When creating a new living history persona, I find that using a name similar to my own given name is a great way to strengthen my connection to the persona. In my main Middle-earth impression, I use the Gothic translation of my name, which isn’t too far off. While there are plenty of ‘Earth names’ present in the GFFA, I felt that mine probably wouldn’t be a good fit; in which case, I was stuck until I could come up with an appropriate in-universe name.
While there are a ton of ‘Star Wars Name Generators’ out there, most of them are pretty arbitrary, and usually come up with a list of names that uncreatively follow the ‘Obi-Wan’ pattern. They also never take cultural naming conventions into account—Rodian names are distinct from Twi’leks, who are distinct from Hutts, who are distinct from Corellian Humans, who are different from Naboo humans, who are…you get the point.
As I had already decided that this persona would be based on Sulon (and would be human, not Sullustan, freeing me from an incomprehensible string of U’s, L’s, B’s, N’s, and M’s!—their use of an extremely limited alphabet reminds me of Hawaiian), I cracked open my sources to see what first names on Sulon were known. Imagine my surprise when I copied them all out in front of me to see that not only do we have Kyle, Morgan and Patricia Katarn, but also Carole, Jenny, Katie, Marie, Byron, Luther, Portia, and Jen!
It would seem that either Earth names are just unnaturally common among folks from Sulon, OR else Bill Dietz has a seriously weak grasp on GFFA naming conventions! (After reading the rest of his Dark Forces trilogy, I can definitely say it’s the latter -_-
Disappointed in the general mundane-ness of documented Sulon names (while the minority, a few properly-GFFA-named characters like Skorg and Grif do exist), I decided to try to ‘Tuckerize’ my own name, which unfortunately has a limited supply of letters; I had difficulty making anything that sounded good using only ANLYUTISOH (I feel your pain, Sullustans!). However, by cutting down my last name a la ‘Coppola, Francis Ford –> Oppo Rancisis’ I was able to come up with ‘Oli’ or ‘Olis’. ‘Oli’(pronounced OH-LEE) would be reminiscent of ‘Obi’, and also rang a bell as a known first name…ah yes, Olee Starstone…who, as I soon learned, was in fact female. Whoops!, nevermind.
Alright, ‘Olis’ it is! Last names were also a struggle for me to come up with; all I managed were Nolsa, Onsal, Tanso, or Tinla, none of which pair very well with Oli, at least to my ears and tongue. However, in my rereading of the Dark Forces novellas, I did find a few references where Rebels on Sulon were referred to as ‘Citizen ___’—which seems appropriate for members of an armed, underground, activist network. Why endanger the rest of your family? Citizen Olis would have to work!
In the Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight manual, Morgan Katarn is described as “the slain father of Kyle Katarn and native of Sulon” (p36). Based on that, I concluded that having a more in-universe name among all the Earth names present on Sulon suggests to me that Olis’ parents may have been offworlders who immigrated to Sulon, which conveniently reflects the actual truth of my family, since my parents moved down to Kaintuckee from Up North in order to homestead and be dirt farmers. This means I can simply ‘set’ my family history in GFFA terms, allowing me to be able to recount it with confidence if questioned, and adding realism to the persona.
Living History in the Star Wars Galaxy 