Good character names are running out, huh?

OK, OK, this is a stupid reason to start a new thread, but... Well, when has that ever stopped me? You know, for the past five years I've been listening to the same tired old argument - all the good character names are already taken, woe is me. On the one hand, I don't buy that, because I know they're not, but on the other hand, there's always that niggling little thought at the back of my mind: "Yeah, I'm making fun of these people and dismissing their concerns, but what if it happens to me?"

What if it happens to me, indeed? Suppose there was a character I just HAD to give a descriptive name, where giving her two names or a personal name would just have been a step down? What if all the descriptive names I could come up with are taken? What if... Well, it finally happened.

See, for a while now I've been throwing around a concept for a character who is blind (and deaf and lacks any sense of smell, taste or touch), but has alternate methods to see. "Daredevil" was out of the question, obviously, but I wanted to go with something that meant "blindness." "Blindness" itself wouldn't do, again very obviously, and I've tried both "nearsigted" and "shortsighted" before, and both were taken, as well as, let's be frank here, not being terribly good names. Being that English is not my first language and I hadn't dealt with blindness much before, that's where my synonyms ran out. What is one to do, then? I've seen a lot of people post thesaurus sites, but like an arrogant *****, I just ignored them, proudly thinking to myself "I would never need such a thing! My vocabulary is far too vast for me to worry about it!" Yeah, apparently not vast enough.

But there's still the 'net, obviously, and doing something as simple as googling "blindness synonym" (and that's straight out of my search history) presented me with a couple of user-unfriendly dictionary sites that gave me such odd suggestions like "sightlessness" and "blindness" o.O. But among them were good suggestions, such as "myopia," which I never actually knew the meaning of, but it turns out to be a medical term for near-sightedness. "Cool!" I thought. "That... Sounds like a really crappy name, but maybe it's free!" Nope. No dice. Someone thought of it first, and perplexingly decided to use it. Huh. Well, people are typically smarter than me, and there are, like, a hundred thousand of them consuming, like, 30 names each, so they pretty much have to be.

Moving down the list, I found the word "cecity," which is apparently SUCH a rare word for blindness that a google search for it reveals nothing and asks me if I actually meant "city" (it does show ONE sight that has it, though), and Wikipedia has no articles of that name, or with that word in their titles. Huh. Here I thought it was a word that meant some kind of specific blindness condition, or an eye disease of some sort, but apparently it literally means blindness in all sense of the word. Imagine that.

Of course, before I did any of those additional searches, I tried the word as a character name. Surely someone smarter than me, with a better vocabulary and English as a native language would have thought of such a curious word and it would be taken. After all, all the obvious names are taken, a "blindness by another name" is very much as obvious as it gets. Nope. "This character name is available." Huh... I did not expect that, but I'll take it! So I sit around, making a character for around five minutes (I had the costume all planned out beforehand), get to the name selection field and type the name in. Just to be sure (and out of disbelief), I hit Check Name. "This name could not be checked." Son of a... Hit again, cannot be checked again. Why, I don't know, but I decided to give the name check system the finger and go ahead with it anyway. Name went through and the game popped me up into Outbreak.

Still in disbelief, I checked to make sure I'd spelled the name right. My /infoself name field says "CECITY," that's C E C I T Y. Looks the same as what I'm seeing in my google serches. I can't copy my name off my infoscreen, so I do a /whoall (I'm the only one in Outbreak on Victory at the moment), copy my name out of there (in the process closing my chat window ARGH!!!), plop it down into google and I get a confirmation from The Free Dictionary explaining that my search term meant "(Medicine / Pathology) a rare word for blindness." Well, I guess I spelled it right, I'm in the game with the right name, it has the right meaning, and apparently either no-one thought of the name or no-one liked it. Huh...

Finding the word to use as a name took me somewhere in the neighbourhood of 3-4 minutes, give or take. I've been typing up this post talking about it for the past 15-20 minutes. That ought to give you some context as to how hard it was to find.

Good character names are running out, huh?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I made a new Mind/Kin the other day... (2 days ago) named her Orion's Angel on Virtue... got the name no problem, it was my first choice.

I wonder if RMTers have issues making names like lsfghjdfh;sdf or hkvbgkfjxdkhf or jlfhgadhg;a? Oh darn that one is taken too.

I think there is a guide somewhere on the boards explaining naming techniques. I do things like frame in "x" or add a dash. So I ended up with x Keeper of Blades x after moving one of my toons to Virtue. I tend to get the name I want in one way or another.

I made a new tank on Freedom last week and named him Thumpbot (elec/stone). I was pretty pleased with that name.

Thanks to a friends suggestion after being stuck for a name for an Ice/Ice Dom, I managed to nab Frostspite. Happy with that one.

Tbh, most of my names are either the persons name (more natural heroes), unit designations or rank (soldiers, robots)...you can get by quite easily with that. It's when you need a more 'traditional' name that you can run into some trouble.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

I had mentioned it in an off-handed manner on the VU global channels about how CO's solution to this (global names unique, local names not) would be a nice implementation, since some of them were busy whining about having issues picking names. Naturally, I got a bunch of rageouts frothing at the keyboard about how it would "suck" or be a "bad idea" or "ruin the game". For what's normally a cogent, intelligent channel, their arguments against what amounted to an uninterested side remark were remarkably pallid.

That said, I generally don't have issues with finding names, even on "bigger" servers like Virtue.

So your argument that good names are still readily available is that you managed to get a name based on a word so obscure that neither Google nor Wikipedia were able to identify it?

There seems to be a huge disconnect between those who argue all the good names are taken, and those who counter that is not the case. When these threads pop up, those who argue that good names are not hard to get are often people who seem to favor offbeat or obscure names, and that's great for them if that's what works for them. But this is a superhero game, and many people would like a character name that sounds like a superhero -- something you could conceivably see on the cover of a comic book. These kinds of names are much more challenging to get.

Yeah, I agree that good names are still very much available.

Just this month I've managed to snag (and on Virtue, no less) some pretty useful mythical names that you would've thought were taken 5 years ago.

Also, the good'ol trick of putting together two nouns never fails. You can get some pretty good names that way.

To me, a name isnt a great name if noone knows what the hell it means.

That said, theres plenty of good names left but I certainly dont resort to obscure variations that are never used in actual conversation. That is like an inside joke nobody else is in on... its only funny to you.

Personally, I'd have gone for some combination of "dark" and "vision" for a blind character. Dusksight or Midnight Vision or something (I have no idea if those are available... if not, grab 'em!). Although, really, what makes you happy is the most important thing. A character with a "meh" name for me just doesn't get played.

When I transferred some characters to Virtue, my two previous "mains" both needed name alterations. Because I had established both in my mind with their "real" names (with artwork done of them and everything), I didn't want to just make up all new names for them. So Polish Princess became Polish-Princess and Tally-Ho became Tally Ho. (with period).

I haven't really played either of them since their name changes. The magic is gone. Although I thought of a great rad/rad name last night and might rename Polish Princess into it while we still have a week left of free transfers (*cough*name changes*cough*)

Oh, back to the point of this... a name that you like it the most important thing. However, this means that a person who really wanted "Ice Dude" has legitimate disappointment even if it's inevitable.

I've managed to get both Globestomper and Offworld Outlaw recently.