Good source of names by country/ethnicity

[msstice]

I'm looking for a good source of names grouped by ethnicity/country. For example, I've had some luck looking for Sinhalese names by looking for Sinhalese baby names, but what I'd really like is to just open up a newspaper from Sri Lanka (say) and find a bunch of names, and look at the patterns. Do you happen to know of a website that does aggregations like this? Thank you!

 

[The Judge]

Not quite what you're looking for, but I use Behind the Name quite a lot, as it can be searched by nationality and then further resolved into male and female names for first names The Meaning and History of First Names - Behind the Name

They also do surnames, The Meaning and History of Surnames - Behind the Name but I also google (well, duck-duck-go) and Wikipedia often has something, but there's also this site, if it's of help https://forebears.io/sri-lanka/surnames

You can usually get an idea of the frequency of surnames this way, but probably not patterns of use by eg class, caste or religion, and the same for first names, where there may well be an extra complication as certain names come into or out of fashion (eg Henry as opposed to Harry). In that case, if you find a name you like the sound of, it's probably best to research it a bit further.

 

[Laura R Hepworth]

Have you tried 20,000 Names.com?

 

[msstice]

@The Judge Both those sites are awesome! Thank you for the link @Laura R Hepworth !

PS. I looked for Khmer names as a test and Khmer Names - Behind the Name at least tries with 30 entries, and I'm most impressed that they chase some of them down to Sanksrit roots. For various reasons I'm going slightly deep into the spread of Hindu and Buddhist beliefs east of India and how that influenced names.

 

[Wayne Mack]

Another option is Fantasy name generators. Names for all your fantasy characters.

 

[msstice]

Another option is Fantasy name generators. Names for all your fantasy characters.

This is pretty neat, though I didn't look closely enough to see if they merely randomized first and last names, or randomized syllables too.

 

[THX1138]

All Names - Behind the Name is another one too.

 

[Harpo]

A conversation between two strangers online has just made me smile. They’re commenting on this:

One of the people is called Saoirse and the other is called Abderrahmane.
Nothing wrong with any of these names, obvs.

 

[sknox]

Names for people are fairly easy to come by and some are mentioned above. Place names are more challenging. I have two favorite sources: historical maps and Wikipedia.

Historical maps are doubly useful (I have lots of sources for Europe, very little for elsewhere, but have seen enough to know such collections exist), First, they give the old names for places. And if you're not writing actual historical fiction, you can just use them for inspiration without worrying if they're in the right place. Just linguistic consistency. Which brings me to the second use; namely, that place names change over time. So, a map of central Europe in 300 AD is going to have different names than one in 1300AD. For my writing, that will matter.

The other source is Wikipedia. There I use it mainly when I've settled on a particular place that's going to figure in a story. Very often, though not always, Wikipedia will provide historical names as well as the name in the other cultures that had figured in that place's history over the centuries. So, if you're looking broadly, this second source is less useful, but may prove so later on.

 

[ColGray]

Fantasy name generators. Names for all your fantasy characters.

Countless generators for countless names. Some say it's the best fantasy name generator site around, which is very humbling to hear.

www.fantasynamegenerators.com

I know it says, Fantasy Names Generator, but there are subsets by country, language and region. There's also sets for historical vs modern.