Map the city before naming its people
Underground does not mean featureless darkness. List the wells, bridge districts, fungus farms, glass kilns, shrines, markets, and tunnels people use each day. Those nouns produce houses and bynames with a specific home behind them.
A city built around hot springs will name things differently from one cut into a salt mine. Geography gives you variety without reaching for another synonym for night.
Give dangerous characters ordinary birth names
An assassin's parents probably did not name a baby Silent Knife. Separate the birth name from the working alias. A spy may also use a surface name that attracts no attention.
The useful tension is who knows which name. A sibling using the childhood form can puncture an intimidating public identity in one line.
Build priestess names from office and duty
A temple name can record rank, training, or responsibility: Third Witness, Keeper of the Lower Bell, Archivist of Ash. Decide whether the title replaces a surname or appears only during formal work.
Temples also contain clerks, reformers, gardeners, and unwilling heirs. Their personal names do not need to advertise mystery or cruelty.
Let villains earn the menace
A readable personal name is stronger than a pile of villain suffixes. Reputation, title, and action can make an ordinary name frightening. Rivals may refuse a self-declared title while followers repeat it as propaganda.
Use dark imagery once and make it concrete. Ashwell is a place. Bell Understone is a duty and location. Nightshadow Doomblade is only mood stacked on mood.
Keep the label inside fiction
Dark elf traditions belong to the invented setting. Do not make darkness a shortcut for race, morality, or a real culture. Populate the community with people who disagree about politics, faith, work, and the surface.
This guide offers original prompts, not an official drow language. When canon matters, use the game's own source material.