I was driving home from work the other night, about where I started using my character's name and thought it might be interesting to hear about how others came up with their names as well. Considering this is one of the few outlets that we can essentially choose who we are and control how we're perceived by others a little bit more than in reality; the names we use reflect that as well.

I started using Rein back when I started playing Ultima Online with one of my best friends from high school. I used it in Ragnarok Online as well, and then moved from MMO to MMO until FFXI came out and it was already taken by a JPN player. So I added a -held and boom. Name. In just about every MMO my main character has been some form or another had the same name, in WoW I strayed from my normal naming mechanics and went by Malcavion for a bit when I played my warlock, Odhran for my druid, etc.

With XIV since we also have last names as well, I used Kelsier which is the first name of one of my favorite characters from the Mistborn book series. My cousin and her husband used similar names for their characters in Guild Wars 2, and I swiped it from there. I hate trying to be original with last names, haha.

How about you guys? Any interesting stories?

Used the name Kane from Shining Force when I first started doing online stuff around age 11-13, was taken on mIRC one day so used Kayne ever since.

Deschain comes from The Dark Tower series of novels of course, so when you notice a lot of those last names that's why, although I wouldn't change my name since I think it has a nice ring to it, lol.

Converted Dustdevil from FF11.
came up with that name twofold,
1: its the name of a Butthole Surfers song
2: when i used to have money and race cars in my youth, some of the old dudes that raced with called me "the dustdevil".
On an even gayer note, my PA license plate DUSTDVL since like '98 lol.

Used to burn around in a '68 Camaro SS that was a beast (sold to go to mortuary school, so sad) then i had a '98 Camaro SS totally decked which i had until local authoritah's gave me an option to sell or else.

Now DUSTDVL resides on an '11 Ford F150 lol, and i cry myself to sleep.

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im not very creative with names so i named her in 1.0 as the obvious.

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Take my hand, brave adventurer. We face this dungeon together - with FRIENDSHIP!

Kio was shortened from my 11 name, Kioko. I like using Japanese derived names for a lot of stuff, so it was just something i picked when searching for Japanese womens names. Nothing particuarly special about it. Solais was something Ket picked out, I think it was a sword or something, it means "light". Its kind of funny now because any game I play wherein you get to name your player character, I started using Kio instead of my real name or real life nick name. It just suites game characters better for some reason.

Regnar is Ranger backwards from my XI name - was picked along with my brother and Ket when we all started XI together after playing CnC Renegade on our 'correct direction' names... Ket was Ubertek which backwards was Ketrebu, my brother was Kamikaze which became Ezakimak...

As for Kasdaye, that's from wow I had so many char names in there, Himacth, Nandor were my other favourites, but Kasdaye felt like it went better with Regnar as the last name.

Simples

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Kasdaye Regnar

Rein! You never told us what made you choose Rein, tho!

I'll go into my whole handle life story, though, because I like stories!

Back in the offline days, I basically used Chaos as my handle for anything that allowed 5+ characters and Ryan for anything that was limited to 4 only. Chaos, as you can imagine, would probably be one of the first names picked off by any sort of registered naming thingy, and I really didn't want to include numbers, so I had to come up with something better.

After moving onto campus, I did a google search for free online games, and I picked a few out. I had to come up with a name that would work in the future, though, and I settled on Raistrahl. I can't even tell you where I got it from. I don't know if I just looked up names somewhere, and stumbled across it, or what. Anyway, cut to a month, or two, later, and I wanted to make a new character to do something with the lady-friend I met in the game, but I was struggling thinking up names. She came up with Ridere, since it basically means "to laugh" in Latin, and I generally crack jokes. haha. I thought the name would suffice. In that same game, you could give yourself family names that were little more than just little cliques, or whatever. Nothing official. But they all started with Ti' and then ended with whatever. I chose Ti'Rose, 'cause I'm from Portland, and whatever, I thought I was cool. So when I had to make a last name for 14, Ridere Ti'Rose came to mind, but I didn't want to make anyone use apostrophes, so I dropped it in favor of Ridere Tirose.

After typing this up, though, I'm really curious about the origins of my using Raistrahl. I used Nybbas, too, for another alt, and I'm pretty sure I must have got that one from a book. A necromancer, or something. But maybe I just straight up came up with Raistrahl, because I figured no one else ever would. Hmm!

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Oh shit, you're right. Haha. I'm at work and got distracted. My buddy and I went with a similar naming scheme originally. Many of the protagonists for the Final Fantasy series have weather or nature based names and my friend went with Hayle, and I was Rein. I pronounce my character's name like rain, though Yarr likes to say Ren.

I've always said, Rhyne. haha. Good to know.

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I'm always curious how people come up with their names. Good stuff.

I grew up a Final Fantasy fanboy. FF4(2UD) and FF6(3US) were my favorites. About 15 years ago I posted on gamefaqs a lot as FuSoYa which is a character from FF4 with a unique name I liked.

For FFXI I wanted a semi-unique Final Fantasy name. I tried Fusoya but it was already taken, so I chose his brother KluYa. Kluya's power turned Cecil into a Paladin on Mt Ordeals. For some reason I liked that idea since I wanted to play Paladin in FFXI. I know that doesn't fully make sense as Kluya was a lunairian mage, not Paladin...but it made me happy.

The last name Lunaira simply came from Kluya's race as a Lunairian. I simply removed a few characters from "lunairian".

There is a Kluya Lunairian on another server. I want to find that person and kick him in the balls.

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I like Rhyne. Rain, Rhyne, either one. I think it's probably really Rhyne, and I'm saying my own name wrong. lol

I like Kayne's origin story!

I don't find many people who played the Shining Force series. I own 1, 2 and the Game Gear one (Sword of Hj, or something).

I remember once using all my stat-boosting items on... Arthur? once, and he turned into a pretty decent character. Of course, using all those items on someone whow as already good would have made them epic.

Plus, I love me some Domingo and Bleu. And... Musashi! In hindsight, however, Kayne should have named himself Jogurt.

And I say own name wrong, Rein, so don't feel bad. Ree-dare-ey. Aint no one got time for that. Wararies pronounces my name the closest to correct. haha

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Nice, that's awesome. Isn't he also Cecil's father or something?

Funny story, Shining Force is one of my favorite series of all time. I have 1, 2, 3 CD and the Gamegear one. The game gear one is actually the first part of the Sega CD game. There's three parts, similar to how Shining Force 3 had multiple parts as well. Only us poor US fucks never got to see the other two games. I picked up Shining Force 3 and Pokemon Red the same day I think. Haha.

I was creating a char for Ragnarok Online, and I had recently watched the Simpsons episode where they ride the rails with the hobo.

"I'm not a stabbin' hobo; I'm a singing hobo!"
Followed by a reassuring song:
"How I love the hobo life, stabbin' folks with my hobo knife!"

I ended up creating HoboKnight and HoboPriest on Ragnarok Online, but just shortened it to Hobo when I moved to FFXI.

Martingale is a reference to the infamous Martingale gambling strategy that has been responsible for turning many people in to hobos.

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When FFX came out I became super obsessed with it. I just fucking love that game. I even wore Tidus' necklace for a few years cause I was super nerdy in high school. I actually still wore it in college till it broke, haha.

When it came time for a name in FFXI I went with my real name in Al Bhed, which is the language they use in FFX. So Derek became Tanag.
I'm real original.

Luckily though Tanag is just not used by other people. I can't think of a time I've tried to register on a site and it said Tanag was taken. So I lucked out in getting a super unique name I've just stuck with for over a decade, and subsequently created a business with. Even the logo I use is just the T in Al Bhed, haha. I'm super original :D


Alexander as a last name is just from my FFXI server. It's a great reminder of my origins as I consider my FFXIV character to be the same guy from XI on a new adventure. I even built him to look mostly identical.

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http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/character/871200/

For ffxi I was Iolanthe. I chose that name because I wanted an interesting name that nobody else would have thought of and I liked how it sounded. It's Greek for violet.

For ffxiv I wanted to have a more fun name because I rolled a lalafel instead of a mithra this time around. I thought Pie Napple was a good balance of dork and cute. Perfect for my new character.

Well.. I always wanted my username to be Azrael. Azrael took Batmans place when Bane broke his back. So, anyway.... I tried for the spelling the first time back in 2004 and could not get it. I've been Azreall ever since.

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That's a cool idea. I made my character sort of similar to my XI character, but all of the models were so feminine and now with highlander males the contrast is fucking huge. lol So, I don't know.

I was hume in 11, 'cause I figured a jack of all trades would be a good choice. I didn't realize how much I'd like magic. Which is silly, 'cause I always liked summons in the FF series. Rydia has got to be one of the coolest chars out there, even back in the SNES days, where there wasn't -as- much character lore. There was still a lot, but not as much as we see now.

So I was pretty jealous of Tarus in 11. I fixed that for 14. Stats matter less in 14, but my love of the taru character type remained. So Lala was a no-brainer.

I'll forever keep http://rosehusky.com/hotwhm.jpg up on my site as a remember of my past. The last SS I took of myself before ultimately losing Ridere for good.

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I always think of Rein as “rain”. And Ridere is “ri – dare” not “ry-dur” like it’s probably supposed to sound.



Yeah he was Cecil’s father! I really liked the character Cecil, I just didn’t care for his name. Otherwise I might have used that.



I fully agree. One of my all time favorite moments in FF4 is when she comes back out of nowhere as an ultimate badass summoner and saves her old friends mid-fight againt Golbez. It makes me wanna go play FF4 again just thinking about it.

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Holy shit, that screenshot... So many feels...

Whisp = wanted a name that started with "Whi" for "White Mage"
Allium = latin for wild onion, named after the onion-shaped hairstyle popularized in the early 2000s by me


after my old roomie and i had played FF11 for a week or two, where i was an elvaan thief named Avulus (made by closing my eyes and picking letters randomly drawn on a sheet of paper, one of the only few coherent names i made that way), and he was an elvaan white mage named Vicrov (randomly made up on the spot), we found we couldn't really duo because i didn't have provoke. we both concluded that we both wanted to swap roles, and also make new races. so he went warrior for provoke, made a galka, and named it Kayne because he wanted to eventually be a dragoon. no joke. then when he went to hit submit, it said Kayne was already taken. so he went with Thunderstomp. meanwhile i thought for a while on names that started with Whi, because i wanted to be a taru white mage in contrast to TS. that's when i came up with Whisp.

and as the story goes, once we logged in, we immediately saw Kayne standing around San d'Oria as some nude level one noob at the AH. and he got a random /tell from a stranger named whisp about how he stole my roomie's character name.

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RIP Shiloh - I'll never forget ya

History was made that day.

Your story was oddly beautiful Whisp.

BTW I feel really stupid because for a long while I thought Kayne and Pam's surname was from the Shawshank Redemption (why? I dunno). Then I remembered relatively recently that its Dufresne not Deschain lol. I felt extremely stupid that day.