Lo-Quality WoW

When I started playing WoW, I created my first character and was looking for a name. And I did what I usually do with characters in fantasy settings. I picked a letter and then merged a bunch of consonants and vowels until I came up with something that would plausibly be a name. Thus came my hunter Keyalnon. If you do a search on that name, you pretty much only find references to my character. Likewise, he’s the only character in the WoW armory with that name. It was unique. It helped define my character.
For my WoW characters, I have three patterns. One is mentioned above, which I used for Night Elves, Draenei and Gnomes. For Humans, I used a second pattern, which was to use Japanese to create names. Not quite sure why since most of the models are European based, but it gave the character a name that wasn’t English but still “real world” to me. The third pattern is the one used for Dwarves. That’s the odd one in that I have two dwarves. The male dwarf I gave a name based on what sounds more like a “clan” name to me. The female dwarf got a name based off norse mythology. Both the Dwarves got a more European feel to their names as a result. Now those in my first pattern still sometimes end up with real-world names as a result. My warrior was Aleania and my warlock was Grendar, both with real-world counterparts and as such, a search on them in armory shows quite a few. While it’s not as cool as a unique name, it still gave them a feel.

I don’t play on an RPG server, so I often see names that are either puns, reference real-world memes or other such things. That’s just not my style. For me, my characters have a real “identity” and if I can’t picture or imagine people using their name in regular conversation, it bothers me. But if you really, really want to call your druid “Eatslotsofpizza”, who am I to argue?

Of course, if you’re going to call your rogue “(something)-healer”, well you better expect some confusion when you get invited into groups. In fact, one of my guildmates has a rogue with the word “axe” in it, and it wasn’t until much later he realized that rogue’s can wield axes! Does that make it “wrong”? Not in the slightest.

We name things in everyday life. Pets. Boats. Children. When you give something a name, you create a small bond with it, however minor. It’s something personal to you. Granted, naming your kid “Xybot” is bound to cause some sort of issue in the future, but for the present, it is part of the bond you share with each other. It has to be a name that has some sort of meaning to you, no matter how ridiculous. And the same should go for the name for your characters in WoW.

Now the beauty of my hunter’s name is the fact that since it’s completely made up, it has no particular meaning to it other than what I imbue it with. Not that it matters in most cases. For Americans, most of us have no idea of the entomology of our names. It’s the label our parents put on us. Now would have my parent’s still given me my name if they knew it translated to “Strength of a boar” in Old English? Who knows? But I’m pretty sure that wasn’t what was on their minds when they picked it.

So what is the purpose of this? Whether you are making up a name, making a pun, or declaring your love of mice, give some thought to your character’s name. It’ll be a part of that character and a part of you. And if someday, I ever meet a kid named “Xybot Lee”, I’ll know my classmate got his wish.