My novel is set in India, and I'm having trouble finding good but pronounceable Indian names. Many characters are royal, so I'm looking for rich, respectful names that mean important things.
How can I go about finding suitable names? What resources can I use?
Indian culture is very complex. The names and characteristics of Indian royalty varies from state to state. To create a royal name you will need to answer several questions.
What is the period your character is set in? This is important because names have evolved over the years. TL;DR.
I will restrict my name choices to a particular part of North India. If you want a simple North Indian royal name near the state of Rajasthan, simply add the surname "Singh" to the end of the name and Raja or Maharaja in the beginning. I am skipping the "h" in the end (i.e don't use Maharajah). Furthermore you will need names of an entire family and not just a person. Indian royals take pride in the family history. For example you could say there existed "Maharaja Rudrapratap Bhavani Singh Rathore". He had a son "Maharaja Umed Bhavani Singh Rathore" and four daughters. The eldest child, his son, "Kunwar Ratan Singh Rathore" too the reigns thereafter. The erstwhile king "Kunwar Ratan Singh Rathore" had a son "Kunwar Veer Singh" and one daughter. Veer Singh now goes by the nickname Vicky. Other answers have given possible names for Vicky but they are common names. Old kings had multiple middle names. The current generation has shorter name - a first name and a last name.
You will need some family history too. For example, you can imagine that the fore-fathers of "Maharaja Rudrapratap Bhavani Singh Rathore" were filthy powerful rich royals who fought wars against the Mughals and thrived. But "Maharaja Rudrapratap Bhavani Singh Rathore" lost most of his wealth to the British. Whatever was left, "Maharaja Umed Bhavani Singh Rathore" lost in 1947 due to independence when the elected government took over. Finally, "Kunwar Ratan Singh Rathore" is into politics, maintains some servants, a long line of family portraits hangs on walls of his mansion. He has a collection of guns and the big mansion needs repair. He lived on government pension and mostly pride. Finally Vicky goes to college, runs after chicks, drinks and is mostly ignored by people except for his friends who want a free drink. Finally, I must reiterate that I made up the names. Also for the Indian royals, it is not unusual to have a large joint family that includes uncles, aunts and so forth who may or may not not be faithful to this guy. You could add that "Maharaja Umed Bhavani Singh Rathore" was killed by a greedy uncle and his children were brought up by his mother/aunt/servant etc..
This structure does not answer your question completely but explains to you a short history of the decline of typical royalty in the past few hundred years. But any story about Indian royals needs some historical background and culture as they take pride in it.
Here is a generator for Hindu names.
http://fantasynamegenerators.com/hindu_names.php
You can pick among hundreds - names and family names.
Try asking for suggestions in the NaNoWriMo ("National Novel Writing Month") sub-forum "Appellation Station" or at the Livejournal community devoted to fact-checking for writers "Little Details" .
I found out about both of these via the answers people here kindly gave to this question, which was about resources for real-world research generally.
When asking for suggestions you will get better answers if you specify the time period in which your story is set, the part of India which the characters come from, whether the setting of the story is strictly real-world or includes elements of magic or alternate history, the royal characters' religion and the historical background to their royal status, and any similar constraints.
As long as your name is short and doesn't have too many syllables, your audience will like the name. Here is a list of Indian baby boy names and Indian Baby Girl Names to get you started. I am not sure at what stage your book is or if it is launched currently but hope this helps
I use http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/gen-male-us-us.php You can choose gender, country, and group.
Wikipedia is also a decent source of information about names (though I'm not sure about the English version). It often gives the etymology and the names of famous people who have (or had) the name. It also says if the name is shared, with different meaning, by other cultures, which can be useful to prevent cultural misunderstandings about where the character is from.
