started rewatching Frieren from the beginning and realized almost every named character sounds German, Frieren, Fern, Stark, Himmel, even a lot of side characters. Is there an actual reason the author picked German specifically, or is it just an aesthetic choice? Feels way too consistent to be random.
Not random at all - it's about as intentional as this stuff gets.
Almost every human name is a plain German word or adjective, chosen to describe the character rather than just sound pretty. Frieren comes from frieren, "to freeze/be cold," which lines up with her whole emotional-numbness arc. Fern is "far/distant" - fitting for someone raised without much of a real childhood. Stark just means "strong." Himmel is "sky/heaven," which gets used pretty pointedly for a character whose death is what the entire story orbits around. Even further down the cast you get Sein ("to be"), Kraft ("strength/power") and Übel ("evil/bad") - that last one probably tells you everything about that guy without me spoiling anything.
As for why German specifically: Yamada (the writer) hasn't given one definitive quote that I've seen, but the effect matches something you see a fair bit in Japanese fantasy work - German just reads as "old European, weighty, a little foreign" to a Japanese audience the same way, say, French reads as "romantic" in English-language media. It's shorthand for atmosphere more than a puzzle to solve. You see similar instincts (not the same names, just the same reach for German to signal a serious/epic tone) in things like Attack on Titan's terminology.
It's not airtight across literally every side character or every non-human race - I wouldn't stake my reputation on that - but for the main human cast it really is that consistent, and it's clearly a deliberate naming layer, not you pattern-matching on nothing.
