Hi and welcome to D&D Alley!
The question I'm asked the most is: where do the names come from (or how do you know the meanings?).
When creating for my own homebrew elves, I really wanted to know the meaning behind their names. After all, elves choose their names when they come of age. Their name defines them and how they see themselves.
Some elves might choose to honour an ancestor. Or take on a name they had in their previous lives. Or maybe they want a name that tells a story of who they want to be - after all, when you're young you have your life ahead of you.
So, I decided to hunt down canonical D&D elvish terms. And I found them, but unforunately, a lot of it inconsistent and what was consistent was hard to follow and understand. There was no true "language" only a series of unrelated words.
I took it upon myself to create it!
I'm a hobby conlanger (that means I create fictional langauges). So I had a bit of an idea on how to do this.
The names and the meanings that appear are all based off this constructed language, which itself based off those canon D&D terminology I found on the internet.
Recently, I've also create conlangs for Drow and Draconic.
Credit to these websites for the base dictionaries:
- http://www.candlekeep.com/library/articles/diction_elf.htm
- https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Drow_dictionary
- https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Draconic_dictionary