Here's a couple of WordArt nameplates done in MS Word. Insert/Word Art, pick a character type, enter your text, then Text Effects and pick an effect (to get the curvature in the characters). You can change the font, size, bold, italics, etc. The bottom 2 signs are bold+underlined, 48 point, Times New Roman. Word doesn't have a way to add a connected underline so you need to play with that. Copy and paste into Gimp to edit the graphics.
In the bottom sign, I worked in Gimp to move the underline up to the characters. CorelDraw has some fancier ways to attach text to a base but I don't have a copy of CorelDraw.