Yay for Donjon

There is a website that features a lot of useful tools for running RPGs, like random name generators for NPCs or cities or taverns, and it even has a calendar generator based on specifications you input, those sorts of things. I went to see if that site had Avatar Legends name generators or animal hybrid generators, and it did not, but I saw the donation links while I was looking, and since I had used it a bunch in the past for DMing other campaigns, and I decided to donate via the "buy me a ko-fi" link, and just mentioned in passing in the donation note that I had stumbled across the donation link while looking to see if there were avatar: legends name generators. 

If you just google for ATLA name generators or ATLA hybrid animal generators, you get pretty meh results.  The book gives you a long enough list of example names to get started, and it gives you some basic outlines about how the naming systems for the different cultures work in relation to real world cultures.  Which is perfectly serviceable for me when I am planning out specific NPCs in advance, or if you are a player making a character.  Earth Kingdom names, for example:

The Earth Kingdom is vast with a wide variety of cultures among its people. Earth Kingdom names are composed of one or two syllables—many of these appear in the other three nations’ nomenclatures, so feel free to use these names for Fire, Air, and Water characters as well. Use one or two syllables for both given and surnames. Or you can use names of precious stones (e.g. Garnet, Amethyst, Pearl), plants (e.g. Peony, Camellia, Willow), or concepts (e.g. Faith, Hope, Joy) as Earth Kingdom-style given names as well.
 

And there is also a decent-ish length list of Earth Kingdom names, with their real life culture of origin included. 

So you can just pick a name from the list, or you can use this and the description above to guide you in how to pick another name that fits this pattern, if you are planning things out ahead of time for your own character or for NPCs you know the players will meet (as the GM/ST/DM).  But, if you are playing the game, and the players turn left when you expect them to turn right, and you suddenly need a name for a character you hadn't anticipated, this list is sort of sparse. You could just have a whole town full of Bowens, but it is nice to have a bit more variety.  This is part of what makes donjon's site so good.  A lot of the random generator sites are just basically recycling the same small set of names for you, which isn't much better than me having this list in front of me.  Most of them wouldn't pay any attention to the block of text that notes that precious stones, plants and concepts are also in the mix.

The person who runs the site got back to me very quickly, and asked what was unsatisfying about the existing name generators. So I explained the above. And also went through the issue with the existing random hybrid animal generators [one], [two].  The issue with these hybrid animal generators, in my mind, is that they seem to basically just have some stock list of animals, and then pull two different entries and give you the result (one of them also adding a random adjective for no apparent reason). But the bulk of and most iconic hybrid animals in the world of ATLA are not just random mash-ups (though there are some hybrids that seem random-y).  Badger-moles are a combination of two creatures with big "digging" energy.  Turtle-ducks are hybrids of "live near water, spend lots of time in water, but aren't fish".  There are lots of hybrids that seem to work in that sort of way, where there is a sort of conceptual linkage between the species.  Compare that to these results:

 

In an ideal world, you'd want to have traits that you could select for, and then it would pick a random combo with the trait in common; unless you were seeking one of the rarer cases of off-the-wall truly random combinations.  Whether that shared trait was natural environment, or being a predator, or ability to fly, or whatever.

Anyway, I started all this on Saturday, and (in part because one of the random name generators donjon offers already had names from the various cultures drawn on by ATLA, not even a full two days later there is already an ATLA Legends character name generator!