Character names, from the other players.

[Dannyalcatraz]

One of my players runs a paladin who wears full plate. His name is Akari, but early in his adventuring career, when he tried crossing a water-filled chasm across a rope and ended up dangling half into the water, he was given the nickname "Tea-Bag."

This was only reinforced a few adventures later, when a completely different set of circumstances had him dangling from a rope into another body of water.

It got to the point where Akari named his pack horse "Tea-Bag," hoping to deflect the name, but we still call him "Tea-Bag" on occasion.

Johnathan

Our gnome monk wound up gaining the nickname "T-bag" after standing up while the human fighter stood over him...naked.

 

[SkredlitheOgre]

Back in 84 or 85, when I first started playing in my brother-in-law's group (which lasted a total of two sessions for me), I had (badly) made a Dwarven fighter. When I got everything else done, by BiL said 'Don't forget to name him.' I was going to name him 'Xavier,' because I didn't know what "real" Dwarven names were, but I got distracted by someone else and forgot to finish him name, so my Dwarf ended up being named 'X.'

In my 3e campaign, I had a Dwarven cleric as an DMNPC that was my PC in a previous short-lived campaign named Barrenveit Balderhek. Either my players couldn't pronounce it or they didn't care, because he became Baron Von Bitchcraft.

I ran an ogre (or an orc? Not sure) street samurai in a Shadowrun inspired GURPS campaign along side a girl who was all about character creation and backstory and everything. I don't remember what the character's name was, but since I was an ogre/orc and dumber than a bag of hammers, her name ended up being 'Pretty.' She was pissed.

My current Pathfinder group refers to our former Druid (no longer with the group) as 'The God Damned Druid.'

 

[SiderisAnon]

In a gaming group I used to play in years ago, the hardest thing in character creation was coming up with a name. We played a lot of one-shots and sometimes it took longer to come up with names than to make the rest of the character.

So, for one shot I started out with telling them that all of their characters were named "Bob".

Being players, of course no two of them spelled it the same on their character sheets. We had a Robert and a Roberta as I remember, and one guy whose name was more letters than a Scrabble set but was pronounced "Bob".

 

[godfear]

Used to run a drow bard with the name Bae'qeshel, a term I'd looted from the War of the Spider Queen series. They called him "Balky". I withheld healing more than once as a result. Jerks. : )

Current character is called Balthier, and I have yet to offer up "my" pronunciation for it. Whatever they say, I just nod.

 

[the Jester]

We have a player who is infamous for choosing convoluted, difficult-to-pronounce names, then trying to change them 4 or 5 games in (usually to something equally nonsensical but slightly easier to pronounce). By then it's too late, the original name has stuck and the character has already gained several (usually rather insulting) nicknames.

 

[vezina99]

This is something that seems to come up all the time in my group since none of us can ever remember a single name of any other PC. We generally refer to each other by class or race, and the example that has stuck with me the longest was a result of poor handwriting that caused years of inside jokes around the table.

We had a player playing an elven ranger with extremely bad handwriting (not that mine is any better.) When he missed a session and one of us had to take over his PC, we looked at his race and his attempt at writing "Elf" looked much more like "Elt." So from then on, he was referred to as "the Elt," and after his multiple encounters with death our adventuring party became known as the "Order of the Dying Elt."

 

[Crazy Jerome]

My wife had an elven mage type character (Fantasy Hero) that kept her name and nickname as originally conceived, but the nickname got used in a manner different than she intended. The "real" elven name was some long business that no one could pronounce, but "Sparky" was her name to non-elves. It was supposed to be all light and breezy.

What is was, when it became clear that the area effect side effects of her lightning magic would be frequent, was highly sarcastic and a commentary on her abilities--always delivered in a cutting voice--"Oh great, Sparky is casting. We're doomed!" Fortunately, this was all good fun in character, and not a problem for the players.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

My friend made a void mage for an L5R campaign who wore a large basket hat and always spoke with a prophetic tone. At one point at the site of a failed blood magic ritual he pointed out the obvious that something unnatural had happened, so I took to aping his character as always pointing out the obvious while referring to himself in the third person:

"Doctor Hat says something wholly unnatural is happening here."
"Doctor Hat has a bad feeling about this."
"Doctor Hat thinks that geisha's a man, baby!"

It took only a few impressions before everyone was on board and I bet even my friend can't remember his character's real name!

 

[SkredlitheOgre]

I forgot one. In a rather odd GURPS Supers campaign, one of PCs was a mid-level executive type at a company one of the other PCs worked for. He was a mage of some kind and his main ability was to conjure small useful items with a chance to summon larger, more helpful items. When our brain trust forgot to take food with us, he started conjuring sandwiches, so we started treating him like a Subway.

"Yeah, I'll have a BLT with onions and extra bacon."

"I'll have a patty melt with provolone and a side of chips."

Most players started calling him Subway, but I refrained and simply referred to him as Mister Sammich.

I can't remember what the character's name actually was.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

There's always that one player in every group...in mine, he always plays anthro characters. Their names always have grunts, or whistles, or glottal stops...whatever those are. Inevitably, we end up calling his characters Klik, or something.

When my current campaign began, one player simply spelled out his character name: H-A-R-S. I asked whether to pronounce it as Harz or Hars; he said he got the name from the CB, and he hadn't thought about it. I chose Harz, and the pronunciation stuck.

That was such a missed opportunity on my part.