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@melancholicwriter

Like others have said, I like to think about the fantasy culture and get inspired from the real-world. I like to modify or make up new names that have a similar feeling to real-world names. For example, I’m pretty familiar with Greek and Latin names. I altered “Antigone” to “Antione” or “Tione”, that kind of thing. Meghan Whalen Turner does this in the Queen’s Thief books: the MC is named Eugenides, which she made up but it sounds like a real ancient Greek name.

I also like to think about the sounds the culture’s language would have–you don’t have to make up a language, just think about it’s alphabet. I have one culture that has harder and more throaty sounds and another that is lighter with more vowels. They both have very different feelings and it adds a nice uniformity to the names.

Behind the Name is an awesome website for name inspiration. It gives etymology and history and has lists of names by culture, including ancient names, and surnames.

Hope this helps some!