"It's a joke name, sir."

[Darmanicus]

Phil McCavity.

I've always wanted to play a priestess called 'Bad Habit'.

 

[diaglo]

"He has a wife, you know . . ."

Ben Dover. i think he writes for BadAxe Games.

 

[Mystery Man]

Yeah, I also know a David David and his grown son, David David Jr. That's just not nice.

There needs to be canings for parents who do this to their children.

 

[diaglo]

There needs to be canings for parents who do this to their children.

one of well respected authors in my field is Peter Small.

if you have the last name Small never name your kid Peter or Richard.

most roll calls start last name first.

 

[Dragonhelm]

However, I have known some people in real life who's names sound pretty made up, such as Penny Lane, Yua Hue, and Huo Li.

Yeah, well, my name is Trampas.

Take a look at a baby name book sometime, and you'll see some examples of bad names. In one case, the surname was Bra. The parents named their daughters Iona and Ineeta. Ahem.

I've also heard of people named Lemonjalo and Oranjalo (lemon jello, orange jello).

Okay, back to gaming names...

I've played in games where we've used silly names off and on, but we haven't had it be too terribly bad - at least in comparison.

From Shadowrun...
Kev Orkian (guess what was in the news at the time)
The Rigger Mortis (had to have "the" in there)
Undertaker (Mortis' brother)

From my friend's homebrew...
Gullible (real name was Gullival, but we had some fun)
Crystar (named after the comic book character, save that my friend pronounced it "Christ-Star")

I'll see if I can think of more when time permits.

 

[Desdichado]

While at medical school we had an oncologist who specialized in hospice care and end of life pain management. His name was Dr. Payne.

My dentist had the same name when I was a kid. Luckily, it wasn't prophetic...

As for Rosham Bo, I don't mind more subtle "joke" names like that. Because Rosham Bo is supposedly the Japanese name for rock/paper/scissors and only Troy speaks Japanese (although he's never confirmed nor denied that Kevin got that right anyway) it ironically sounds like an appropriate name rather than a joke one.

Heck, in my Eberron game, my character's name is Ebeneezer "'eezer" Goode, which sounds OK for a noir genre like Eberron. I think only Kevin and I recognize the song by the Shamen on which it's based. So, again, it's a joke name, but it's subtle, and it actually works on its own anyway.

 

[Kage Tenjin]

I've seen a couple of bad ones, but the worst one is a subtle one I'm using in my homebrew. The capital of an empire that controls magically propelled walking armors is called Rastur.

Cookie to the first one who gets it.

 

[Henry]

Character names? I've seen 'em all. I used to play a Bard named "Plaster" years ago, based on a fellow gamer in the group who used to get drunk quickly. In our old gaming group, being a cheap drunk was a far worse stigma than being a drunk.

I've seen HJ's, BJ's, CB's (after the sex acts), Vantage's (cavaliers named after cigarettes), a bard named Yuyella ("You Yellow?"), Fighters named Dorkus, and Scrujahb the Wizard. And you wouldn't have had ten seconds of straight faces if you said the background of any of your characters was a "Seaman."

In real life, I've known very few people with "odd names", other than a woman named "Sparkle", and a child who's mother called "Doral" in my wife's preschool once. She pronounced it "Dor-AL" with emphasis on the "AL" and in my mind I can't shake the impression that she named him after a brand of cigarettes whenever I think about it.

 

[JoeBlank]

I usually try to stay away from goofy character names, but my current gnome sorcerer has a fox familiar and I couldn't resist naming the fox . . .

Red.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Why the GENCON Catogory?