I've seen it all , name generators , stealing names from popular series , using names from more abstract and underground fantasy books / games / movies , creatively coming up with a name from your head , linking words such as SilverWind or MiniDragon , taking a popular name from a well established series and putting a twist of your own on it. So I'm curious to know what you the player go about your name and why you choose the name you do. Afterall to me atleast , the name of your character is somewhat of an important aspect of playing the game. It represents you as an individual and gives a layer of meaning to your character. It's also something your stuck with the whole time your playing and have to look at alot and not something that can usually be changed so the decision is a big one. I always have trouble coming up with a name that I can agree on for more than a couple weeks after using it. So how do you the player come up with a name and why that name?

What a fun thread!

Well, I have three ways.

1 - My first character I ALWAYS name Alamor.  I've been using Alamor on every game, every forum, every E-mail, etc. for as many years as I've been on the internet.  I've almost totally forgotten where I got it from.  I think it was in an old Heroes of Might and Magic.  Dunno!  If it's taken, I get very sad.  :p

2 - I make one up.  I have absolutely no system for it.  I tend to stick with fantasy themed names (Lorinath, Eztirion, Tral, etc. - just made all of those up).  I just sit there and think of random sounds, consonants, and vowels, or hit random keys and form it in to something cool sounding.  I can spend quite a bit of time until I'm satisfied.  Though it really depends on my mood, and whether I think I'll be sticking with this character/game very long.

3 - When I'm not coming up with a serious name, I'll think of something funny or relevant to my character or what my character will be doing.  For example, me and my step-dad started characters on Runes of Magic named Hakk and Slashh, and only play them together.  Or, in WoW, I had a Paladin named Fishmuffin (based off of the infamous muffic youtube video).  In fact, I got everybody in my guild to start making alts as various ___muffins!

And that's it!

I joined the U.S. Navy in 1973 and immediately following boot camp I was sent to a ship that was overseas. The overseas and combat pay was so good that I requested transfer onto another ship that was currently overseas. I had to stand before the Commanding Officer and make the request to which he replied, ”you’re a regular seabeast huh?” The other personnel attending the request heard that and the name “Seabeast” stuck which I took into games ever since. My strongest recommendation about obtaining a game name is to use an experience you have encountered and transform it into your game personality. After all, whats in a name?

May Da Swartz be with us always,

SEABEAST
 

Middle name followed by First if I want people to be able to track me.    Scott is such a horriblely common name that's soo easily confused with some parts of language...

Otherwise I'll just take a latin root or mess with english roots to make a name.   Maybe even combine roots from more than one language.   Of course one rule that I follow is to make sure that the name doesn't fall into the Constant-vowel pattern because then it looks japaneese(IE: like the wakaishie in morrowind which is just taking roots from western language to describe a short sword that's shorter than one)

All of my name is related to Magic The Gathering or a slight variation of it.

My username was drawn from WH40K.

My character names are extremely random. Imagination is such a wonderful thing. :)

I've got a few standard ones that appear in various games. If I'm not feeling those, I'll play with a random name generator and tweak it to find something I like.

I use the following:

Forcan:  Falcon + Orca

Leorcan:  Leo + Forcan (take away F in Forcan, remove one o...)

These are the two that I widely use in most MMO I play (English ones that is..)

Chinese ones I use a different naming technique...

I pick a word/phrase that best descibes the character I intend to play; then I translate it into an archaic language like Latin, Gaelic or Old Norse and fiddle around with the resulting word 'til I'm happy with the finished product.

My current character is named "Mik Ilvaldyr" for example; old norse collaboration of the words:

mikill (meaning big)
Illr (meaning bad)
valdyr (meaning wolf)

Of course, it's not a literal translation (and I would never claim it to be thus) but as a method of choosing character names it's always been effective for me.

im with al on this one.  Iv used my name eycel ever since iv been able to connect to a 28.8k modem.  it was originaly excelsior taken from some page of some material. i changed the x t y though because alot of players use excel or excelsior from microsoft office or the mid evil thing(excelsior).  so no one uses it with a y and that makes me happy.  if i cant get eycel though witch has hapened less then i can count on one hand or if iv used that up already ill make an abreviation from eycelsior like it spelled backwards minus a few letters like rois witch is the last part of eycelsior backwards eycel(sior=rois) or just eyc witch is what iv used mostly up till this point.  i cant say im not obsessed with my name.  some times i get so exited bout it i try to tune it down and tell my self "its just a name" but im just fooling my self.

My two top criteria are that my name be short and easy to spell (gawd I hate trying to type in a long/hard to spell name into a text box when I want to send a tell), and that it be something that is unlikely to be taken when I create a new character.

And Pynda also just seemed kind of friendly and non-threatening to me. And I consider myself a friendly type of person.

Edit: But there have been some problems. People were calling me Pine-dah recently on Vent. I mean it's Pindah - like Lynn, Gwynn, etc.

A sort of cool name I came up with recently.   Aestalith ( Astal ( Name of the protagonist from this action game for Sega Saturn + Aerith from FF7 ) Another variant , Astarith. Not sure if I will ever use it because it sounds a little too feminen. ^__^

I take up names from threads like this just to piss people off.

Originally posted by John.A.Zoid

I take up names from threads like this just to piss people off.

Lol I've seen it happen before too for games. It's too bad for people who actually want to name their character Cloud or Squall and have to see it unavaible due to someone using it on a char non-main just to take it lol but nevermind that I guess it saves the people the ridicule of running around in-game with one of those names , because there's alot of players who hate people who use those names lol.

Err... (no laughing pls) but... it is my name. Ya know.

I go smoke a couple gravs before I name my characters....

There's no amazing story behind my name in MMOs.

It started with my first MMO, Anarchy Online. I couldn't think of a name so I randomly bashed a few keys and came up with Xiomar. That was taken so I added an O... So I'm always called Xiomaro

I later found out there is a spanish girl's name, Xiomara. So I usually go with that for a girl character. Or because it's relatively well known name, if it's taken I will go with Xiomaria.

The gender of the character depends on the class and theme I have going for them.

Always use the name Ulag.  It all started back in the day of Baldur's gate when I was playing online and heat.net was constantly telling me i had x amount blocks of lag, go go 56k modem.

So when i went to name my first MMO character with my standard name on EQ1, it would not let me use it because it was a reserved name for a class.  After several other attempts to name my character and no luck i was getting frustraited, bashed my keyboard, and up came Ulag and it finally took, so Ulag is now the online MMO character name of choice >).

On a side note the last name 'darquel' was derived from playing on the Quellious server and was because i was an evil dark elf.

I actually keep most of the names I have randomized from other games. I have gotten the name Korrid from DAoC and Ratharien from WoW. Those are two of the names that I use most often. When they are taken, I usually try combining words from other languages.

My name always has something to do with Marijuana. The names I use are Durban Poison, Shishkaberry, White Widow. Ive had names like Grimreefer, funkynuggets, in the past but they have gotten a name change so usually types of weed work  and don't get banned.

Originally posted by uglee13

I actually keep most of the names I have randomized from other games. I have gotten the name Korrid from DAoC and Ratharien from WoW. Those are two of the names that I use most often. When they are taken, I usually try combining words from other languages.

 Yeah , Name generators can be pretty good sometimes. It's suprising how nice of names they can create sometimes.

I use the name generator in my head. Quirhid, Taneth, Kheladon, Elidanara, Agnymel, Vanadan, Ezarkines, Lilieth, Kordan, Tawayn, Quarick... I can come up with these with ease. Names are easy for me. It's only a matter of how it suits the character and my mood.

Stealing names is sad. I cry blood every time I see another Drizzt, Raistlin, Mugabe, names from anime or other TV series or anything else I might recognize.

My real name is Sam...

Samazon

Samaritan

Samson

For fantasy games I try to get Delusive or Vezril. However, they are often taken. I got the name Delusive back when Halo first came out. I was creating my name for our Lan party. I found the word in a dictionary (misleading; deceptive; false; unreal). I should have known that it would be used in MMOs since it was an actual word. Vezril is a name I made up, or so I thought. So either someone thinks like me, or stole it. I'm gussing someone just thinks like me, since there are so many people in this world it's not too hard to believe. If those names are taken, I just make something up. If I can't come up with anything, I smash my keyboard until something close to a name comes up, and then I modify it.

I find it rather easy to create names for City of Heroes. It is one of the few games I make both male and female characters. Mainly because of the play on names and powers. My best being HotAsh for a girl and HealerXP for a guy. The girl was a fire controller when I first created her, and she had a fine ass, so HotAsh seemed to fit nicely. HealerXP was a healer, which meant easy grouping and lots of XP, so I just combined the two.

But it's harder for me to name fantasy type names.

I usually try to find a name that's fitting for the age of the world, the race, the class, and ofc the gender.