The Most Popular D&D Character Name Is "Bob"

What's the name of your D&D character? The folks at D&D Beyond have released some more stats, and this time they're sharing the top 15 D&D player character names.

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What these stats appear to tell us is that many people call their character "Bob", and even more seems to just use their class name, such as "Cleric" or "Bard". Lots of people seems to name their characters after Game of Thrones' Varys, but spell it differently, and lots like "dark" names like Ash, Raven, Ember, and Shadow.

More realistically, it may be that many of these are simply experimental builds, with placeholder names. The folks at D&D Beyond (watch the stream here) say that these are the most popular names "for characters on D&D Beyond", although the other data elements shown on that stream were specific to material used from Xanathar's Guide to Everything.

Numbers-wise, they're not saying those are all the characters on D&D Beyond - there will be thousands of names used which are used less than 755 times each, and possibly even thousands which are used just once. The table above only shows the top 15, and how often they were used.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I'm sure everybody who hates that the Fighter is the most popular class will take some comfort in this implications of this new data.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Little do we know, but 98.4% of all the "Bob"s are from one guy who's playing with a killer DM. He's up to Bob MMCIX.

"I'm here to avenge my grandfather's cousin's ex-husband's nephew's ex-wife's brother's friend-with-benefits' third cousin once remove on their mother's side."

"...Prepare to die!"

 

[Tony Vargas]

I'm sure everybody who hates that the Fighter is the most popular class will take some comfort in this implications of this new data.

Yeah, because Fighters named Bob are OK.



(Seriously, though, the Fighter has ALWAYS been the most popular class. Every. Survey. Ever.)

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Always used BOB and RICK as generic, Ranger Bob, Cleric Bob, Magic Bob, Rogue Bob, Bob the bartender, Bob the sneak, so on and so on.

Ranger Rick pretty much requires a raccoon character. Sadly(?) this isn't available, at least not yet.

 

[Leatherhead]

My group had a Wizard named "Bob the Fighter" back in 4e. He was famous for being absolutely fearless in combat, going to extremes such as crawling up into the face of a dragon just to get a good shot at the beast.

 

[Henry]

Bob was your uncle. Now he's your Cleric.

And no Fannys, either — I’m disappointed.

 

[Zardnaar]

In 2E we named our horses Bob 1,2,3 etc. Made it to Bob 37.

 

[ccs]

That's pretty funny.

Bob:
*In the 1st adventure of our new 5e campaign (2 sessions in tonight!) I have an NPC named Bob running around.
*In general, in our less serious campaigns, there's a god who goes by the name Bob. He's a multi-faceted god with 9 different alignments. You can tell wich alignment his cultists are IF you know how they write his name (Bob, BOB, boB, bob, bOb, etc.).

Lilith: The name one of the new players gave her Necromancer in our ToA game.

Jack: I have a rogue in a PF game by this name. Technically Jackson/Jack'son, but Jack in most cases....

 

[The White Sorcerer]

I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that I'm jealous of people who name their characters something like "Lilith" or "Shadow." I'm too preoccupied with cleverness to embrace the cool.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Heh, close enough!

Back in the old Goth scene days, pseudonyms very much like that one were everywhere. Heck, there are still some friends that refer to me by my old stage name now and then.

I'm ready a series of books right now where the author's name (well, pseudonym most likely) is Lillith Stormcrow. Does that count?