Good character names are running out, huh?

Personally, I refuse to use any of the ugly workarounds for character names--no x[Name]x, no extraneous punctuation, no all-caps or spacing games (unless they're appropriate to the character for other reasons). You can still come up with decent names, you just have to approach it from a different angle sometimes.

For example, I have a blind character, too--my TA/A defender. I named him "Bluff", as in "Blind Man's Bluff", and tied it into his backstory. The name is connected with his defining characteristic without being a synonym for it, and it's a decent name that was available on Virtue.

I also recently started a Magic Origin rad defender on Freedom. I was quite surprised that the name "Hex Ray" wasn't taken, and it's a perfectly punny name for the character.

I get frustrated with naming sometimes, too--times when my first choice or two are taken--but I've never resorted to a thesaurus to name a character. French, German, and Latin dictionaries, maybe, but never a thesaurus.

I'm still rather proud of Thermocouple for fir Fire/Fire Scrapper, and my recently acquired Terminate for my stalker

I think one of the funnest parts of the game is in naming your Toons. As you can see, based on my signature below, I have a few toons with very different names. For example, my level 50 Controller Dark Braven, I originally wanted to call her Dark Raven,..and we all know that name is pretty much taken. So, I had to pull up Dictionary.com, spell certain words by removing the "R" in Raven and see what I could come up with. After further thought, I then said to myself, my toon will be Brave and have a Dark side to her. So, I just combined Brave with Raven and got Dark Braven. For my other toon Zambrosia, I orginally wanted to name her Ambrosia, which is greek for food of the gods. Nope, already taken. So, using my Braven technique, I just dropped the "A" and added a "Z" and got Zambrosia. Ta-Da!

I also use a lot of greek goddess names for reference in naming my toons. The easy part is all my toons are women and I always take careful consideration in wanting to give them the best name and to make it easy for anyone who has to type my name in to send me a tell. Fusion 7 was my first toon and I used a number with the name as the name Fusion was already taken. In my toons description, I said it would take all 7 nuclei to combine to form a powerful explosion for her wondrous Nova. So, I was able to tie the name to the toons personality and attributes.

For another one of my toons, I wanted a "cat" theme with her so I ended up calling her "Cattalina". Originally wanted to spell it as Catalina like the island off of California but it was taken so I just added another "t" to make it Cattalina. You know it sounds like Catalina, it has a "cat" reference to it and is still pronounced the same way. See how that works? My last toon I rolled, Fhenix, I wanted to call Phoenix, the bird that rises from the ashes,..you can see the fun in this I hope. Picking a name to fit your toons personality. Anyways, after several, and I mean about a good hours worth of time, after several attempts I finally came up with Fhenix for my Fire/Kin Controller. Easy to spell, and when you look at it, you know it will sound like "Phoenix". Problem solved.

Good character names are not running out, just peoples imaginations. As you can see from my post, with a little thought you too can make a name for yourself.

I thought it was strange last week when I server transfer from Virtue to Freedom >.>

Earth Kin Troller, named Natural Stimulant

I got to keep her name, and then I made a place holder on Virtue to keep it...
But, I thought it was strange no one had it on the all mighty freedom server

Kinda random but I was suprised when my pvp ma/regen scrap's name (I love Lamp) was taken on about every server but mine :P I was moving him around to check pvp on other servers and on about 75% of the them, it was taken. I ended up just moving him back to triumph and reclaiming the name. I'm still sad that "Bee's Knees" was taken for my bee fire/sd scrap, but I just ended up naming it "Hornet's Nest".

(I have normal named toons, but after naming 40+ toons names that sound good/fit the character, it's lolz to name some randomly)

Never really had a problem with obtaining a name on Virtue. Though, I had fun doing something new recently. Usually land a fairly decent name and -then- make the character. This time, the character was created and costumed first without any preconceived idea for a name. Crazy, right? Could have been there all night. I'm such a risk-taker!

Friends kept telling me how much fun fire/kins are. Jumped into the character creator and made a fairly plain model. Kept staring at all the hair and costume options in reds, orange hues and golds. Finally whipped one up with a swank bob of copper hair and gold undertones... stared at her for all of three seconds and thought, "Oh that's a cheerleader named Peaches if I ever saw one." Peaches didn't quite fit. Gave a few more seconds thought to her personality and vocabulary. Imagined her bouncing around and brightly chirping out how "Peachy Keen!" everything was. And since she is a kinetic, "Peachy Kin" was chosen and registered.

Total time on selecting a name that was available: far far less time than settling on hair. Minutes. Maybe that is an option for folks who have trouble coming up with names. I see threads and posts stating powersets and general background.. maybe they can create their look, capture printscreen to post, use the costume save option and then post. So many common powerset combos and background ideas mesh together over time but costume designs are still fairly highly individual.

Actually, I want to clarify something. I didn't do the google search to marvel at my own good fortune in finding a name no-one would spot, but rather to ensure I wasn't copying an established character. These days, almost any common word you pick to use will have a character attached to it. I mentioned Parallax, whom I found while I was searching for the meaning of the word, but there are others. In fact, you can make a game out of naming common words and seeing how many get a hit on a hero or a villain.

Just off the top of my head, things like shard, steel, blade, rock, ring... I'm just guessing out here. Hell, I have a character I gave a completely made-up name I thought of on the spot. Not 20 minutes in, I get a random tell asking me "Oh, hey! Billy Drake like the race driver?" Wha? So it goes. These days I always google my names before I finalise them just to make sure I'm not ripping off something famous.

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 don't worry so much about single word names in respect to copyright.. since I'm not copying an existing character. Take Dakota for example. How easy is it for there to be tons of media with the name Dakota in it. There's a movie called Dakota, a restaurant in Idaho, a stripper named Dakota, a racehorse named Dakota, etc etc. If I'm lucky to find a simple name I enjoy and just whip out a costume and bio from my head, I'm confident that I won't be generic'd because some state official called NC. Copyright violations, to me, are "likeness" and "concept" attached to a name and not just the name itself.

(QR)

The third hero I ever made, back in 2004, was an elec/elec blaster on Virtue named "Lady Faraday". She was fun to play, but as I was running out of character slots and I already had another blaster, Lady Faraday had to go!

Fast forward a few years later, when we're finally able to buy or earn more slots. Well now I was free to make more blasters! I decided I wanted to try and make an elec/elec blaster again. Surely the name "Lady Faraday" would have been taken by then! Nope! It was still available after all that time! So I took it again. That made me very happy.

In the last two months i created Feral Catgirl on Virtue, Freedom and Champion. But then it's such an obscure, esoteric name, neh?

I found cecity just fine on Google.

Not so much that the "good names" are taken... I do reward creativity... but always found the unique-name-identifier system rather ridiculously constraining. I liked seeing CO try to make the name issue moot... wasn't 100% sold on their solution, but it was an interesting effort.

(and... much to my surprise... didn't result in a billion drizzts. Even when the shards were full, I didn't encounter any similar names except for one intentional "multiple man" clone... or a dozen of them... depending on how you count... but I digress)


I'll often come up with a character idea & story when commuting. It's a little mental exercise... and these will often have names that convey more meaning or support the narrative in an important way, while still being relatively obscure. A good number of them ARE taken, and I've killed characters because of it... or just reserved them for appearances in my stories outside of the game.

It's an annoyance, but not rant-worthy.

How do you define 'elitist'? If someone is mad because they couldn't find a name good enough for them, when I was able to find a name good enough for me, does that make it suddenly my fault that they refused to look beyond the most commonly used words?

Or maybe you're right. It's pretty common on this board for players to dismiss other players' complaints offhand, and quite often with a snide wit. Seriously, there's more to the Internet than what you see on Something Awful, folks!