Naming your characters

[GarageGothic]

I was trying to come up with a last name for my game character this morning, and it made me wonder, how much thought do you put into the names of your characters (player as well as npcs), and do you have any special techniques for choosing the perfect name?

It's easy to forget the importance of names in defining a character, but sometimes these are more memorable than the title of the game itself - sometimes they even ARE the title. I mean, Larry Laffer, Zak McKracken, Roger Wilco, Guybrush Threepwood, Bobbin Threadbare, King Graham, Indiana Jones, what else would you possibly call these characters? Most of these names are of course jokes, puns, something out of a comic book, names you could never look up in a phone book (or maybe you could, but that's a scary thought).

But how about "real" sounding names then? Let's look at them. Even bland names like Sonny Bonds have a certain ring to them that make you associate (cool 80's narcotics-cop a la Sonny Crocket), and Lara Bow, if nothing else, suggest the 1920's by referring to the actress Clara Bow. But for the life of me I couldn't recall the name of our brown-suited hero in PQ4, so I had to look it up: John Carey. Obviously it's bad. Or I would have remembered it. Could it be any more dull? You might as well call him John Smith or Fred Jones. It does nothing. It just... sits there. Ok, so we might read something into it... Carey, caring, that sort of thing, but still, why this name? So apparently, you just can't choose a name at random, it needs... something to set it apart.
But on the other hand, some "cool" names, like Boston Low, Max Payne, Ben Throttle, are just too much. They're supposed to sound real, but they remind me of that Simpsons episode where Homer changes his name to Max Power. It's difficult to take seriously. David Wolf (old espionage game by Dynamix) should probably be on the list too. Gabriel Knight is right on the edge. If it wasn't for the explanation of his past and the logic behind the Ritter-name, I'm not sure I would have bought it. Especially not when put together with the first name of an arch angel.

I'd like to hear your take on this, and maybe some of you could explain the thought process behind the names of your characters. I'm sure there must be some interesting anecdotes.

[SSH]

Try:

http://www.seventhsanctum.com/gens/index-name.html

[GarageGothic]

LOL, that's great. I chose "heroic names", and it came up with Tex Tungsten. Now THAT's exactly what I needed for my game

[Squinky]

Pirate Fry was made up when I was a kid and played Sid meirs Pirates...I thought it was funny to play a french pirate named fry...I was such a dumbass....

[n3tgraph]

I think a name will be tolerated as long as the game rocks,

but when you look at a character you should give a name that suits that character. When you see a big strong jail-bloke you won't expect a name like Christopher or something

although that can work pretty funny
ah I don't know

[GarageGothic]

The trouble with name generators is that they're great for finding ideas, it doesn't know your character. Even IF you could specify the personality of you character, It can't base names on etymological meanings, metaphors or on sound-alike adjectives, or on references to other works of art, unless it's been pre-programmed for it, which would in turn make the name stereotypic.

Once again, I have to refer you to an article at the great screenwriting site wordplayer.com:

http://www.wordplayer.com/columns/wp09.Name-dropping.html

(in which you will find invaluable information such as: "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle once wrote a short story featuring a detective named Sherrinford Holmes, and his sidekick, Ormond Sacker.")

Edit: I would, by the way, like your feedback on Dinah Burroughs as the name for a player character, and Konrad Grau/Conrad Gray as the name of a German film director who fled to America in the 1930's and changed his name accordingly. I'm not going to explain the reason for the names, as I'd much rather hear the associations you get from them.

[m0ds]

I usually make mine up, or;

- Find an old text book from school and select a name at random in the acknowledgements.

- Find a list of credits for a film and steal a surname.

:p
m0ds

[Trapezoid]

There are lots of baby name sites out there, as well as surname directories. I just go through these sites and find names that I like, put them all in a text file and mix and match until I find the perfect name.

[aussie]

How awesome is that naming engine!?!

[Archangel (aka SoupDragon)]

Here's the one I use; iirc it finds random first names and surnames from the american census and shoves them together. http://www.kleimo.com/random/name.cfm

Edit: oh, another good feature of this one is that if you click on a name generated it will google it, to make sure you haven't picked the name of some random famous person or other ^_^

[Dave Gilbert]

Unordinary names don't always make them memorable.  I couldn't tell you the name of the character in "Out of Order," even though he had a very unordinary name.  Why?  Because his name was hardly mentioned during the game.  That's the trick.  It's all in the dialog.  The characters need to constantly talk and refer to each other by name.

Here's how I named one of my characters.  When I was in college, I wrote a horrible mystery play starring a detective named Peter Griffon.   Five years later I wanted to write a mystery AGS game with the same detective, but that "Family Guy" show selflishly nabbed my character's name.  I renamed him Max Griffon, and soon shortened it to Max Griff because that sounded cooler.

[Privateer Puddin']

i hope you still love family guy in every way

[AndersM]

I thaught about giving my common-looking hero the name John J. Murdoch. I think it gives the hero a certain touch of heroizm. I allso thaught about giving the most important female non-player-character the name Mercedes. (that is in fact a girls name.)

[Snake]

My characters' names most of the time just come to me out of nowhere and to me, they are perfect.

Seth Reece (The Legend of Leitor's Edge): His name was first planned to be Billy, but when I was thinking about the whole jumping over the edge thing, Seth Reece just popped up. And Reece should probably be spelled, Rees, but I don't give a damn

Hirum (Monkey Wrench): Is this name German? I can't remember... but anyway, when I was just a little kid, my older brothers would call me that from time to time...I always thought it was a humorous name, so I just named that monkey boy I made up, Hirum.

Allie O' Leary (Monkey Wrench): Named after Ali Landry, but I just spelled it different Also changed Landry into O' Leary. Wouldn't O' Leary be Irish?

Dr. Lumpkin Glumpkin (Monkey Wrench): Heh, I just thought it was funny. I also thought I made it up before my friend pointed out some kid that had the same last name...lol

Eric Peters (Evil Night): Eric is the name of one of my brothers. Peters just was a random name I came up with. The original name for him, Scott, is the name of one of my cousins.

Micheal Peters (Evil Night): (Eric's younger brother). Micheal is the name of my oldest brother.

Marty Shore (The Life of Marty Shore): I always liked that name and was first inspired by Back to the Future and Shore just seemed to fit very well with it.

Dexter Livingston (The End): I have know idea where Livingston came from, but I've always liked the name Dexter for some weird reason.


--Snake

[DGMacphee]

I named Max Dekker (from the upcoming Dark Hero) after JD.

I did this because his artistic style inspired mine.

So, I named my main character after him.

That, and Dekker is a coolass name for a character.

[Las Naranjas]

Typos are a great way to name protagonists, as Novo showed.

[SSH]

Typos are a great way to name protagonists, as Novo showed.

Coming soon, a new AGS adventure: "The journey of Teh Ares"...  

[evenwolf]

Weird generator gave me "Bowl of Pestilence"

hehehe

[SSH]

One thing to consider, if you're having your game in multiple langauges is that some names are pronounced differently in different languages, even if the spelling is the same: for example Spanish phonetics are very different from English, so my wife and I tried to find a name that would be pronounced the same in both langauges. Easy for a girl (we chose "Alba" in the end) but if we have a boy, we'll be stuck between "Conan" and "Sebastian".

BTW: What with "Dekker" and "Murdoch" listed already in the thread, how many more A-Team names can we get?

Snake, "Dexter Livingston" sounds a bit like the famous "Doctor Livingston (I presume)". Incidentally, I am currently in Livingston, Scotland.

[EldKatt]

Just an interesting digression:
When "The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" was translated into Dutch, the spellings of the names were changed to match the phonology of Dutch, so that they would be pronounced the same. For examply, Zaphod Beeblebrox was in the Dutch version called something like Zephod Bibelbrox. Also, it used to be quite common, when translating, to change the names in films and such to similar names in the language concerned. The very same thing has been done with the Bible as well, and most languages have their own versions of Biblical names.

[DGMacphee]

BTW: What with "Dekker" and "Murdoch" listed already in the thread, how many more A-Team names can we get?

A minor qubble: It was actually 'Decker' from the A-Team.

But to answer your question........



'Nuff said.


(Jibba jabbin' image by Makri)

[Igor]

Unordinary names don't always make them memorable.  I couldn't tell you the name of the character in "Out of Order," even though he had a very unordinary name.  Why?  Because his name was hardly mentioned during the game.  That's the trick.  It's all in the dialog.  The characters need to constantly talk and refer to each other by name.

Either that, or you name the game after the main character
I like weird and not too common names.

[Snake]

Igor, where'd Ignac come from? I love that name


--Snake

[Igor]

Hehe, yeah- Ignac is one of the old names that were quite common before 1900 (derivated from Ignacious, etc.), but are now so rare you hardly find anyone named like that. I remember i was once looking at one of those calendars that have name-days on them and i cought "Ignac"- i thought it would make an interesting and funny name for main character (and i knew it would couse pronoucing problems to all English speakers ), so...