Jess Lebow asks, What's in a name?
by Brooke Pilley 
May 4th 2009 at 4:30PM
Filed under: Guides, MMO industry, Opinion
What's in a name? That's an interesting question. For some players, there's obviously not much in a name. For instance, how many VanHellsings, Grandalfs, or RougeKillas have you come across in your MMO travels? We're not quite sure if these people are trying to be clever, innocently paying homage to their favourite pop culture references, or simply don't care what others think.For others, a lot of thought goes into a name. These players want to have unique, meaningful, and/or perhaps a wee bit pretentious names for their avatar. Maybe there's even a back story for how they got their name.
One thing is certain; developers usually put lots of thought into naming various cities, locations, and NPCs in their MMO worlds. Why? Jess Lebow, MMO storyteller for over a decade, believes players are smart and pay attention to detail. He also knows they're easily annoyed by things like too many consonants with too few vowels or oddly punctuated names. When naming one of the first cities in Guild Wars, he used a feature-based naming generation system that came up with Lagbourough for the city by a lake. This resulted in a few chuckles from testers and not-so-pleased programmers. That city name changed five times before releasing as Lion's Arch.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
NeuroMan42 said on 4:45PM 5-04-2009
Never been a copycat player, but I know a few. All my character names are of my own design.
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Poozle said on 5:51PM 5-04-2009
I with NeuroMan, I've always used a name of my own design in online games (I don't even know where it came from now).
And I think that "Lagbourough" would be quite applicale for Lions Arch, especially in the days when it was just prophecies ;)
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Gascogne said on 6:09PM 5-04-2009
The name in the picture says: Friend Helsing
The word vän means in Swedish friend. ;)
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Gascogne said on 6:08PM 5-04-2009
The name in the picture says: Friend Helsing
The word vän means friend in Swedish. ;)
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House said on 6:13PM 5-04-2009
City of Heroes/Villains had a recent promotion to bring back old players, and I wanted to check out the new mission builder, so I reinstalled. To my surprise, they had given my main character's name to someone else, and I was forced to rename the character.
Not a smart move if you're trying to get people to resubscribe.
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Lemmo said on 10:10AM 5-05-2009
You must have been gone a long time. That was a mistake they made three or four years ago. They don't do that anymore.
seanfury said on 6:37PM 5-04-2009
Back when I first started playing WoW, the anime/manga Bleach wasn't very popular yet. One of the characters, important, but not around very much was Kisuke Urahara and he was my favourite character. His sword's name is Benihime, which in Japanese means "Crimson Princess", and I thought it was the perfect name for a rogue.
Unfortunately, since then the show has become quite popular and there are quite a "Benihime"s running around. Plus, I wasn't even aware of the stereotype of rogues with Japanese names. Sigh :|
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Lornicide said on 6:46PM 5-04-2009
My first toon was named Lornoc (no idea where I got this name)....since then all of my (8) toons now start w/ Lorn.
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Quidamtyra said on 6:57PM 5-04-2009
I really like putting Old English or German in my names, all of which I thought were pretty unique.
Quidamtyra: quidam - unknown; tyra - beginner
Quidessence: taking "Quid" from my main, playing with the word "quintessence" since she is my bank alt =p
It took me a good 2 hours of looking up old english words to come up with Quidamtyra. Now I couldn't change it if my life depended on it, I absolutely love the name!
I can't stand people who have names like Istabyouhaha, where's the innovation in that?
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Noahdeer said on 9:03PM 5-04-2009
My first wow name was a stoke of brilliance, i decided to go with a name that had its own special meaning. It's, a call back to Homer's Iliad. When Odysseus met Polyphemus ( the cyclopes) he said his name was "No-Man". So i named my character as "Noahdeer" or 'no idea' (spoken with a very thick Boston accent)
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borgy78 said on 9:52PM 5-04-2009
when naming my toon I sometimes get massive RP spasms and so all my names have a hidden meaning. Eg my eve mining toon is called cat793 which seems random but its actualy the model name for a mining lorry (the super sized ones that have 20m blind spots)
But if idont go RP crazy then I usually make it a subtle reference to some literature (I had a toon called llareggub, the town from under milk wood) or I make it funny like a ork called magret thatcher. Hehe
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Kaamos said on 11:10PM 5-04-2009
Lagburough sounds like a great name for a game that plays exclusively online :D
Otherwise, Ive tried moreso to keep a name suited to me, my attitude, and most importantly, my persona's intimidating presence.
Ive kept the same select few names, I keep them as callsigns, so that where I go, people know me.
Though where I get the names originally are just a matter of interest in a topic at that particular time, or for me personally* usually a subject of poetry, for example, I used to use "Axis" from The Axis in the poem "Bold as Love"
But, people perceived it as a notsie name and I migrated to Axe, and then off to something from a cartoon... which was again replaced by the name of a favorite, violent sounding song, which happened to merit a poetic meaning considering the role of my character.
But yes, as a whole, if your roleplaying, your roleplaying (a hero?) character based off of yourself, on the simple basis that your imagination might make the game more immersive for your own entertainment. And so, a common, callsign is and should be required, across all of your (my) videogames.
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Darkfield said on 3:36AM 5-05-2009
name of my character is as important as my own name. you see my character is part of me and it will represent what I stand for. so it's important my character have a descent name and unique appearance. when someone insults my character I take it personal, it's like insulting me. And when I insult someone's character I mean to insult him. So make sure you wont run into me...
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skreeran said on 2:28AM 5-05-2009
S'kree'ran was the name of the main character of a sci-fi novel I was writing, so when I started Runescape, I named my character Skreeran1.
Skreeran1 eventually developed quite a personality as I cultivateds an image and story around him, and so when I started WoW, he became Skreeran the First. My WoW character was just named Skreeran, but in my mind he was Skreeran the Eighth. And so I created an entire WoW-universe around the Skreeran family, which you can read about on my Wowwiki page (although it is quite rampant with mary-sueisms, but I don't care) at wowwiki.com/Skreeran.
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Jamie said on 3:45AM 5-05-2009
My name in World of Warcraft is Sternhart, a dwarf paladin, which is so far unique.
The actual name stems back to when I played Maple Story (Global) several years ago when I made a Dragon Knight called Sternjohn (named after the football player of the same name), I am niether stern or john, but the name tickled me.
During my time in Guild Wars (roughly 2 years), me & my girlfriend named our characters "...of Xanadu", my girlfriend liked the name but not the film of the same name, we had various names linked to our classes eg ("Wraith Of Xanadu", Necromancer; "Storm Of Xanadu", Elementalist; "Knight Of Xanadu", Warrior; "Ghost Of Xanadu", Ritualist; etc...).
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Cray said on 4:59AM 5-05-2009
My characters in Guild Wars all share the same suffix or surname if you will. I did it so that my friends could find me no matter what character I was playing with.
I definitely feel that MMOs need to warn and constantly remind players to put more effort in creating their names. I've seen far too many juvenile names like Monkhater or Kissmyassin. Just stupid names people trying to be funny.
What most people don't realize that being snarky or telling the same joke it gets old very quick. Names like Gumbywashere might seem funny for the first couple weeks or months but eventually you start to regret not having a more fitting name to your high level warrior that tricked out with elite skills, badges, and titles.
It actually takes me a few hours to decide on a name, because I want it to fit with the character and the role I'll be playing.
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Iokthemonkey said on 6:37AM 5-05-2009
You know the ones I hated in WoW? Humans with names like "Hunterdwarf" or Tauren with names like "Humanpally."
And I wish people would learn - as pointed out in the piece - it's ROGUE, not ROUGE.
That said, bad names are always handy in lieu of MMOs having an "I'm a Twat" flag.
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