Mack

I got into this because I was frustrated. Every fantasy name generator I tried was doing the same thing: randomly splicing syllables with no understanding of what made a Norse name sound Norse, or why Tolkien's Elvish names have that particular flowing quality. The results felt fake in a way I couldn't always articulate but always noticed.

So I started building my own. The core of LoreNamer is Markov chain models trained on actual historical corpora — I pulled from Old Norse saga names, Tolkien's published linguistic notes and name indexes, medieval English parish records, and Erin Hunter's Warriors series for clan cat naming conventions. The models learn the phoneme transitions of each tradition, not just the surface sounds.

The etymology cards are the part I'm most particular about. I got annoyed at generators that would confidently display fake meanings, so every lore card on LoreNamer either cites an attested etymology or clearly labels it as a cultural-style description. I'd rather say "this follows Old Norse naming patterns" than invent a meaning that sounds plausible but isn't real.

I write about the linguistics and cultural history behind naming because it's genuinely interesting and most people don't know it. The fact that Anglo-Saxon parents named children after elves because elves were considered powerful and beautiful — that's not trivia, that's context that changes how you think about the names. I want the articles here to give people that kind of context.