#drow names

Zarinil

Zarrae

Zarvyrae

Nathaer

So drow names… if anyone’s seen my blorbo Llewelyn and his backstory post you may be wondering, Frankie… why does he not have a drow name like all the other characters in your story? Well. It’s because when I made him I knew nothing about drow names so he’s stuck being Llewelyn and not like Dinin Do’Urden the Second.

My in lore canon reason? He probably changed his name. Well rather he had it changed for him. I don’t imagine drow names are very palatable for surface dwellers (yeah yeah I know there’s other races with their own unique names but most topsiders are at best wary of Drow so having a more “surface dweller” name probably helps him, he’s got like a whole thing of not wanting to be seen as an evil Lolth worshipping Drow so it fits his character). Morgana, his mother figure, actually just started calling him that and I haven’t actually figured out his Drow name yet because I have serious beef with the Drow language as a whole but I’ll post about that later.

Anyways now that I DO know about drow names (all hail Kismet’s drow name generator) you best believe I am naming all my drow silly names. They all have shorthand versions though because I’m not typing Thia’zylisstra’drada every time she shows up in the story. Yas’tana is just Yas’tana’ust because I only knew about the third suffix later on so she has a short name. Apparently Yas’tana’s full name is Yas’syn’tana’usst which cool… but I didn’t write that down anywhere except my DMs with one of my friends 💀. Also I had it written down as Yas’syl’tana and then Yas’syn’tana so what is the truth idk. I’m not a very organized loremaster. Kalan is like Kalanxundkah’dra or something I don’t fully remember because I just call him Kalan. And finally Matron Tal’zaiira is just that. I imagine she was like firstborn tho idk.

The funny thing too is I actually kinda hate drow names… like don’t get me wrong I love them but it can be hard to find something that sounds nice y’know? Drow to me is a very guttural language and so their names not being very pretty to a silly human such as myself actually fits very well. I know I don’t have to use drow names cause fucking Drizzt’s mom is named Malice but I *want* to use drow names so I’m in a hell of my own making.

NGL it was a long ago (~10 yrs) when I searched about drow names but back in time the first source I found was the book 'Drow of the Underdark'. Most of the other sources I found and don't remember were based on this book. There says that drow names contain a/more prefix part(s) and one/more suffix part(s) and these parts give the meaning of the name.

Some of the names contains part of the deity's name the family worships and the name can also show the order of birth.

There are names which would understand quite fast like Dinin, Malice, Nalfein or even Drizzt. Pls don't take this a fact because I'm not sure if I translated them good and I wrote them just from my memories, but:

Dinin = Din+in = (someone/relative of) a hunting lizard

Malice = Ma+lice = deadly poison

Nalfein = Nal+fein = ancient revenge/vengeance

Drizzt was if I remember well Dris+zt = ranger man

There are also some names I simply don't know how to assemble like my fav assholes, Rai'gy and Kimmuriel or f.e. Masoj.

I also noticed back in time that the names in the War of the Spider Queen are much more translatable this way like the ones in the earlier Drizzt books.

I had the doubt ~10 years ago that maybe the translation of names would wary in the different languages but later I noticed that all of the drow names are (almost) the same in the different translations I read these books so probably it's not an error possibility.

And hey, thank you for asking this and I would like to request everyone who knows more about drow names to reach out if you want and share your wisdom!

Source material:

Drow of the Underdark 2007 (D&D)

Drow Name Tables from Dragon Magazine

full name: Iim'rak Daxffyn of house Maervs

nicknames: Ym (used 99% of the time) or simply Iim'rak

pronunciation: Ymrakk Dachynn Ma-ervs

meaning: Iim (lively) rak (storm) - Dax (wandering) ffyn (song) - Mae (raiders from) ervs (the depths)

"the lively wandering storm-song"

My wife was working on some Drow characters for our D&D campaign, so I made a random generator for her based on existing name tables. (Specifically, the table from Dragon Magazine courtesy of this Reddit post.)