What's in a Name?

   Like a lot of referees, I sometimes find it difficult to think up names, and words for my games. So I look for inspiration wherever I can. Including but not limited to Music playlists (musicians and songs), word and name generators, random wikipedia pages, and even my email spam folder.

    I often listen to music on you tube while working on my hobbies, and I will look at the list of musician or band names and song titles and choose names from amongst them. One such name was Magic Slapstick; I cannot recall whether this is the title of a song or the name of a band, but I used it as the name of a ship and the animal it was named after. Which of course was based on a scene from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy film.

    Word and name generators, whether it's one of the myriad of online generators or the word generation tables found in the old Traveller alien modules, all work well. 

    I've also found inspiration by opening wikipedia in my browser and clicking random page. This is a little hit and miss, but sometimes provides some awesome inspiration.

    My spam folder doesn't receive a lot of spam, but every now and again I'll check the folder out and when I do I see that some of the emails purport to be sent by people who sometimes have interesting names which would easily find a home in many an RPG.