Thursday, October 18, 2018

Sword & Planet Character Name Generator

Art by Clyde Caldwell
After way more intensive review of Barsoomian names in Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars books and adding a dash of Gardner Fox's Llarn novels, which pretty closely mimic Barsoomian morphology, I have come up with a series of generators for Martian names, as accurate as I can make it. Well, there's one name from the series it can't generate, but by the time I discovered this, it was too late. Anyway, it's pretty close to getting them all. Check it out.

Note the in the structures given for the names multiple "elements" typical mean a new word for males names, but is more likely to be a multi-syllabic "single" name for females, but since this isn't always the case I've elected to leave the dividing up to you. For example: EES is the structure of Djor Kantos, but also Carthoris and Vanuma.

8 comments:

Billy Longino said...

The world needs more sword-and-planet.
I haven't followed the genre very deeply, but do you know of any contemporary takes on it?

Trey said...

I'll interpret contemporary as post-1990.

Paragaea by Chris Roberson is probably the most pure planetary romance while updated thing I'm aware of in prose. S.M. Stirling also has two novels that do a modern rationalized sci-fi take on the pulp versions of Mars and Venus in In the Courts of the Crimson King and The Sky People.

There was also an updated comics versions of Flash Gordon from Dynamite in 2014.

Billy Longino said...

Awesome. I'm going to pick up Paragaea. I've tried reading Stirling before and couldn't quite get into his writing. Too bad no one with the skill of Gene Wolfe has taken on the genre.

Anne said...

Let's make a royal couple!

Queen Kima

King Sonaihana

They sound a bit tropical to me. Perhaps they rule a kingdom on Venus?

Dariel said...

Another author whose way with names that I liked was Tanith Lee. Her Birthgrave series has a sword and planet feel to it at times, and I liked how the names of places and people rolled well off the tongue.

By the way, I'm starting a new sword and planet project myself tentatively titled Swords of Maruzar. An excerpt of the intro is on my blog http://hariragat.blogspot.com/2018/10/battle-for-maruzar.html.

Blue Tyson said...

This is very cool.

You could always add a Kline variation, too.

So this morning was getting a robot to pick me random numbers for names!

evangineer said...

Meant to post this before now but a few more contemporary takes on Sword and Planet of note are:

Champion of Mars by Guy Haley
Jane Carver of Waar and Swords of Waar by Nathan Long

evangineer said...

Surprised there hasn't been any mention of the anthologies by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois:

* Old Mars
* Old Venus