, etc. Jim the dark is the farmer with dark hair, and Sally the fair is his wife, for example. I think of everyone named Johnson in the town in Blazing Saddles.