Over on Blog Azeroth, the Shared Question of the week is “How did you come up with your character name?”
Just about all of my characters have had names pulled from different locations. My mage came from a book, but the name itself is Gaelic in origin. My pally is Japanese name in origin. My banker character is named for a cat that I had at the time, who has since passed away. My baby priest is yet another Japanese derivative but I’d used it for another character in another MMO. I have a placeholder that’s named for my first MMO character, and that was derived from wanting a “raven” without it being “Raven”.
And then there’s Siana and Mirya, her pet. Siana came from another method I have of creating names: taking a word, chopping it apart, and rearranging it, usually with another word that’s also been chopped. In this case, however, Siana came from “LouiSIANA”. No, seriously. That’s where it came from. I was looking around the house for anything to start building a name from, saw a Louisiana state map I was about to throw away (since I don’t live there anymore and haven’t for years), and used the state name. That was for a banker character in another MMO, and when I was surprising The Boyfriend on WoW’s Opening Day (cos I hadn’t told him I was getting WoW), I knew he didn’t know that banker character, and having some person named “Siana” sending him a tell would confuse him. It worked. Mwhaha…
Mirya was an easy choice for my teal kitty. I told the story of how I got her over at Survival Hunters Anonymous. I’ve known the real life “Mirya” (not her real name) for over 12 years now. I’d sucked her and her husband into MMOs and they’ve been merrily committing carnage over in FF11 for a few years now. She’s also a vet and a huge kitty lover, and dang it, I missed having a flurry of teal and steel running around me from back when we played EQOA and she was a bard while I played cleric. So asking her if I could name a rare teal cat pet after her wasn’t that far a stretch for me, and her reaction of bouncing in glee and demanding pics of her namesake wasn’t that far a stretch for her.
Ah character creation. Ain’t it grand!
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Hmm, my main toon, Aerye was named quickly. Seems while I was visiting a good friend, she decided I needed to “try” WoW. I was sat in front of a computer loaded with WoW, and had a box with the discs and codes tossed at me with the order to make an account. ::grins at Siana and winks:: I did so, then hit the create screen and was FLOORED with the face marking of the Night Elves as, of course, I *had* to play a Night Elf.
I chose the markings that, to this day remindes me of wings radiating out from the eyes, Knowing NOTHING of game lore, it just began spinning in my mind of this elf growing up high in the mountains, almost part of the wind. I ran through all the various birds of prey, and no name “fit”. I thought quickly (the person poking me to come onnnnnnn, get in gammmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmeeee -g-) and Aer’s smile just hit me as having a gentle nature, welcoming– so I figured why not the HOME of a bird of prey– an aerie. I knew Wow had been around for a while, and that meant most of the “good” names would be gone. So I played with the spelling, just in case and voila! We had Aerye.
Like many, I fell for the teal tiger badly. Enough to spend 8-10 hours a day walking Winterspring when I leveled high enough. It was a bad few weeks, and I had one cat tamed out from under me, and another fail to tame before I died badly– but a very kind set of Horde helped me get my baby, and I named him after my recently departed cat who’d been with me since I first moved out of my parent’s house. I kinda felt like he’d be almost a guardian spirit to poor Aer, who needs it with what I get her into, and so Myrddin was named.
Her mount is a spotted cat named Chowder as sometimes I drive him into walls and… um.. get stuck– and I firmly blame the riding cat, being dumb as a bowl of chowder. Oh, and the two petpets I keep out nearly all the time are a red whelpling named Radish that dropped the very first time I killed one of those buggers in the swamp, and Snozzberry, an azure whelp recently given as a birthday gift by some good friends.
@Aerye
Hey I did NOT twist yer arm! You sighed and made sad eyes at me but I KNOW you snuck back downstairs before I woke up to start playing! So nyah! ::grin::
Arlyon is my hunter. I forget which I got the name from. I believe it was Shetterleys’ Sword of Shannarah or a book called Elsewhere or Never Never.
Either way they are all good books. Worth the read and an excellent source of creative names.
@Seik
Books are such a lovely way to get character names. Haven’t read Sword of Shannarah in ages. Need to see if I still have a copy…
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