Good day Mr. Greenwood. 🙂 Do people in the realms ever name their children after gods, demigods, prophets or famous religious figures? All the time. Hence Torm of the Knights of Myth Drannor (named after Torm the deity). TSR edited most instances of this out of the published Realms to dispel confusion.#Realmslore
— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) March 31, 2019
I don’t know for Forgotten Realms, but Dragonlance has a few characters. The twins Caramon and Raistlin Majere, their surname is the god of wisdom. Caramon’s wizard son Palin is named after Paladine, god of light.
If you have a god, a few locations, and several characters sharing the same name, keeping track of lore becomes a real pain.
Helm Dwarf-Friend, ruler of Sundabar
Isn’t it typically VERY rare for people to use deity names as common names?
The big example I can think of is “Jesus” being widely used, but he’s not really quite a deity. No member of the Abrahamic traditions gives their child the name “Yahweh”, or “Jehova”, or even non-name epithets like “God” or “Allah”.
The Norse didn’t name their children “Odin” or “Thor”; the Japanese didn’t name theirs “Susano’o” or “Amaterasu”; you don’t meet Finns named “Perkele”; you don’t hear about Indians named “Krishna” or “Vishnu”; no Mesoamericans named their children “Huēhuecoyōtl” or “Itzamna”; the Incans didn’t use “Inti”; the Turkic and Mongolian peoples don’t use “Tengri”; the Romans never named people “Jupiter” or “Mars”, nor the Greeks “Zeus” or “Ares”…
To be honest, I can’t think of any real examples of deific names as common names – the closest I know of is the aforementioned “Jesus” and other equivalents like “Mohammed”, or similar figures like Saints and Imams, et cetera.
Even in a world where the Gods are real and eminently present, it seems highly unlikely that people would give their children the names of deities. Surely that would be seen as somewhat blasphemous?
Heavily depends on the god in my experience. Where helm the god of duty may not care if someone was named after him. Naming after a particularly vain or jealous god could come with consequences. Like naming your daughter sune might insult the faith, as she and her clergy are notoriously vain.