Lame Names

[Drowbane]

This one guy insisted on naming his Wizard "James".

I managed to convince him to at least reverse it to a semi-fantasy sounding "Semaj".

 

[Kafkonia]

I had two players in one campaign who were stuck for names, but it turned out that when you turned their real names around they sounded like they'd just stepped out of a fantasy book!

Over at rpgmp3.com, there've been a few amusing ones -- in the sadly-unfinished ToEE game, there was Harry U. Man, a half-orc who was raised by a mother who insisted he was a human. And, after the adventure went off the rails, there was Bastardos, god of fatherless children. To whom at festivals they burn... wood.

 

[tenkar]

My namesake started as one of my players henchmen back in the days. Tenkar Calishun was the only party henchman to survive the whole campaign. He was as dangerous as his name is when sounded out and always left a mess of bodies in his wake

 

[Thunderfoot]

<SNIPPY>
Just tangentially- has anyone on this thread besides me played Paranoia? After all, that game actually encourages bad names, like:

Roy-G-BIV
Wot-U-GOT
Eve-B-OLA

Yeah, but that's expected. (Encouraged even). If you decide to show up at GenCon, you have to try to get in on Crothian's Paranoia game, its a hoot!

 

[Sound of Azure]

I also have a habit of coming up with "trick" names, but you really can't get it unless you already know about it.

For example, my Eberron PC is called Marius ir'Kol; the name was designed to sound like Miracle. Or Kellan (Kill 'em), and Milat (a villain whose personality is frighteningly similar to Talim of Soul Calibur fame).

People over here would be more likely to connect the name to Ivan Milat.

 

[Thurbane]

It annoys me when players in our games either refuse to give their characters names at all (in which case they just get given a nickname by the other players), use pun names, or rip off names from well known literature.

Honestly, it's not that hard to come up with original (or at least interesting) names for your characters... :\

 

[STARP_Social_Officer]

We have a player/DM who sucks big-time at names. It takes him several sessions to come up with a name, and this includes for adventures he's running. We have a running gag now that everything in his world is alphabetically tagged to save time, so "Character A" goes to "Town C" to meet with "Character E."

 

[+5 Keyboard!]

Joe, the paladin. The name was just as lame as the player (though not quite as mentally unstable).

Billy Ray the Evangelist cleric was also quite lame, but much more entertaining.

 

[+5 Keyboard!]

On a related note, one of my groups a few years back got a real kick out of making up lame names to replace my otherwise perfectly suitable fantasy names. For example, there was an intelligent longsword named Lord Gabriel (the soul of a paladin resided in it), but the players insisted on calling it "Gary".

Then there was the donkey that one of the players decided to name Frank; a former player that just happened to be a jack ass.

 

[shaihalud]

I once had a halfling rogue named "Slim Pickens." Yeah, a bit clever but more-over very lame. He was always suspect by name alone.