I need some help thinking of last names for 5 of my characters at five different places all over the globe. One is from Cairo named Amun One is from Belgium named Cyril One is from Tokyo named Hikaru One is from Quebec named Nathan The last is from Seattle named Serge So if you have any last names feel free to drop them here. You might see them in my first creation. :]
Well, I'm from the Netherlands myself (the country above Belgium), but you should know that belgium is devided into 2 parts; Vlaanderen (dutch speaking) and the french part (forgot what's it called)... For some dutch names; Sloot Jansen Slotenmaker Duif Weemaes
all you have to do is google for '[country] surnames'... 'japanese surnames' brought up over a half million hits, the first page alone providing all you could need...
aphonos gave me this very very useful link for this stuff: http://www.gaminggeeks.org/Resources/KateMonk/ It's a lot of links-from-links to navigate through, but it does include information of surnames from all over the world, too.
Serge? Isn't that a soda? Or maybe short for Sergio? In that case you could go with an Italian surname.
For Japanese, I'd suggest going with Matsuo. It's common enough to be familiar and easy to read, but not borng like Tanaka.
For some reason I find names with an odd number of syllables (1,3,5,7) to sound better than ones with an even number. e.g. Amun Djalili (5) Cyril Bach (3) Nathan Greene (3) Odd-numbered-names sound stronger and sharper to my ear... With longer ones (4+) sounding more exotic...
Cyril for a Belgian sounds like someone who's at least 50 years old, if not much more. Young Belgians have 'normal' international-sounding names like Thomas or David, boring local names like Jan for someone from Flanders or Jean for someone from the French-speaking south (Wallonia), or exotic foreign-sounding names like Swann.
