What I dislike the most

Present system is good. I would hate to see duplicate names. Sometimes you have to think slightly longer but that's not any big problem. Just avoid some most common words like slasher, ripper, blade, sharp etc. Even I with crappy english can name new characters easily. And please don't use xXcoolnameXx style. It's childish and ugly.

Using foreing languages could be sometimes slightly confusing if you meet people from those countries. Other languages are not just funny looking words. People are using those languages in their everyday life and english is foreing for them. So... When I saw one hero with finnish name I naturally greeted him finnish of course. He said he just liked words but he was english. Not any big problem but if you choose french name you will get whispers in french. Or any other languages. We are there in game

edit. If you have some cool idea and then you noticed that all good names are already taken you could change the way of thinking. For example one of my characters is dual blade brute. I tried all names with blade, sword, sharp, edge etc. They were all gone. Then I startet to think what will this character do... Well he is tough so maybe "Adamant" could work and then Adamant Avenger was available. Not very original I know but it's ok. So you could use dictionary and try to found rare synonyms.

I do find it annoying that, whenever I am making a name for one of my characters, when I eventually come up with one that is just right, I find it is taken. No matter how obscure the reference or idea, it'll be taken. Literally, half of my toons have names that are deliberately misspelled because of this: Zerenade (instead of Serenade), Allatrope (instead of Allotrope), Hare Splittor (instead of Hare Splitter), Nazka (instead of Nazca), Vespila (instead of Vespula). When I am taking references to giant etchings in the ground or pulling random scientific terms out of a field guide for insects, they're already taken.

As much as I would love to change that and have the names I want, I can't find a system that would really work without causing a myriad of problems.

The naming process for me can take hours, especially if what I had in mind is taken. Luckily we have plenty of web resources for me to try and work around this without feeling like I'm losing out on concept. Wikipedia, Thesaurus.com and Dictionary.com are my best friends in toon creation.

Great example, on Triumph back in the issue 4 days I had a grav/kin controller named Dying Breath. He was a 3rd generation Japanese scientist who worked for Crey and eventually gained powers via a serum he developed. He realized Crey intended to abuse the serum and intended to destroy it. Crey hired Freaks to execute his family on live TV and he vowed to avenge them with his Dying Breath and used his own serum, gaining powers. He was a very Sunfire inspired hero costume wise. Well when I went to reroll him on Pinnacle, my home server these days, the name was taken. I spent days trying to come up with something similar but the same. After a few searches on Wikipedia I came across Onryo. A Japanese spirit of vengeance. Perfect! I rerolled as fire/thermal troller and feel that the character actually grew from me having to think outside the box, even though I didn't get the name he'd had for around 2-3 years. Instead of just unlocking powers, the serum now granted powers based on the subject's emotional makeup at the time of injection. His anger and rage transformed him
into an inferno of revenge.

The addition of the check name box has helped me alot. One thing I wish we had the tech for is a global cross check on names. If it's taken the system would check to see if that name's account has been active within let's say a year. If not active, the name "free's" up. If we already have something like that in place I'm unaware of it.

It's not? I actually like your name. I must be missing the joke part...

Here's one way to look at it: if there were superheroes in the real world (I mean *real* ones, with superpowers), how likely is it that they *wouldn't* copyright their super monikers so that no one else could use them? Or that existing comic companies and the like wouldn't go after every "Spider-Man" wannabe name-stealer out there operating without the legally sanctioned usage of their copyrighted name?

Then imagine that Paragon City is the same way.

(Of course, the villains should be immune to such threats, since, y'know- they're scofflaws by nature. What's a copyright infringement charge added to murder and larceny? But maybe lawyers in Paragon are superpowered, too? Maybe the Coming Storm/Battalion is really all lawyers. )