Aerith and Bob: Difference between revisions

In some fantasy settings, people will have names that you would expect to see in real life. In others, names are made up to sound exotic.

 

 

This can also happen within an [[Overly Long Name]], where a [[Muggle]]-type name is liable to appear amid a long series of archaic names. Most often, the "normal" name is "Terry", "Scott", "Dave", or "Lyle", because those names are somehow inherently funny.

* ''[[The Five Star Stories]]''. The Mirage Knights is full of people with names like Nu. Suoad Graphight, Sir Bester (Close) Orbit & Maximum HOLTFORS Ballanche Kaien. Then there's a guy named Allen Bradford.

** Max is an [[Artificial Human]] (partly, his other part is [[Physical God]]—well, [[Mind Screw|it's complicated]]), so it's kind of justified. But then, FSS is indeed [[Mind Screw|this kind of series]].

* ''[[Pilot Candidate]]'', but a variation. Most of the characters have weird-sound European-ish names (like the main character, [[My Hero Zero|Zero]] and the resident [[Troubled but Cute|bad boy]] Hiead), with very few characters (such as Saki, Azuma, Yu and Kazuhi) who have actual Japanese names. Zero's falls under [[Translation Convention]], since his real name is Rei, and it's lampshaded, since Zero's colony is so far away from the main ones that they use Kanji rather than the universal language.

* ''[[Now and Then, Here and There]]'': The females all have real names (Sis is likely a nickname, Soon is a Korean name, and Abelia is the name of a plant). The males, on the other hand, have crazy, made-up names, like Hamdo, Nabuca, and Tabool. Shuzo Matsutani does not count, since he {{spoiler|[[Time Travel|comes from our time period]].}}

* ''[[Dude, Where's My Car?]]'': "My name is Zarnoff. This is Zabu, Zellner, Zelbor, Zelmina and Jeff." Caption "Jeff".

* [[The Beatles (band)|The Beatles]]' managers in ''[[A Hard Day's Night]]'' are Norm and [[Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?|Shake]].

 

== Literature ==

* The ''Bridge of D'Arnath'' series by Carol Berg has four cultures. One, the mundanes, include such names as Connor, Paulo, and Martin, alongside Seriana and Evard. The other groups get more outlandish as they separate more from the mundanes.

* In Peter F. Hamilton's ''[[The Night's Dawn Trilogy]]'' Trilogy, human civilization falls into two main cultures. The Adamists have names that are relatively normal for whatever ethnic group the individual hails from. They have names like Joshua, Ralph, Quinn, and Kelvin (it's Polish). The Edenists, on the other hand, pull names from the deepest, most obscure depths of mythology (or just make shit up). They have names like Syrinx, Sinon, and Eysk. The two groups' respective starships follow a similar trend (''Lady Macbeth'' versus ''Oenone'').

** There are also some weird naming traditions in the Ramtops, giving you names like Yodel Lightly, King My-God-He's-Heavy the First, and Esmerelda Margaret Note Spelling of Lancre.

*** The weird naming traditions aren't limited to Lancre, either; any number of plain old Ankh-Morpork citizens have names like Findthee Swing or Legitimate First. (Can't blame a mother for being proud.)

** And let's not forget traditional Omnian names like Smite-the-Unbeliever-With-Cunning-Arguments and Visit-the-Infidel-with-Explanatory-Pamphlets

** Not to mention One-Man-Bucket and his unfortunate elder brother.

* In Tolkien's works, specifically ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'', the translation convention is that various 'real' Middle-earth languages are translated to various real-world ones. E.g.: The Westron language (the 'common speech') is translated to English (including names), Rohirric becomes Old English, while the Dwarves get Nordic names. Appendices and supplementary works mention some of the 'real' names that were translated - for example, Frodo Baggins' and Sam Gamgee's 'untranslated Westron' names are ''Maura Labingi'' and ''Banazir Galpsi''.

** Oddly enough, "Guinevere" ''is'' quite common nowadays, as the Anglicised Cornish variant "Jennifer".

*** Guinevere and its variants come from the much more normal - at least as old Welsh names go - Gwynhwyfar/Gwenhwyfar.

* In ''[[The Iliad]]'' and ''[[Odyssey|The Odyssey]]'', we have people named Achilles, Patroclus, Menelaus, and Odysseus amidst people named Helen, Hector, Penelope, and Cassandra. Paris is also becoming a popular/normal name. Amongst names like Socrates, Hilarion, Kleisthenes, Kallikrates, Pythagoras, and Drakon, these seem to be fairly normal names. Of course, ''[[The Iliad]]'' is itself the main reason why those names are popular, and thus "normal", today.

* In many demonologies you will find the names of demons with names like Abraxas, Sariel, Zepar, Mephistopheles....and Leonard.

* While not a fantasy setting in the traditional sense, the ''[[Mage: The Awakening]]'' book "Grimoire of Grimoires" has a grimoire take the form of a black metal/industrial album put together by a band called Schattenbahn. The band's lineup is Blixa Dark, Hellson, Regenfeuer, Doktor Kultur... and Andy.

* Just about any reasonably free-flowing game system will run into this constantly. While D&D is highly strung enough to actually have rules about names, practically nothing else has rules, and even those with guidelines and extensive examples are likely to be completely and immediately ignored by all involved. It's partially because the players mostly came up with their characters in isolation (with predictably wide variation in backgrounds) and partially because a lot of [[GMs]] have better things to do than go through elvish dictionaries. Like running the game for example. After ensuring that no-one is intent on breaking the game or the story simply through application of stats, a weather-beaten 'whatever' normally greets an exotic name.

 

== Video Games ==

* Similar to Jewish communities, Armenian names can be sometimes derived from the bible as well, so you might be just as likely to meet an Armenian named Ara, Vartan or Raffi as you are to meet one named David (or Davit as the case may be), Samuel or Gregory.

* There was, until 1974, a local government district in [[Wales]] officially named, hold your breath, "Newtown and Llanllwychaearn".

** Sometimes they went [[Up to Eleven|a bit over the top]], like ''[[wikipedia:Vladimir Lenin|Vladimiro Ilyich]]'' Montesinos, Peruvian intelligence chief.

** Ilich Ramírez Sánchez AKA ''[[wikipedia:Carlos the Jackal|Carlos_the_Jackal]]'',his two younger siblings were named "Lenin" and "Vladimir"

** Keep in mind that Latin American countries also contain immigrants who are not Spanish, so various European names like "Ludmilla" pop up, and you get names like "Jose Chen" from the Asian immigrants. Archaic names like "Hippolito" also seem to stick around.

** The use of North American ''surnames'' as first names is not uncommon either.

* Shows up in some areas of Australia where the population of recent (first- or second-generation immigrants) is high—and inverted in an interesting case. Traditional but relatively uncommon or archaic western names like Kenneth, Vincent, Edmund and the like are much more likely to belong to ethnic Asians than Europeans. The name [[The Matrix|Anthony Wong]] tips him specifically as an Australian actor; ditto for composer Edmund Choi. Of course, a lot of Asian families have been there as long as a lot of European families.