A Character by any other name....

[Sidran]

DMing players who pick wierd names ( do you allow hard names if so do you come up with nicknames to keep it straight In dire need of ideas)


I have a cast of characters ( 7 Players) 5 Major Good NPC's, and working Cast of 34 Familiar NPC's and 5 Major Villians Not to mention the countless number of level 1-6 sorcerers that have at one time or another attacked my party (thanks to the Mage Hunter in the Pack)


Examples of my players naming conventions


Adawar Iliandar (Good Simple name though we still end up calling him Andar more that Adawar)

Sullaxius Tygrianorus ( Tiegore)

Ashe Rowen ( Another good semple name


Fael Iriadun

Valanna ap Llyrandwen Yem Lutsgiya ( Simply Valanna usually thoug the full name Means Valanna of Llyrandwen of the Clan of Lutsgiya Denoting that her father is Llyrandwen, and her Clan is the Clan Lutsgya or Lutsgiy ( A gypsy group)

Miirran Dax ( easy name I created)

Rialdo

IlKrahvenesh Iliandar ( I hate this name NPC of Adawar's)

Oromen Rahl

Riivengal Rahl

Tolk Brenham

And Astricanar Ilurndilarin The most annoying of player names.

 

[Bagpuss]

Never really encountered that problem most of our players pick names that can be pronouned without you needing to think to hard about it.

 

[Buttercup]

We haven't had a problem. If a character creates a long name, the other characters give him or her a nickname. But then, I don't have any elves in my world, so that eliminates many naming problems.

 

[Naull]

Funny Names

I have a friend that has been in various groups over the last 15 years with me, and here are some of his names. Some are quite funny, others are just jaw dropping in that you can't believe he would choose those names:

Rick (a ranger)

Wilt (a druid)

Bill (a druid)

Lerxst (a fighter)

Steve (a wizard)

Ted (a fighter)

Pete (an assassin)

The group actually fusses at him when he names his characters things like Pete and Steve, because they tell him that it isn't fantasy.

 

[Moxie]

I had an illusionist in 1e named Soriahsis. I guess it looked neater than it sounded.

 

[boxstop7]

I've been lurking for a while, but I simply had to respond to this thread...

The group I play with has a habit of making fun of PC names. We had a female fighter named Maylar, and she was constantly called "mylar". We had a female monk named Katen who was invariably addressed as "the touch, the feel of Katen". We also had a character named Nubbin. We abused him relentlessly with Eddie Murphy's Gumby rendition of "wookin' pa nub in all da wong pwaces...". In another campaign, we had a character named Noonish...no need to elaborate on that one. I've actually taken to naming my characters in boring names (my current character's name is Garret) simply to avoid the abuse. It's almost a tradition in our game that every character's name gets abused in any number of ways.

At the beginning of our current campaign, we all chose the iconic charcter names from the PHB for whichever class we chose to play. We had a fighter named Tordek (a.k.a. "Thor"), a cleric named Jozan, a monk named Ember and a ranger named Juan Carlos Soveliss. Of those characters, only Jozan survives. We have a habit of creating somewhat quirky characters. Fortunately our DM encourages this, as he derives immense pleasure from incorporating those quirks into the game.

 

[Desdichado]

I had an illusionist in 1e named Soriahsis. I guess it looked neater than it sounded.

How did you prounounce that? "Yes, I'm Soriahsis of Lihveer. I drink a lot."

 

[Sir Osis of Liver]

How did you prounounce that? "Yes, I'm Soriahsis of Lihveer. I drink a lot."

 

[Quickbeam]

We have a player in our group who pretty strictly adheres to one of the following two annoying character naming methods:

1) He takes a very long Spanish noble-sounding name like Viscount Domingo Bastion Ramirez Vasquez, and applies it to a wild elf or peasant human.

OR

2) He creates names which describe how violent and deadly the characters are, like Naamohr Bloodletter or Telian Gorereaver.

In either case, the names aren't hard to say and the PC's frequently get nicknamed, but I don't understand either pattern. I'd rather a peasant be called Pete .

 

[Desdichado]

Lately for fantasy games, I've been preferring to use regular old English names that are very old-fashioned or out of general use. Sounds vaguely fantasy/olde-tyme that way, but there's nothing to make such a name get made fun of either.

Of course, I can just imagine characters named after the Romans in Life of Brian...