LUCIDABRIGHT

So, you’re writing a thing, and you need to name a character. And, as we all know, naming a character is a giant pain in the ass. I offer this list of shit I use pretty regularly, for this purpose.

Behind the Name (The etymologies are weird as fuck, in a few places, but it’s great if you’ve got a name and need to find other names that are from or derived from the same culture/language)

Behind the Surname (BTN for family names)

Academy of Saint Gabriel Medieval Names Archive (This is the go-to for medieval names in Europe and the Near East. Hardcore scholarship and a distinct lack of fucking around.)

Kate Monk’s Onomastikon (The original internet name resource.)

The Soldier in Later Medieval England (Actual names from English military rolls around the Battle of Agincourt)

England’s Immigrants (Non-native residents of England, 1330-1550)

Celtic Personal Names of Roman Britain

Mapping the Medieval Countryside - People (People appearing in English inquisitions post mortem, 1418-1447)

Wiktionary’s Index of Biblical Names

Ancient Names Galleria (The weird shit is here. If you need Akkadian or Phoenecian names, those are totally covered.)

Trismegistos People (Names extracted from the Trismegistos Texts – mostly names from Graeco-Roman Egypt.)

Wikipedia Category: Surnames of African Origin (which is helpfully divided into sections by language)

Wikipedia Category: Amharic Language Names (I believe this list is primarily, if not entirely, given names.)

 YorubaName (“an online intervention to preserve and document all Yorùbá names in a multimedia format.”)

Writing Adolescent Fiction: Character names: Kenyan, Tanzanian and Ugandan (a list of given names and surnames with notes on how full names are constructed in each culture listed)

So You Want to Name a Sino (a fairly detailed guide on how to name a Chinese character without sounding like too much of a moron)

Most Popular Baby Names for Girls Since 1960 (most popular American girls’ names, by state, from 1960-2012, as a gif)

Popular Baby Names (the US Social Security database of naming trends in the US, with search options for date, gender, location, and trend)

A Guide to Names and Naming Practises (a UK government guide to common names and structure of names from around the world, split first by continent and then by culture. PDF.)

Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature (an entire book on trends in English naming and name structure and the Puritan influence, from 1880. PDF.)

I voted today

TOMO-CHAN IS A GIRL!, Vol. 1

Story and art by: Fumita Yanagida MSRP: $12.99 Release date: September 11, 2018

“HE NEVER TREATS ME LIKE A GIRL!”

Ace Attorney and memes, two things I will never stop loving.

I don’t think Breath of the Wild gets enough credit for the small but important touches that make the Guardian lasers the beefiest laser beams I’ve seen in a while

The lengthy charge up time, the spark just before they fire, the speed at which they launch (requiring incredibly precise timing to dodge, let alone block), and the huge, screen-shaking explosion that results from them hitting anything. Especially if they MISS, because then you get to see the beam travel past you before dramatically exploding like a missed attack in DBZ, letting you KNOW just how hard it could have creamed you if you didn’t dodge. It’s an attack you can feel the power of in real life, just watching it whiff and obliterating part of the scenery.

- the healer gets into a boss fight with the mage b/c the mage is smelly and won’t take a bath. - there is a superhero brigade of composed of starfish and the party nerd is a HUGE fan of them. - the party puts on a Snow White parody play, and the most serous member of the party cross-dresses as the evil queen and hams it up. - the Big Bad collapses in the desert to yell about friendship. - the main character collapses in the rain to cry about how incompetent he is. - the main character uses the word “protect” over 120 times. - you can rest at an inn during a chase scene through an enemy city. If you do, the party starts brushing their teeth until someone reminds them that they’re being chased and they should probably start running. - your adorable pigtailed monk, essentially a thirteen-year-old girl, asks the Big Bad to make a friendship pact. He tells her to go die and magic-punches her across the room. - there are swimsuits available for everyone. You can wear them to the final battle. The king, however, does not have a swimsuit. He claims this is because he swims in his royal regalia. - there is an optional dungeon in space where you can fight child-aged versions of the main characters and also your own dead father. - one of the super-attacks features a chibified robot copy of the main character bombarding the field with missiles. - one character is armed with a weapon that /breathes in is a dual-bladed spear that can separate into two blades, create arrows made out of energy, or transform into a pair of handguns. And in one of his super-attacks, he fucking drops that amazing weapon and just hadoukens a bitch with his bare hands??? AND I FORGOT THIS PART BUT HE COPIED HIS FIGHTING STYLE FROM A COMIC BOOK - another of his super attacks has him yell, the best that anyone can translate, “Instant Balls”. - the king regularly dresses up like a superhero. - the descriptions on the items are utterly hilarious. any and all of them. I vaguely recall that an equippable ribbon is described as “the perfect thing to wear when you find out he’s been cheating on you!” and there’s a poisonous fang described as “so poisonous it could kill you, bring you back to life, and kill you again.” - the party tries to come up with a pseudonym for the prince traveling with them in disguise. The name they choose is “Tiger Festival”. - the Big Bad is actually defeated by the power of friendship almost entirely without exaggeration. - the king has his own line of fruit snacks. - the party is swallowed by a giant desert turtle, and there is an entire dungeon where you try to find the turtle’s butt to escape. The phrase “everyone thinks we should leave through the butt…let’s search for the butt” is used.  - the protag gets REALLY ANGRY ABOUT JEWELRY