Bad Naming Conventions

[theasl]

I've also used Mitsubishi, and Suzuki.

Don't feel too bad about Suzuki. It's a legitimate and somewhat common Japanese surname; the company was named after the dude who started it.

[Berenger]

Amevil. Yesi Amevil.

[Stealth Marmot]

Amevil. Yesi Amevil.

And suddenly I need to write down the names of EVERY Ace attorney character ever.

[Anonymouswizard]

Amevil. Yesi Amevil.

I have a strange urge to name my dwarf Murr daHobo.

[Vinyadan]

I have a nasty habit of copying character names from campaign journals.

I've played a Paddock, a Marilus, a Kemen, a Murdoc, a Vardon...
and that's not counting the names taken from other games like Aribeth, Griswold, and Kerensky. I'm just glad my group hasn't picked up on my lack of naming imagination.

Kerensky made me die

WORLD OF GREYHAWK^® has a character named Melf ("male elf"). All other names invalidated.

(Though to be fair, I believe the character was made by one of Gygax's children who was quite young at the time.)

Wait, is that where Melf's acid arrow comes from?

Anyway, we had a ranger named Power. A player also accepted the PH tip to use Enkyl as his dwarf's name. It meant "up the ***" in the local dialect.

[JAL_1138]

Enzin Red-Chert
Yxpin Däble
Kanone Phoderr
Mia Tzschield

[Stealth Marmot]

Played in a game once where there was a fighter named Marvin Mcguy. He was an NPC.

Oddly enough, we used nothing but having him use a Bastard Sword and a Tower shield and have him be a 10th level fighter, and just using the feats from core and Complete Warrior, he was a surprisingly effective character.

[GungHo]

Wait, is that where Melf's acid arrow comes from?

Yes.

The named spells were characters and members of the Circle of Eight. Melf, Bigby, Nystul, Mordenkainen, Tenser, Otto, Otiluke, Drawmij, Rary. Same goes for a lot of the "named" items.

[Beleriphon]

Perishment TrowelChef? I can keep doing this all day.

Oblivion SpoonHatter

[Cluedrew]

It is not quite an RPG thing but I would like to give due to one...

Spoiler: Hiro Protagonist

Show

[D+1]

It is not quite an RPG thing but I would like to give due to one...

Spoiler: Hiro Protagonist

Show

I want that book as a movie RIGHT FREAKIN' NOW.

[Anonymouswizard]

I want that book as a movie RIGHT FREAKIN' NOW.

Who's going to play the main character? I mean he's a black Asian man, it's not like there are any African-American or Asian actors.

In all seriousness, I love the book (and as this thread shows, Hiro Protagonist makes some sense as a taken name), but this is the main problem I can see there being for a film. I was actually okay with the casting in GitS (seeing as the Major is in a full replacement body), my problems with that are they seem to have gone for a rather generic plot and so had to change the Major's character (she knew who she was, as far as I understood it the pondering was 'am I literally the same person'). I have half a feeling Takeshi Kovacs is only getting a TV series because he spends the entirety of Altered Carbon (an awesome book) in a white body.

[HidesHisEyes]

This naming trend can work out quite well if a key part of the character's personality is their pompousness/vanity/inflated ego/delusions of grandeur/scam. Like, the person playing the character intends the character to be full of s***.

My current character: Kadal Sandford aka Kadal the Hunter, aka Kadal Monstersbane, aka Old Deadye, aka the Hawk of Darromar. All self-applied, naturally.

A game I used to play in had a halfling cleric called Randy Inappropriate Goblinsqueezer. Little badass, that guy.

[HidesHisEyes]

And in the solo campaign I'm running now I came up, on the spot, with the name Jones for a caravan guard on the same caravan as the hero.

Later the hero opened an ancient magical glass bottle that summoned a shadow version of herself from the plane of shadow, which I put in as a potential main plot hook for the campaign. She had Jones with her at the time and she tried to persuade Jones to open the bottle for her. She failed her persuasion check; if she hadn't then the BBEG of the campaign would have been the shadow version of Jones the caravan guard.

[Wardog]

[Job] is really, really common IRL for surnames (and often, less-obviously through archaic forms, given names), though. Smith, Cooper, Thatcher, Fisher, Carter, Baker, Archer, Gardener, Farmer, Fletcher, Carpenter, Tailor (often spelled "Taylor" in surnames), Weaver, Cook...and that's just a few of the obvious ones in English.

Apparently in Britain, 8% of surnames are occupations, 19% nicknames, 23% relationships, and 50% placenames.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-38003201

You weren't born an armorsmith, but your great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather might have been a really good armorsmith and it ended up as the family name. And surnames have a way of making their way into given names, such as Taylor.

And there's a good chance the smithy was a family business, so you may well have been born to be an armoursmith.

The worst name I have seen would be the blaster wizard that was drafted but was never used: Joe Fireball. The character of Austin Fizbang was used instead.

On flip it round though, and ''Fireball Joe'' sounds like exactly the sort of nickname someone would get if they used that spell excessively.

EDIT: My problem with FR names is thst they feel like they're trying too hard. Candlekeep, Waterdeep, Silverymoon, the Moonsea, the Moonshae Isles, Moonwood, Neverwinter, Icewind Dale, Fane of Shadows, High Forest, Sword Coast, Castle Darkhold, etc...

Although, really, I shouldn't complain much about place names. I'm originally from Kentucky, a state with such place names as Monkey's Eyebrow, Oddville, Blandville, Fearville, Lynch, Vortex, Viper, Dwarf, Paint Lick, Black Gnat, Thousandsticks, Cutshin, Possum Trot, Tyewhoppety, Marrow Bone, and Hell-for-Certain.

http://mentalfloss.com/article/69445...ish-town-names
Including Westward Ho! (And yes, the exclamation mark is part of the name)
And even the normal names sound like a cheesy fantasy setting when translated into modern English:
http://www.omnimap.com/cgi/graphic.p...67-1081GBd.jpg
http://www.omnimap.com/cgi/graphic.p.../67-1081Ed.jpg
http://www.omnimap.com/cgi/graphic.p...7-1081GBd1.jpg

[Madokar]

I'm fairly solid when it comes to giving my PCs reasonable first names. It's when we get into surnames that I have my doubts. Like my first paladin, the half-orc paladin Madokar Valortouched. So called because he was born with a birthmark in the shape of Iomedae's holy symbol, the Sword of Valor.

[raygun goth]

You get one apostrophe.

Ever.

Use it wisely.

But I run/play a lot of things set in the fantasy equivalent of the Americas or the Pacific Islands >_>

On that note, I have a character right now named 'Opae. It's literal for "shrimp." She is not short. At all.

[Anonymouswizard]

So I'm currently in a supers game, and my character is likely going to prison for at least a few sessions. As this is a setting with heroes like 'Mister Strong' and, I kid you not, Captain Awesome (the local Superman expy), I was considering that my next character would be a hyperintelligent uplifted orang-utan who knows Kung Fu and has a load of skill ranks.

The name I've decided to use?

Skillmonkey

It fits the setting, and works for the character.

[Lord Torath]

But I run/play a lot of things set in the fantasy equivalent of the Americas or the Pacific Islands >_>

On that note, I have a character right now named 'Opae. It's literal for "shrimp." She is not short. At all.

I've got a half-giant gladiator named Ayanna, which roughly translates to "flower".

[Arbane]

An elf named Cotton Shortz was named by a player at my table. Twerpy little punk (both the player and character).

As far as bad naming conventions go, I'm going to throw the X-Blade and War-X naming pattern that WotC got up to when coming up with stuff for 3.5.

Don't forget all the Noun of Verbing magic items. That one goes back to at least 1st edition AD&D.

For my 'bad naming conventions', anything with an apostrophe is banned in my games as I need to be able to pronounce it. I have a gag where I pretend that elven is just English with all the vowels replaced by apostrophes, and in some settings I'm not far off the mark. It's mainly elves where players fall into this trap, apparently it makes the names sound more exotic. It annoys me more than names with extra Xs or Zs, because at least those I can pronounce.

"New rule: All apostrophes in fantasy names are now pronounced 'boing'." - Evil Overlady Issendai.

See also, the various names of official D&D pantheon deities over the years. Most of them look like they came out of a random syllable generator.

ISTR one D&D setting int he 1980s had a goddess of luck named "Arenji". I wonder if the author was an early computer geek?

So I'm currently in a supers game, and my character is likely going to prison for at least a few sessions. As this is a setting with heroes like 'Mister Strong' and, I kid you not, Captain Awesome (the local Superman expy), I was considering that my next character would be a hyperintelligent uplifted orang-utan who knows Kung Fu and has a load of skill ranks.

The name I've decided to use?

Skillmonkey

It fits the setting, and works for the character.

I've made supers characters based entirely on a turn of phrase I thought was funny. (For City of Heroes, but I think still applies.)

From a name in Astro City, I made a short, rodentine humanoid with a large mallet - the Sledgehamster!
A bitter teen mad scientist was Nerd Rage.
A bro-ish pyrokinetic with a poorly-hidden geeky side was Burning Hans. (His sister, Scorching Raye, never got to show up.) He only avoided calling himself "Chuck Roast" because it had already been taken. (A bit of luck, that.)
A killer robot disguised as a stuffed doll was the Shreddy Bear.

And I've seen more variations on "Icy Hot" for characters with thermal powers than I can count.
One amusing team was a pair of women with revealing outfits and bladed weapons: Excessive Cleavage and Gratuitious Cleavage.

[Knaight]

I've made supers characters based entirely on a turn of phrase I thought was funny. (For City of Heroes, but I think still applies.)

From a name in Astro City, I made a short, rodentine humanoid with a large mallet - the Sledgehamster!
A bitter teen mad scientist was Nerd Rage.
A bro-ish pyrokinetic with a poorly-hidden geeky side was Burning Hans. (His sister, Scorching Raye, never got to show up.) He only avoided calling himself "Chuck Roast" because it had already been taken. (A bit of luck, that.)
A killer robot disguised as a stuffed doll was the Shreddy Bear.

I ran a game with a few of these. Particularly notable was an electricity based superhero who's alter ego was of a waifish teenager - name of Short Circuit.

[LooseCannoneer]

Oblivion SpoonHatter

Null AugerAuger

I regret nothing.

One of my players is using Jeremy Kool. His excuse? "We know a guy who's last name is Kool, so it's a viable surname?"

[Beleriphon]

Null AugerAuger

I regret nothing.

One of my players is using Jeremy Kool. His excuse? "We know a guy who's last name is Kool, so it's a viable surname?"

I had Gong Lee Master of the Flying Cow Kick in one of my M&M games. That was a fun character, the Master of bit was "borrowed" from a Hong Kong kung fu movie we all watched with really bad subtitles.

[Inevitability]

One of my players is using Jeremy Kool. His excuse? "We know a guy who's last name is Kool, so it's a viable surname?"

Fun fact: 'kool' is Dutch for 'cabbage'. Just something that made this even funnier to me.

[Beleriphon]

Fun fact: 'kool' is Dutch for 'cabbage'. Just something that made this even funnier to me.

Jeremy Dutch-Cabbage. There's an interesting name.

[JAL_1138]

Something fun is to string together the most posh/pompous/upper-crust sounding names possible. E.g., "Chauncey Percival St. John Billingsworth-Smythe IV, Esq."

[Flickerdart]

"Chauncey Percival St. John Billingsworth-Smythe IV, Esq."

Lord of the Privy Seal, First Baron Lancaster-upon-Lancaster, O.B.E., Ph.D., K.G., Q.E.D.

[Stealth Marmot]

Valentinez Alkalinella Xifax Sicidabohertz Gombigobilla Blue Stradivari Talentrent Pierre Andri Charton-Haymoss Ivanovici Baldeus George Doitzel Kaiser III.

Don't hesitate to call.

[Cluedrew]

Reginald Mortimer Humphrey Fairchild Delafontaine III

At Your Service. I managed to get "Mortimer Humphrey Delifontain Fairchild the III" from memory + spell check.


Also Stealth Marmot... correct me if I'm wrong but is it Vash for short?

[Stealth Marmot]

also stealth marmot... Correct me if i'm wrong but is it vash for short?

i hate it when you call me by my real naaaaaame!