forum Surnames in a fantasy world?

Started February 20, 2019 by @Becfromthedead group

tune

So I started out not using surnames in my story (why I thought that was an okay idea, I don't know), but now I do want to use them. How should I go about picking surnames? I thought about going with the 2-word surname in English, as many fantasy surnames are (Warsong, Bluewater, Moonglow, etc), but idk… is it too cliche? They're definitely fun to use, and I can use them as occupational surnames and such, and I also found a fun way to change them when people get married (if they want to, they can interchange parts and have the same last name, but still keep part of their own, so for example, if a Warsong and a Moonglow got married, they might make their last name Moonsong). But still, I'm having my doubts. (Note: I'm not looking to get published or anything, I just want to give them good names, I guess.)

Based on their ancestors traits or history is a decent idea. I toy with the idea of my dude Rogin being known as Rogin Darkslayer because his father was the one who killed Morlus god of Death and Destruction. (Well he wasn't the one who did it actually but…)

Okay, so I'll probably stick with it, partially to make things easier on myself. Using it to describe traits seems like a valid enough method.

Use names in different languages, they usually sound awesome and have nice meanings

Yeah, I already do that for most of my stuff, like place names… I kind of wanted to try something different, maybe, but idk. I could always vary surname types by region, too.