What's In A Name?
Posted by 
Bastosa on Thursday, April 9, 2009 - 151 Comments Tags: guild chat, name, online identity, paid name change, princess diaries
Bastosa on Thursday, April 9, 2009 - 151 Comments Tags: guild chat, name, online identity, paid name change, princess diaries 
For me the most difficult part of World of Warcraft isn't raiding, it's not going after extreme achievements, and its not even struggling in the arenas. For me the most challenging thing to do well in WoW is successfully filling out the little box at the bottom of the character creation screen. You know, the one where you enter a name for your character?I don't know why, but I am terrible at it. Perhaps it's just the pressure of the whole thing, after all this is your online identity. People will identify you to this name, an in some cases even call you that to your face when you meet them in real life.
Let's face it, your character name is important. I think I learned this lesson especially well when dealing with the name of my Shaman. When I rolled up the toon I spent very little time putting thought into the character name. I was anxious to play, and try after try of "that name is unavailable" sapped all creativity from me.
Well as time went on I discovered I enjoyed playing the Shaman more and more, until low and behold she hit level 80. Level 80 in my mind was the big time, all the sudden you are in raids with your friends, people are yelling out your characters name over vent, and your identify is finally cemented.
With all that in mind, I ponied up the $10 and paid for a character rename.
Unfortunately my new name didn't work out so well. The name I thought to be a random formation of letters that had a cool sounds, turned out to be a direct reference to a Disney movie regarding a teenage princess... I didn't exactly see this as fitting to my face-melting conduit of the ancient forces of nature. And of course, my guild mates were more than happy to rub my unfortunate choice in my face day in and day out.
I did what any proud creator of a shiny level 80 character would do, and begged for help. Luckily the good people at Blizzard felt my pain and granted me an opportunity to correct my error.
After a half dozen Google searches for secret meaning, and running it by my circle of friends I landed on a new name for my Shaman: Jinxed. It only seemed appropriate after the first naming debacle.
This whole episode ended up bringing so pretty interesting gchat that I thought I would bring to you guys. How did you come up with your characters name? Are you happy with it? Furthermore what are some of the better names you have seen out there in the World Of Warcraft?
Reader Comments (151)
most of my names are references to movies,TV shows, and video games lol
Ret pally- Holyhands
Warlock- Ðemonik
(tauren) Druid- ßeef
:)
All my toons have my name somewhere in it, i.e. my druid is DrakTharon, hunter main is Twest, pally is Tharonbob, warrior is Tharoneous (remove the "E" and thats my actual name). So yea with a name like mine I have many available variations.
I don't remember why I named my first (and still my main) toon "Alayea". I don't really like it anymore, but I refuse to pony up $10, so... yeah. After rolling that troll shaman, I made it a policy to keep the names in character with the game.
My alts:
Lithala - Blood Elf hunter
Gekkani - Troll priest (her name is Japanese for "in the moonlight")
Mathrie - Undead warrior (sounded like a realistic Human name)
Mayae - Tauren druid
Draika - Orc rogue
Kraia - Orc Warlock
Layana - Blood Elf paladin
Chrystie - Undead mage
Elita - Blood Elf death knight (I was stumped, so I went with a Transformer femme who was a headstrong leader)
i normally name my toons sumtin easy to make short like these
(pally)Ahteny=Aht
(Knight of Death)Jokilla=Jok
(druid)Foyji=foy
(mage/hunter)Severose/Sevenroses=sev
Let's see, I've named my toons:
Markulla - Warrior
Markazap - Mage
Marksalot - Hunter
Marksthespot - Rogue
Markiality - Druid
Markisdead - Death Knight
Marchell - Priest.
I'm detecting a distinct pattern here...
Brokenwing Lv. 80 Resto Shaman (alliance)
- USAF, squad name shot down 25+:1
Bonesjr Lv 76. Alt BM Hunter (alliance)
- Nickname, I'm skinny.
Rollz - lv 66 Alt Fury Warrior
- So I can do the /train w/ a macro "you got rolled."
Zath - Human Warlock
Zrae - Draenei Dark Knight
Preziar - Blood Elf Priest
Matusk - Troll Mage
Hydron - Orc Hunter
Veoir - Tauren Druid
Paliar - Draenei Paladin
Zulde - Night Elf Druid
Aenarion - Night Elf Rouge
all my names revolve and robingtons been my name since quake 3 my bro's brother came up with it u can even google it and it will come up with me :D
im 11 so i have a pretty big imagination an since i like death knights i usually have a name like:nomorescourge or some thing like that.
My nickname has been Loki for 25 years which is usually taken. So I've gone to the complex method of adding letters to the end of it.
i have several toons
dwarf warrior-cordaire
dwarf hunter-nutcluster
dwarf rogue-deserato
human mage-natharious
drani shamen-clytoria (female)
human preist-koreen (female)
dwarf death knight-lorthos
i like names that are either inapropriate or possible. nutcluster started as clusterfk and bliz said it had to be changed and clytoria started as masorgie blizz said it had to be changed and both new names r approved...lol go figure
Well my Pally's name is Healium and she is a holy paladin so it fits. The name comes from, yep you guessed it helium just spelt differently lol.
I have another toon named Doomkin, who is a balanced druid, this toon gets alot of whipers saying "I want your name" or "I'll give you gold for your name!" but I will never give it up. =P
My main is called Morphalot since with him being a druid he would spend a lot of time morphing a lot. Every alt i have made since then get their name from me thinking of random words in my head that dont sound either funny or stupid.
Oh man I am in the same situation with people who are lacking on the name creativity side of things. So i figured maybe I should use something medical because I am on the medical field... But then I want something that has some toughness into it and not too weird that would gross people out. Then I remembered one of my patient had abnormal sounds on his jugular vein due to his medical condition. (Weird, huh?) So I came up with the name BRUIT. My Prot Pally in Agg. Bruit sounded right. Then I realize these random people started whispering me in french. Errrr... I don't speak french. They started telling what my name is in French.... "Sound"......Its close enough to what it means in medical term. I like my name Bruit. :))
I got a few originals, (plz don't copy them)
Shammyshosha
Leggomyfuego
Fuglymonkey
Twinkycheeks
Zeronorhero
Specialsauce
Pottytrained
and my main, Thorrhan
1 and only Shamtastik...'Nuff said.
Huesos - Undead warlock (means bones in spanish, and something rather very unpleasent in russian...)
Awesomeness - Orc Death Knight (name says it all)
Nightfly - Blood Elf Paladin (Blank and Jones song)
Mitsuko - Undead Rogue (from Battle Royale, chick with high frags)
Cetra - Troll Shaman (FF7 anyone?) :)
and mostly all my toons are female, except of Huesos, who's male. :)
My toon's name was a parody in honor of a hero from one of the greatest adventure games ever,Soul Reaver
Alas
Raziel=Razius
I'm a huge fan of ancient mythology, so I usually use obscure gods and goddess as my name.When I made my Blood Elf huntress, the usual goddess names were taken.Until I tried Cotytto.Cotytto is fairly unique in WoW.Last time I checked there were fewer than a dozen.There were less than six when I started my character.
Cotys Or Cotytto (Kotuttô), a Thracian divinity, whose festival, the Cotyttia (Dict. of Ant. s. v.), resembled that of the Phrygian Cybele, and was celebrated on hills with riotous proceedings. In later times her worship was introduced at Athens and Corinth, and was connected, like that of Dionysus, with licentious frivolity. Her worship appears to have spread even as far as Italy and Sicily. Those who celebrated her festival were called baptai, from the purifications which were originally connected with the solemnity.Later relief sculptures from Thrace showed her as a huntress-goddess similar to Artemis, but in literature she was instead compared with the Oriental-Greek-Roman Cybele.
my name for my shaman is, well my real name. my name for my hunter, however, i decided to do something a lil more original. after thinking for a while i made up a reallly random name. Jrakthorn. Im happy with both my name choices. I've seen very little creativity in names, ussualy something like "pallydan" or "shammy" , or for those challenged DK's "Arthas". sometimes they come from tv shows or anime... such as "Reyshinra" or "House".
Well, my char names are all based in European names, most of them from Russia and Germany! These are cool names of philosophers and/or sovietic icons....
As you can see, my Shaman is named Wittgenstein, a Mage named Ludovich, and I'm looking forward to create a pally or DK named Trotsky or Pachukanis...
Anyway, cool names of the State Capitalism and word-wide philosophers always work well ^^
My Shammys name is feelinblu...and no
I used to play Final Fantasy XI, and I couldn't think of a name for the life of me on there. So, I thought something Japanese sounding would be cool. I literally picked which Hiragana looked the coolest and threw them together in the name "Rikaku". When it came to playing WoW, I was following behind some of my other friends from FFXI, so I chose the name Rikaku again.
It was only shortly after that I realized that "Rikaku" was actually a 16th century Japanese actor. It suddenly made so much sense why I received so many Japanese whispers on FFXI.
I'm happy with the name though, having someone call me "Rika" at Blizzcon was better than hearing my own boring real name XD
I'm am very picky about names, as well as the look of my toons... most of the time i try to think of a name that fits the face and roll of the character. Sometimes i pick a name that sounds like it might be from LotR, sometimes i incorporate a class spell into a name, and sometimes i just hit random. The worst name i ever came up with was Shadoman... nope, not a warlock, nor a rogue... it was a shammy. I dont know what i was thinking. I had that character recustomized and now she (formerly he) is Shockstarr... one of my favorite names so far. Some of my others are Frizzost (frost mage) and Souldrane (afflic lock).