My character has a horrible name. Help me fix it.
By
ClawsandEffect,
Posted on: 2012-06-30 15:43 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
first thing that came to mind when I saw your reference to Arcanum (haven't thought about THAT game in a loooong time) was
Smith Piston
Or you could super it up by reversing it-
Piston Smith (with or without a 'the')
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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Hmm... That's actually not a bad idea. I like the sound of it. I'm kind of looking for something more high-tech sounding, however. Apologies, I should have mentioned that. See, "Majik" is one of the earliest examples of a group of villains I made expressly to be part of an overall villain's larger group, and Majik was taken in as essentially the "scientist." He's the Doctor Aeon of my own group, the guy who essentially does all kinds of science: Teleportation, other dimensions, energy weapons, aliens, flying vehicles, running the computers, managing the power plant, developing new weapons and armour - the works. Majik is essentially a super scientist, which is why a misspelled name REALLY doesn't work for the guy who's intelligent enough to be hideously arrogant.|
Originally Posted by Nethergoat
Piston Smith (with or without a 'the')
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I know I'm not great at explaining concepts, so I want to offer my apologies about running all over the place with the idea as I clarify the concept both for you guys and for myself. It's part of the creative process. Please try to bear with me.
*edit*
And Arcanum was a piece of work. Easily the most imaginative Fantasy setting in at least my experience, wrapped around one of the most technically flawed games I've ever played. Yikes!
*edit*
And it turns out I'm having a hard time deciding on the guy's unhelmeted face. So much facial hair to choose from... I want an old man who looks dignified, but do I go for the more eccentric Victorian facial hair or do I throw my hands in the air and use the Dr. Breen beard?
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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.
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Arcananaut
They ALL float down here. When you're down here with us, you'll float too!
@Starflier
Whenever I'm at a loss for a character's name, I have one simple rule:
Put your faith in Blast Hardcheese.
I was going to suggest "The [descriptor of your choice] Thaumaturge", because it's a nice fancy word that I thought has connotations of "doing amazing things" and also "working literal miracles", but a quick dictionary check tells me my brain actually made up that first connotation. Hm.
Isn't there some word that can be used like that, though...? An esoteric word with a double meaning seems like it might be fitting for a character who prides himself on being smarter than everyone.
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Could you break that down for me? Despite myself, I actually like the sound of this name quite a bit, but I kind of wish you could explain what the reasoning behind it is.|
Originally Posted by Starflier
Arcananaut
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Also:
Funny how I start with the intention of making a goofy caricature of a face and end up with something I like:
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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.
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According to my name checker for character creation, "Magic and Technology" is available on Virtue. It even comes with its own theme song if you're into that sort of music. Sorry, I just find it amusing.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
(i.e. magic and technology)
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Samples of names you like would be helpful. Favorite character names of mine are "My pants are on fire" and "Ask me if I care", so the names I could suggest might not be even remotely palatable to you. Though, the first few things that come to mind are names like "Flex Hex", "Electromagetic", "Arcanode" (Arcane + Anode), and "Merlin's Constant" (in contrast to Planck's Constant and a thousand other constants). How many suggestions do you want?
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This angle intrigues me. Yes, Majik firmly believes he's smarter than everyone else, so it makes sense that he'd pick something obscure and obtuse, then proceed to scoff at people who don't know what it means. I like it! Now we just have to figure out what that might.|
Originally Posted by Hopeling
Isn't there some word that can be used like that, though...? An esoteric word with a double meaning seems like it might be fitting for a character who prides himself on being smarter than everyone.
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I have to play my "I'm not a native English speaker" car here, because for as well as I mask it, my vocabulary of uncommon words in English is actually sorely lacking, and coming up with one is going to be very hard for me.
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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.
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How many suggestions? As many as you can provide, within reason.|
Originally Posted by Dersk
Samples of names you like would be helpful. Favorite character names of mine are "My pants are on fire" and "Ask me if I care", so the names I could suggest might not be even remotely palatable to you. Though, the first few things that come to mind are names like "Flex Hex", "Electromagetic", "Arcanode", and "Merlin's Constant". How many suggestions do you want?
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You bring up a good point, however. What names do I like? That's not as easy a question to answer as it ought to be, but let me see if I can boil it down to a few simple rules:
1. It can't be a pun. I'm a snob when it comes to that.
2. It can't be a joke. This is srs bzns.
3. Only one preposition for the whole name, no indefinite articles and only one definite article at most, and that has to be at the start of the name. So no "X of the Y" or "a Y of X" or such.
4. The name needs to be capable of being shortened to a nickname that people might actually say in conversation. "Mek Majik" is bad, but it can be cut down to just "Majik" when you have to refer to the character.
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As for descriptive names, I can't think of new ones I like, but I do have "The Spirit of Light" and "The Steel Rook," if that's any help.
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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.
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Originally Posted by Starflier
Arcananaut
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Could you break that down for me? Despite myself, I actually like the sound of this name quite a bit, but I kind of wish you could explain what the reasoning behind it is.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
my vocabulary of uncommon words in English is actually sorely lacking
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Edit: assuming this is not a random reference to Arcanaville
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Hmm... This makes sense, and I like the sound of it, especially your modification. It's just the kind of strange-sounding obscurity Majik would go for (I really need to give him a real name so at least I know what to call him...), but it seems a tad cheating in that it's not a real word. Wouldn't a self-righteous blowhard like him need something that he can point out in a dictionary and then browbeat people about not knowing?
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Originally Posted by Dersk
Arcane + Astronaut (or Cosmonaut). While "naut" by itself is really more of an aquatic term, when people stick it to the end of something else, modern vernacular implies a space-age quality about it. I think in this instance the spelling of "Arcanonaut" might be more appropriate, assuming I've read into that one-word post correctly.
Edit: assuming this is not a random reference to Arcanaville |
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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.
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Does he speak latin? Without reference to space age terminology, an etymologist would likely read it as a combination of "arcanus" and "nauticus" to mean a "sailor of magic" or "magic sailor". It does sound better than those though.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Wouldn't a self-righteous blowhard like him need something that he can point out in a dictionary and then browbeat people about not knowing?
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He ought to speak Latin, yes. This is actually not a bad idea. If you guys can come up with a decent two-word name in Latin, there's a very high probability that I'd use it outright |
Originally Posted by Dersk
Does he speak latin? Without reference to space age terminology, an etymologist would likely read it as a combination of "arcanus" and "nauticus" to mean a "sailor of magic" or "magic sailor". It does sound better than those though.
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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.
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Yes.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
*edit*
And Arcanum was a piece of work. Easily the most imaginative Fantasy setting in at least my experience, wrapped around one of the most technically flawed games I've ever played. Yikes! |
I loved everything about that game.....except actually playing it.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
I used the name Arcananaut for a character I once played. A scientist, and explorer of the arcane, who used magical energy to fuel his own invention. Dersk summed it up fairly well. Naut is generally meant as sailor, or voyager, as in astronaut, cosmonaut, argonaut, aeronaut, etc.
They ALL float down here. When you're down here with us, you'll float too!
@Starflier
I don't see what's wrong with Mek Majik. One of the year's major PC releases feels that you can get away with spelling mechanism "mekansm." Once you've uncorked the bottle of nonspecific fantasy, ani'ytheng iz pohsibbel.
Magus Mechanicus?
(Mechanical Mage)
Open Archetype Suggestion thread!, Kirsten's Epic Weapon Pools, Feudal Japan, Etc., Alignment specific Rularuu iTrials!
If Masterminds didn't suck, they'd be the most powerful AT in the game.
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That's not a bad direction to head. I kind of like using the word "arcana" in there somewhere, but I want to avoid using the word itself. We already have an Arcana of fame, plus my first language makes it hard for me to use male names that end on a vowel. I did, however, find a root Latin word for that - Arcanus - which I think I can use as part of a name. Now I just need something to couple it with, preferably something that isn't as obviously Latin as, for instance, Fulmineus. Maybe I might even want to mix languages?
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Originally Posted by Kirsten
Magus Mechanicus?
(Mechanical Mage) |
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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.
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I love that name and am now consumed with acquisitive jealousy!|
Originally Posted by Starflier
I used the name Arcananaut for a character I once played.
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>:e
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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Spell Driver (1) (2) (3)|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
How many suggestions? As many as you can provide, within reason.
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Magebolt
Incantus Covalence (4)
Aetheoretical
Slipspell (5)
Luminous Aether (6)
I'm starting to realize my knowledge of "magic" terminology makes this quite difficult. I might have to stick to joke names like "A Wizard Did It".
I'm actually making some progress. I decided to go with a name in Latin since it seems to fit Majik the most. With my full respect for Latin, it's a dead language that isn't used actively by a people today, so it's mostly an academic tool and that of hardline tradition, it's not widely known and it sounds mysterious. Unlike most other ancient languages, however, it's the predecessor to the modern Western world. It's the perfect candidate for an arrogant Westerner out to prove the world wrong and change the course of science for ever.
The question is what, exactly, to pick out of the Latin language. I don't speak Latin, as you know, and I don't hold high hopes of finding someone here on the boards who does. I'd love to, mind you, but I just doubt it. Finding people who spoke Japanese was a beast and finding people who spoke Chinese was only marginally easier since I got lucky, but Latin might just be impossible. I do have the benefit of online translators such as Goodle Translate, but I'm not sure how far I can trust them, and I don't want to make a fool of myself. I've seen a number of people with embarrassingly bad Russian "meaningful" names that came out of the likes of Bablefils.
I guess the translation can be considerer mostly covered, but I still don't know what exactly I want to translate. I actually stole a bit of inspiration from Warhammer 40 000: Space Marine and tried going for "The Machine God," but the translation I got ("apparatus deus") doesn't work for me, plus I realise it's a bit too close to "god in/of the machine," aka Deus Ex Machina. I need to think about it some more and try to come up with something concrete in English first, then go from there, but I don't know what that might be yet.
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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.
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My very first CoH character (in beta) was called 'Technoccult', and had a similar basic character concept.
Technomancer would priobably also be good, but probably taken.
Arcanus Ex Machina. (Roughly Magic from the machine)
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Although, I now really wish the name slot was long enough so I could make a german character called: Vorsprung Durch Magick
Always remember, we were Heroes.
Deus Potentia (Power of god)
Armorum
Fortes Fortuna - fortune's favor
Tribulum -i n. [threshing machine].
Great english to latin conversion - http://www.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wordes.exe
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Huh... I actually REALLY like this. It's not exactly "to code" with my original rules, but it's good enough to make an exception for. Are you sure of the meaning, though? Google Translate has a tendency to pick a meaning at random and stubbornly refuse to acknowledge alternate meanings, so I don't know how much I can trust its reverse-Latin translation, but it's giving me weird results. Basically, I want to make sure that if someone who actually spoke Latin spotted my character, I wouldn't be a laughing stock, so just a little leeway is acceptable, so long as it actually works.|
Originally Posted by Dr_Darkspeed
Arcanus Ex Machina. (Roughly Magic from the machine)
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I mean, if Deus Ex Machina means "god from the machine," why wouldn't that work? I checked for translations of Arcanus, and it does translate into "secret" at the very least, so why not? This I actually really like.
*edit*
I just have to figure out if that's something you can actually call a person
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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.
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Have you ever had that happen to you where you make a favourite character, play it for a year, then forget it exists for four years? And when you go back to that character and look at it, like, really look at everything - costume, backstory, power selection, name - you just think "What the F.A.K.K. 2 was I thinking?" Well, possibly with fewer obscure references. Because that's what happened to me, and I really have no idea how to salvage the character.
). At this point, I don't even have idea one which direction to look for a good name in, so pretty much anything aside from my few exceptions counts.
Most of the stuff I can handle. His bio is a monologue so that holds up pretty well... Since it says essentially nothing, his costume was easy enough to take from this to this (It can probably use some more work) and his build I haven't worked on yet but it should be easily doable. Ain't that much that can go wrong in the 30s. His name, though. ¡Ay, caramba!
For the guy's name, I picked Mek Majik, which stems from three things. One is I couldn't get the spelling I wanted... So I misspelled it. My shame knows no bounds, but that's why I need to fix it. Second, I was watching Chop Shop: London Garage, and one of Bernie's mechanics had the nickname of "Magic," which I liked. Finally, it's the guy's story, and this will probably need a slight explanation. I'll do what I can to keep it brief.
See, "Majik" (I don't think I ever gave him a real name O_o) more or less stumbled into a scientific method to explain and possibly even harness the power of magic. Think back to Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura and the "Electric Armour" chest plate there, which used electricity to dampen magical effects. That sort of thing. The man has the science potential to draw literally unlimited energy out of the very aether, if only he can get his machines to work properly. Instead of using his knowledge to cast spells, though, Majik's tunnel vision has him fixated on creating the ultimate power source with which he could power essentially anything he wanted. Power the world, if need be, and prove his critics wrong. He's sort of a Dr. Breen fan, if I may say that.
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That's pretty much the whole story in as few words as I can physically manage. Now all I have left is to figure out what to rename the guy to. I can fork over for a rename token, but if I'm going to be paying cash money, I need to pick a name that's actually worth paying for. Hence the question - what name could I go for? I'd rather not use a real name for his public persona - the guy's a bit too arrogant for that. I'd need something that's a proper "super" name, probably comprised of two words, that's descriptive of the general concept (i.e. magic and technology) but not literally a description of the character (so no "the Magic Scientist"
Thank you for your time.