This requires a bit of backstory, so the short and sweet of it is I grew up loving Star Wars and I no longer love current Star Wars so I'm writing my own Star Wars. I have a good story and characters I'm passionate about, but the names are killing me. The main characters belong to a religious warrior sect that's a mix of Japanese Ronin and the Jedi Knights. My placeholder title for one of these warriors is calling them a "Cleric", but it doesn't sound mystical enough for me especially since the origin of this religion is alien in nature. I'm not asking someone to do my work for me but I (like most writers I assume) have along list of cool names I refer to when I start writing something and I can't settle on anything that sounds iconic. I've played with random name generators, researched old Roman/Greek names, and scrolled through lists of crew credits on IMDb from foreign films looking for any name that sounds alien but familiar and I got nothing. Any and all help would be much appreciated.
I think I vaguely remember that some Star Wars names were made up of the three first and the three last letters of regular names. How about using that in context with Japanese names, or Greek/Roman ones? Ex: Julius Caesar = Jul Cae Brutus Longinus = Bru Lon = Brulon Haruki Takashi = Har Tak = Harrak Etc... Just a thought.
Oooh, I'll try this. I'm such a huge stickler for names even when it comes to basic human characters, it's why I worship the person who created "Find/Replace".
Spot 5th Ave? OT: I make up alien names regularly, since I write plenty of Sci-fi. Try playing around with a name or two, smashing them together as @Madman sugested. Or using an apostrophe or hyphen to a series of semi pronounceable string of letters. Maybe even making your twist on a name that already exists by swapping out letters for different ones. One example on that last one from my first novel, I had took Jessica and turned it into Janxica for a character name. (Yet still nobody can pronounce it right.) So just use a bit of imagination, and see where that gets you.
It's not Sci-fi, but Wings of Fire names dragons after animals, objects or colors, like Kestrel, Clay, or Indigo, and it seems to work pretty well. In my fantasy realms, I often name places or characters after scientific names for animals. There's the kingdom of Terrelli, after Dunkleosteus Terrelli. Then there's the kingdoms of Poecilotheria, Aphonopelma, and the characters Grammostola and Huntsman, which are all named after spiders!
In Star Wars, you can also throw in the occasional real name (Luke, Ben) and English word(s) (Skywalker, Starkiller, Solo, Dash, Jade.) You want to do this sparingly though.
