So what’s the Human called, anyway? III

The third of the name-generators for humans clocks in at 12 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial/ToC, 1 page advertisement, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 8 pages of content, so let’s take a look, shall we?

So, let’s get this out of the way – this not something fancy, it’s a name-generator, with 3 columns per page. Each column sports 50 entries: 50 male names, 50 female names and 50 place names, meaning that, as far as nomenclature goes, you’ll have quite an array of choices at your command.

We receive one table of African names, one devoted to Arabic names and one for Chinese names. Beyond these, Japanese names, Italian names, Spanish and Slavic names and even South American names are covered – the latter sporting a peculiarity in that they explain the meaning of the nick names the third column features- an entry would for example read: “Ixtelolohtli, Brown Eyes.” Wait, didn’t I say “place names? well, the Chinese, Slavic and Italian tables instead provide 50 surnames to account for the peculiarity of their linguistic conventions.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are very good – with the exception of one entry, I noticed no glitches. Layout adheres to a crisp 3-column standard for the tables that is very printer-friendly. The pdf comes in two versions – one intended for the printer and one for screen-use. The pdfs come fully bookmarked for your convenience.

Now, as some of you may know, I learn languages as one of my hobbies and have a pretty easy time acquiring new ones; that being said, I have to admit to not being able to judge whether all of the names herein are “right” in their respective languages. I did not notice a mayor hiccup or the like that felt “wrong” in a given table – and hey, that’s about all you could expect from a name-generator, right? Well, personally, and this is only the language-nerd in me, I think pronunciation guidelines for each table would have been the icing on the cake – you know, like “x” is pronounced like a “sh” here… The like. Yes, I’m aware that no one but me and a minority would care. Still, I would have loved to see that.

Another potential issue might be that the pdf could have provided family etc. in lieu of places names, sticking closer to the premise of the title of this pdf, but again, this is a mostly cosmetic gripe.

Barring any valid gripes against this pdf, I will award Aaron Bailey’s name-generators 4.5 stars, rounded up to 5 – they do exactly what they say on the lid.

You can get these generators here on OBS and here on d20pfsrd.com’s shop!

Endzeitgeist out.

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