Navnekonvensjoner, Og Et Tegn

In some historic societies, a man would choose his name upon achieving adulthood. In some microcosms nowadays, a man's teammates choose his call-sign  Elsewhere, the parents designate the name for their offspring before ever knowing him, before his birth, dooming him to whatever social norms accompany his name.

We don't think about it much, but our names define something about us. The reason we don't think about it much is that it doesn't define much about us. Characters in written works, however, are merely constructs of imagination -- their name is one of the only things they have. So, though there are any number of ways a name can be chosen for a character, or a character be chosen for a name -- care (or at least consistency) can't possibly be a bad thing.

I, however, have a long-standing love affair with random numbers, so we'll be generating randomly instead, using a website. We like random numbers around here -- this won't be the last time I'll skip doing things the right way for the random way.

Now, on to character creation. Obviously the world should be coming first -- but what's a world without people? It's easier to define a society that would have produced a character you'd be willing to read about than it is to define a society that would generate characters you'd be willing to read about. (That is, if you make the society to fit the character, rather than the other way around, you'll get better results.)

Let's introduce Jeb, named in high-tongue "Lewë". No, I will not share my name generation template. You can make your own. I will tell you that his high-tongue name indicates that he is destined for great things.

Jeb is a sentinel, a tower-top guard, and he is exhausted. It is only two-to-midnight, but Jeb works three jobs. In a more enlightened age, Jeb would be diagnosed as a depressive, as shown by his unwillingness, nearly pathological, to be idle, which led to his employment situation. In a less enlightened society, he would have already been set up with some nice, if reluctant, miller's daughter whose family desired to better their social situation, and would have been cheered thereby. But, in this age of women's liberation, a man born with such naturally brutal features is out of luck.

So he works. By day, he is the doorkeeper for His Lord the Viscount Belrûst Leman. By night, he is sentinel of the western gate's leftmost tower, which post mainly requires that he stay awake until midnight, spread pitch on the rooftops, and be prepared to wake up at all hours to open the portcullis for any late-night wandering nobility, or the night watch.

When he visits his cousins, he is one of the King's foresters. He doesn't know it, but Jeb is a very dangerous man, with very good connections for a common soldier. Were he less depressed, he might even realize it.

From Jeb, we have learned a few valuable pieces of information, foremost among them that there is a King, a Viscount, women's lib, and a high-tongue, which I knew but you didn't. We're going to go places if we keep this up.