Spamfunet Nanny Forum

Today's question is:

How do you come up with your Nanny characters names? Do you just make them up, get them from books or something else?

/P

It's generally a matter of HARD WORK... I try to get a name fitting for the char's supposed role play. It usually is a 'real' name, from fiction or reality, but sometimes it's a constructed name that I think might suit my needs...

Longstrider was a morph of Strider, from the Lord of the Rings, back in 1991, and since I'm 6'4", it was an easy fit.

Selindor was inherited from my time playing on Elendor, a LotR MUSH, and was fashioned from Sindarin elvish phonemes from Tolkien's works.  I completely forget the translation now, maybe some Tolkien scholar can figure it out for me.   :?

My first Character I ever played on a mud was named Vectra, that was the name on the bottom corner of my comptuter monitor. HP Vectra, I probably would have kept it, but I had a lot of European people ask me if I actually liked this car named the Vectra Opal, which I found out was a huge horendous car :P

So Ahriah came about, from a friend of mines childs name actually spelled Arya, which I thought sounded rather Fantasy based :D. I actually like it alot now...

Grendel, my owl, gets his name from my favorite puppy I had when I was younger, a rottweiller, who thought he was my pony.

Delta, my leper, came about because I was reading a book based down in the delta, (N'awlins ;) ) the main character in the book had a lot of attributes I was basing Delta on, except her name was Peg, not a good name for me LOL.

My original char' in 94' (Nightmare) I took from 'Magic: The Gathering'.  That card game came out at the same time I started mudding. I haven't played it since that year, but that card(Nightmare) just happened to be in front of me when I first logged onto Nanny.  

The rest of my char's are either golf or music related.


Oasis

Most of my characters names comes from a Fantasy Name Generator. I browse through it and when and if a name 'calls' for me and I feel it like 'Yeah.. I like this name' I choose it. I have one or two characters with names that I have come up with myself though.. *capers proudly* .. But in general I will choose one from a Fantasy Name Generator..

Totally random names mostly, first thing that crosses my mind. I usually don't have the patience to think of a good name. I just chose whatever crosses my mind, or just make up a pretty stupid name (heh, my dark, that was the worst name ever :) but for what I've used him, it was okay). People told me that I use pretty ugly names, and some hardly fit into Nanny.
I mean, take this name. And when you think this is my main char, or sort of. :P
Sometimes I do search on the web or think for a while, but mostly when I realise that I want a new char, I wanna play right away so that's why I don't have the patience to come up with a better one. I know, it's a bad habit. I used to not care at all about the names...

Most of the time it's names befitting the guild I intend to play, and quite common are names of ancient gods, from either history books, roleplaying games or fiction books. I do however try to avoid the most famous names and pick more obscure, unknown names.

Well, with my knight Wanessa I cannot say that I had so much thought behind the name. I was young at that time she was born and my favourite tv-show was Headbangers Ball on MTV, and the hostess name was Wanessa Warwick...simple as that  :)

With Dissectica, well...one of my favourite bands ever is Dissection, and that explains a lot I guess.

And Tamlin..that name comes from a demon in a book  :)

When I first started Terin was sitting there waiting for me to think of a name for my character and I sat and thought and thought because the name had to be just right. Then I remembered that the lead singer of Stone Temple Pilots, Scott Weiland, had a childhood imaginary friend named Poogus. I really adored STP at that time and I knew it was the name for me.
Poesia is the Spanish word for 'poetry' and when I started these two back in 1994 I was at the uni studying Spanish (among other things). The rest of the 'P' named characters weren't reincarnated after the crash and when I came back the other time. I tried using all 'P' named chars in 2001 when I recreated but I ended up hating most of the names except for the above mentioned two and Pikaboo. So now I use long, beautiful, elegant (imho) names that I wish I had been named irl. Ones that can be shortened to have cute nicknames so I don't have to type out their whole name when referring to them. ;)

/P who has waaaaaay too many characters but loves them all  :oops:

Oh no, Ybbie, that WAS a disappointment... WTF? 'Fantasy Name Generator'... Or are you ironic???

Oh, easily said and easily guessed :)

When i first joined, after some 30 mins spent as Guest, i simply wanted to use my name :) I actually wanted to be Lady Christine, but Nanny wickedly refused to accept a name with space in it and so many characters :P So it became Ladychris.

As for Loreley, i wanted an evil name (fully immerged in knightly honurable deeds, I thought Khorne were evil at that time). And I thought the wicked mermaid/nimph of german origin would have suited me (if you are curious about her legend just Finger Loreley, dont let the german poem scare you, and read until you find the english version).

Later poor Loreley was killed out of Khornes, but i still wanted a Khorne, so i made Malvasia. The connection is weirder here. Bloodthirsty Khornes? But blood is not my favourite drink, so why dont make it wine? I choose a wine that might identify my origin too. When you come visit me you can taste it, i assure you it is worthy of the trip :)

Other chars names are usually chosen to fit the role they are going to have in Nanny society or sometimes they come from the book I was reading at the moment. So we have Nimrodel (LoTR), Mizar (a star in the Big Dipper constellation), Alphwen (elvish for swan-maid), Veela (a vampire dancer in eastern Europe lore)... and some more im not going to tell you  :twisted:  Hey cant i keep a little secret?  8)

I usually make mine up at the prompt.

Usually if I have to make a new name I will follow this procedure:

1. Connect to the mud.
2. Stare blankly at the prompt.
3. Fail to come up with any ideas.
4. Time out.
5. Think for a while and come up with a name.
6. Connect to the mud again.
7. Type in new name; find out it's already taken.
8. Give up; log in my wizard and start spamming.

For some reason I had the impression that most names were already taken, so I tried 'Smudge' and it worked, and that was that.  It's a terrible name for a fantasy MUD, but it fits, somewhat, for a leper.

My first char Daphnae was just a variation of my RL name, most unoriginal and a touch narcissistic.  Daphnae was a knightess (accepted by Yavathol after a three hour test that ended at 4 am!... jeez I was young then), and almost paragoned... but when my daughter Noelle was born, I couldn't risk being in the middle of an Camelot attack and having to leave because she needed me.  So I created Littlebit, which was one of my nicknames for Noelle.   Littlebit became a Druid (requested by Gemfibrozil back when she was still a mortal), and soon became my main character, closest to my heart.  After a while, I thought it was sad that Daphnae was sitting there, almost paragon, so I left Knights and joined a couple of different guilds to finally Paragon her.  Then, once Noelle was old enough, I thought it would be safe to play a knight again, so I created Elleon, which is just Noelle spelled backwards.  Elleon was accepted by Selindor, and I have her up to about level 12 or so, due almost exclusively to partying with Selindor and Poesia.  She would be higher level, but she died in my first attack back, and I haven't played her since.  Finally, as suggested by Labyrinth, Lanabit was created soon after the birth of my second daughter, Lana.   Lana and Lanabit are newbies together.  Now that I have two kids I worry I won't have as much time to MUD anymore... so I wonder if I'll able to Paragon Lanabit before she goes off to college or something....

I chose names in different ways, …
Morild, (Finger Morild and you will get an explanation on what the names means) I think this is a lovely phenomenon and a nice name (only problem is most ppl tend to think it is a male)
Mivirell - just sounded kind of nice
Vilette - same as above
Saviana - same as above
Queentana - this was a horse I looked after in my teens
Thyra - an Old Norwegian name, specially made for the Vikings guild
Civatateo - The name is taken from RL legends ‘a pale and evil female vampire that feeds on small children’ for now she is just satisfying her blood thirst in Khorne

Carrion, I am so sorry to disappoint you like that, but Hey, I was starting my very first MUD ever and the Generator was an idea from a friend and I was totally clueless when it came to names and stuff.. But I did create a few names myself.. Really I did... And when it comes to name in Nanny or any other fantasy related games, names are very important to me.. I would not like to have names like Majonäs or ... or.. Senapsburk .. as other players has.. I hope I am excused?  :cry:

And for your knowledge I created the names for one of my simyarins and for one of my lepers and even my maledruid and  one of my Khornes names comes from the movie Merlin. Is that good enough, Carrion?  :wink: ... Oh Oh OH.. I did create the name myself for another Khorne of mine.. Yes I did.. truly I did..

Hey, hey! Hold your horses dear Yberiel! You know I was kidding, right? And you know which second char of mine you even might consider telling stuff?

I actually used my RL surname for my viking char, now how original was that?!?!? (Mind you, it is a very old swedish name, so it is very fitting for a viking.)

I know you were kidding, Carrion dear ;) *ruffles your hair playfully*

And that is a good idea as well, using your name for a guildname, like the Vikings, since many Swedish names sounds like Vikingnames.. :)




Must say No to this one.. do not know..

Ybbie..

Yeah, I'm a member of the popular school favouring the first thing that comes to mind at the prompt.

Sometimes I get a dictionary / thesaurus and look for words which a) describe the idea of the character and b) sound ok. I don't exactly create many new characters now, though.

Obviously I do have a char whose name is a slightly modified version of my own.

Garetjax was my favorite D&D character I used to play.  Originally named Garet, he later found out he was the brother of the evil queen, Caryss Jax (Dumbest plottwist revelation ever btw).  I liked how the name rolled off my tongue so I kept it for all my rpg game playing (Garetjax has defeated all Bard's Tales, most Ultima's and a Might and Magic or 2)

Most of the other characters are random 1 syllable G names.  (Though Gilgamesh was created in response to Erishkigal).  The names of chars I created so that I could log in 'annonymously' were random sounds, like Blin and Maxis. (Not that that ever worked, I kept capering and wheeeeing)

And 1 last character was just for kicks, Boyrdee.  He is my chef.  When I created him, I remember being told by a wiz that if I joined chefs, he would strike the character dead  :shock:

I remember Boyrdee...

As for me...

My first character name, Wanderer, hence banished was what I was...having grown up as an Army brat, I can say I was a wanderer.
Dolph, a friend created the name..I suspect after Dolph Lundgren...
Danman is a play on my rl name.
Snafu, we all know what that stands for..whistle innocently..if we don't, ask me on the game sometime..It is a name that Qqqq and I came up with after I decided I wanted to risk a third wiz...long story there.
Flash, if I remember right, was after Flash Gordon...
Heckyll (me) and Jeckyll (Beldin) were created as modeled after the chattering magpies of the same name...think 80's or earlier cartoon.
Cacodemon was one of the monster types in Doom I (yes, I am older).
Bleed was just for the hell of it..sounds like a cool name ;)
Murdock (and also Hannibal and Face) were members of the A-team, popular 80's show.
Wan and Derer were 2 of my chars whose names together is the name of my first character.
Digo was a response to Wen (one of Nethis' chars) and Wendigo.
Bagel was created so I could shout out: EAT ME!!
Qball was created to be a monk..and since monks are traditionally bald, a tribute to being bald.
Charlie was just a common enough name ;)
Recycle was created for the mood I was in at the time ;)
Yin and Yang were created at same time to go together...
Koltek was modeled after a highlander character, as was Mythos (now banned), Methos and Silas.
Madhatter was an Alice in wonderland character.
Ursamajor and Ursaminor were chars created together.
Crunchy, I thought, was an appropriate name for a leper, crunchy in milk.
Pendilon was a totally random name..ie, i tagged random letters onto each other as long as it was pronouncable, unlike some people's names I have seen.
Iam was created as a cute name for a possible titles..Iam the Utter Novice, etc.
Dumb, I created for the joy of it..and referring to his plan, the tells he get are amusing.
Seek and Destroy were created as a pair.
Stake was created for vampires..imagine Stake the vampire (ouch)
Gunther was a totally viking name ;)

There are others as well, some existing, some not...can't I have SOME secrets?

/Snafu :D

Random selction!  I only have two left though. :(  
Time to start thinking of names again!

well guess where Dain can come from. yeah right, you did it.  :lol:

After I saw Spawn I really liked the name of the angel that helped Spawn and I found it to match the hole fantasy thing so I took it.

My knight char's name, Draven, comes from one of my favourite movies, The Crow.

My vamp char's name, Madmax, is obvious.

Btw... Spawn isn't one of my fav. movies :)

Personally as a roleplayer I like to choose names which are appropriate for the character and ingame or names which sound "fantasy".

I did not know about the mathematician guy Thomas Tredon when I first created Tredon.

It simply means: "He who wields great power" in an ancient human tongue, obviously not refering to Tredon himself since the last thing he wields is great power.

Tredon is also his family name, the women called Tredona, like his mother.

Tredon also has the most complete history and personality of all my roles.

Odonnely for example is based on an "irish" drunken priest, Father O'Donnely.

The pirate Amos' name is taken from the Riftwar saga by Edmond E Feist, the pirate Amos whom I am quite fond of. :)

Young Lendil is based on Berit/Beril from the Eddings couple's books, I wanted a similar name but something original. :)

It turns out Lendil is a real name as well. :)

One character name is taken from a very old roleplaying game.
I try to pick curious and not as wellknown names when being inspired by roleplaying or books. :)

One character is actually named in orcish, the Black speech.

When naming characters first I think of a character concept, some basic history, likes, dislikes, hatreds, grudges, maybe patterns of speech, favourite foods and drinks and then I try to find a suitable name for him. :)

I usually have a character concept in mind before I ever get to the staring at the prompt phase - look/name/plan/attitude all figured out already.  Thankfully, rarely is a name I want taken.

A couple were not completely pulled out of my from head, but were "borrowed" from other places.

Anyone who has read Star Trek books or exa'ed Valkris can probably gather that she's one of those.