Any name can sound good, if you can justify it against its culture. With a developed culture, you can develop the traditions, the language, the dialect, the names... If you have these developed first, then the names start to come easily.


Also, Streetlamp Le Moose for president.

Naming characters are hard. I'm not really a fan of any of the names you wrote. When I read your list, this is what I see:

Asar Alubat
Braigid Dawntiger
Carn Evelion

Animals appear to be a pattern here. Is that intentional or subconscious? They aren't particularly uncommonly named animals.

Braigid Dawntiger
Carn Evelion

Another pattern common in some of the names. I'm now waiting for an Dusklynx, or a Mornleopard.

Carn Evelion - Is that con-carne with beans? (con-carne)

Asar Alubat
Braigid Dawntiger
Carn Evelion

ABCDE? Is the author trying to hit the entire alphabet?

Asar Alubat - A.A. initials. Sounds funny, but not in a naturally-occuring way.

Asar Alubat - Sounds like a Pokemon name. "I choose you, Alubat!"

Braigid Dawntiger - Brah-gid? Bray-zid? How do I pronounce this? It sounds made-up, even if it is a real name. It reminds me of the Brian Regan bit where he's trying to remember the name of the person who's walking towards him, and is just spouting gibberish.

Mus Otigoc - Gibberish, or else 'Mush Octorok'
Zel Usdgan - More gibberish, at least to me.

Solet - Soylent Greens?

Sanshen Kel and Thana Tos - these two sound like names from the Elder Scrolls series or even the Star Wars series. I was never particularly impressed by their names either.

In my opinion, the problem with these names is they try to hard to not sound normal, and instead they sound silly or sound made-up or sound like they lack creativity.

If someone is going to have the name, 'Dawntiger', that's cool... because it's clear that it's not that character's real name, but it's an assumed name (a self-taken pseudonym, perhaps as a nom-de-guerre - a name of war).
But if someone is going to have the name, 'Braigid Dawntiger', it's trying to pass off something clearly made up as something that I'm supposed to believe is natural. This is bad purely because it breaks immersion.

If it's a natural name, come up with a cool but reasonable natural name. Something someone would actually have in real life.

If it's an unnatural name, make it clearly an unnatural name, by making it a single-name noun or verb.

If there is a common theme (like animals), stick to the theme.

If it's a completely different culture (Thana Tos, Zel Usdgan, etc...), it better be consistent, better have meaning, better sound natural.

Here's some natural names, without being 'Bob' or 'Smith':

Oliver

Isabel

Nathan

Warren

Darcia

And if you have some already natural-sounding names, then you can slip in some slightly-less natural names for that extra inch of cool () when you need it:

Marik

Bast

Byron

Jase

Or, if you are going for nom-de-guerres, take it farther (and keep it single-named):

Bloodwolf

Nightclaw

Dawntiger (is acceptable in this context)

But greater subtlety can be had by being a bit more abstract in your naming or by using slightly-less common words:

Lynx

Nox

Panthera

Or name your characters nouns or verbs without smashing two words together:

Dust

Cypress

Dawn

Derelict

Garrison

The names should fit the character though, at least in "feel". You shouldn't have a character, and then pick a random name, or it might not "fit" right. Instead, if you already have the character figured out, then you can "try on" many different names in your mind, and see if it "feels right" for that character.

Naming characters are hard. I'm not really a fan of any of the names you wrote. When I read your list, this is what I see:

Alphabetical is cuz it's in that order. No other reason.

The names you point out have animal names in them 2 are happen stance and the 3rd is a play on one of those.

Carn Evelion is not pronounced "Eve Lion". It's more pronounced like Carn i-vel-ee-uhn. I just noticed that when spelled it looks like Eve Lion. Which is where dawntiger comes from as an opposite.

Asar Alubat is the same as Alucard, as is Solet, and Mus Otigoc. They're philosophy references ^.^

Zel Usdgan and Braigid Dawntiger (also not pronounced Dawn Tiger) are both possible names for the same character... Neither sounds that good to me, but both play with various things that cropped into Carn Evelion but whatever ^.^

As to them not sounding natural. They arent. At least not in the same way you are thinking of "natural" so that's ok...

thanks for the input

I agree with Servant's response. He gave some really good advice that you may want to reconsider. I understand that the names you chose have specific meanings or references, but they are also very difficult to pronounce and the references might be too obscure for the common player to perceive. If you choose to use those names anyway, I would suggest changing the spelling to fit the pronunciation.

1) Asar Alubat
"Alubat" doesn't sound like a surname to me; it sounds like a bat-like enemy/monster. "Asar" sounds fine as a name though.
It took me a decent amount of time the get that it's "tabula rasa" backwards. Please note that names derived from other names/phrases spelled backwards often indicates some form of opposition to the two, or at the very least some significant connection. And anyway, the "name=something else spelled backwards" gimmick is best used sparingly, if at all; you have three names in this list that use it.

2) Braigid Dawntiger
"Braigid" and "Dawntiger" don't feel like they go together. "Braigid" calls to mind the Celtic name "Brigid", while "Dawntiger" evokes some kind of Native American/generic fantasy hodgepodge. Also, if it's not pronounced "dawn tiger", don't spell it "dawntiger".

3) Carn Evelion
I can't see this name without immediately thinking "carnival".

4) Mus Otigoc
I get that this is supposed to be "cogito sum" backwards (I hope his middle name or species isn't "Ogre"). But "mus" makes me think of rodents (it looks and sounds similar to mouse, and is in fact that Latin word for mouse), and "otigoc" to me sounds like the name of a bug-like creature with big eyes. I doubt you were intending the name to evoke big-eyed mouse-bugs though.
Also, see the above comment about reverse-spelled names.

5) Sanshen Kel
"Sanshen" sounds like it's trying to be vaguely east-Asian, "Kel" does not.

6) Solet
I know it's supposed to be "telos" backwards, which is going to be basically meaningless to most players. (Again, see the above comment about reverse-spelled names.) But to me it looks like nothing so much as a modification of "Colette".

7) Thana Tos
A bit too on-the-nose if the character is connected with death somehow, and just kind of bleh otherwise. Sounds like it came out of a bad comic book.

8) Zel Usdgan
"Usdgan" in particular looks like it trying too hard to be foreign/alien - "sdg" is an invalid consonant cluster in English (i.e. it violates English's phonotactics), which is already quite liberal with consonant clusters compared to most other languages, and it's not the kind of consonant cluster that would typically be found in less-restrictive languages either.

I totally missed the names spelt backwards (even if I had, I wouldn't have recognized any of them except tabula rasa).

That said, Telos, Cogito, and Rasa would be acceptable single-word nom-de-guerres on their own. Otigoc and Alubat would not be good names, IMO.