Darkness von Gothickname

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In fiction, a character's name is often tied to their personality. And, let's face it, it's hard to sound dark and edgy with a cheery name like "Stacey Merryweather", or even an ordinary one like "Amy Jones". Goths and other shadowy characters in fiction tend to have dark-tinted Awesome McCool Names. Usually, they have these names from birth, although, a goth with an inappropriately cheerful name may change their name, or insist on people calling them by a nickname. Many goths also tend to have an exotic middle name or three.

Popular names include:

• Black as a surname.
• Dark/Shade/Shadows- rarely a given name, may be a name the character has chosen themselves.
• Mort- as in "death". The full version- "Mortimer"- is rarely used.
• Ebony- popular first name for female goths. Usually matches their hair colour.
• Raven- can be used as either a surname or first name.
• Elegant, slightly old-fashioned names, such as Lucy or Alice.
• Classical Mythology figures, such as Pandora or Narcissus.
• Anything Slavic or Romanian. Especially Igor.
• Von preceding a surname.

See also Names to Run Away From Really Fast.

Examples of Darkness von Gothickname include:

Comic Books

• Raven from Teen Titans
• Black Alice from DC comics.
• Requiem Chevalier Vampire just teems with these. Justified to some extent as some of the characters are the historical Vlad the Impaler, Nero, Attila, and Elizabeth Bathory, and the vampire knights are given new (themed) names when knighted. In any case, the series has names such as Otto von Todt, Requiem, Thurim and Cryptos, Black Sabbat... Claudia, while giving gothy vibes, just sounds plain in comparison.
• Doctor Victor Von Doom.
• The eponymous Brendon D'Arkness of Brendon.
• X-Men character Mystique has the rather gothy real name of Raven Darkholme.

Fan Fiction

• Enoby Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way from "My Immortal"—probably the best example of this trope.
  • Additionally, almost all of the main characters in Harry Potter get new "Goffik" names in "My Immortal." Harry Potter becomes Vampire Potter, Hermione is B'loody Mary Smith, Ron is Diabolo, Navel(Neville) becomes Dracula, and Enoby's best friend is named Raven.
    • When she travels back to the Marauder Era she also meets (sic for all) Jamez "Samoro" Potter, Serious "Hades" Blak and Tom "Satan" Riddle.
  • Most names, however, are spelled so wrong so many times that they end up being subversions. For example, Ebony is sometimes known as Evony, Enoby, TaEbory, or Tara (the name of the writer herself).

Film

• October from Stay Alive.

Literature

• Lampshaded and parodied by Agnes Nitt of the Discworld series, who develops an alter-ego named Perdita X. Dream to invoke this trope.
  • From the same series, Death has an apprentice named Mort.
  • Inverted for humorous effect in Carpe Jugulum. The vampires are sort of anti-goths who play at being normal people in the way goths play at being vampires/creatures of darkness. Thus, they call themselves mundane names in the way a human would take one of these names.
  • Esmerelda Weatherwax herself used to call herself Endemonidia. It was only for a couple of hours, though. And she was still a youth; this shows even the wisest witches start small and petty.
• Sirius Black from Harry Potter.
  • Pretty much everyone in the Black and Malfoy families has a name like this. Nymphadora Tonks might be a humorous lampshade, since she has the kind of name a fanfic Sue might have and she hates it. In fact, when questioned why she doesn't go by her middle name, Rowling answered that it was Vulpecula. Seriously, bad naming is In the Blood or something, since Nymphadora's mother was the White Sheep of the family and she still followed the tradition.
• Half the characters from Anita Blake Vampire Hunter. Names include Requiem, Belle Morte, Jean Claude, Morte d'Amore, Marmee Noir, Valentina, Narcissus, Pride, Envy, Morvoren, Augustine, Wicked, Truth, Bacchus and Byron. Granted a lot of these characters are actual vampires and were-animals, but most of them weren't actually born with these names.
• Stephanie in Skulduggery Pleasant becomes Valkyrie.
• Abby Normal (Abnormal) from Bloodsucking Fiends. Subverted in that her "day slave" name is Allison.
  • Parodied with her friend in the same author's A Dirty Job, a thrift shop assistant who considers her full name to be "Lily Darquewillow Elventhing".
• In the Gemma Doyle trilogy the Big Bad for the first two books is nicknamed Circe after the Greek goddess of witchcraft.
• Bella Morte from Jason X: Planet of the Beast. It's just a nickname though, her real last name is Morrison.
• Autumn Langevin from A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Dealers.
• The goths of The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod. Names that fall into this category include Krisstoff, October, and Snow.
• A goth character in the unpublished Final Destination novel Wipeout was apparently going to be named Ravyn Blackthorne.
• Though he is hardly goth, Mortimer Lindquist from The Dresden Files is an ectomancer, psychic consultant, and self proclaimed coward. As part of his ectomantic abilities, he can speak to spirits and ghosts, control them, let them possess his body, and gain their knowledge and powers. To tie up the package nicely, he lives in a large creepy house.
• In A Song of Ice and Fire, there's the past pretender to the throne Daemon Blackfyre, who oddly enough, had a reputation as The Ace, as well as Daemon's rival, who was known as Bloodraven (real name Bryden Rivers). Also, this trope is probably why the character known as Darkstar tends to be considered Emo rather than cool.
• One of the many names Kirsty goes by other than Kirsty in the Johnny Maxwell Trilogy is Klytemnestra. She admits she was feeling "a bit gothy" at the time. Kasandra, her chosen name during the events of Johnny And The Bomb probably counts too.

Live Action TV

• Morticia from The Addams Family.
• Saturday Night Live had a segment called "Goth Talk" with Azrael Abyss and Circe Nightshade.
• A flashback episode of Raising Hope revealed that when Jimmy was going through "a phase" he insisted on being called "Dracar Noir".
• All the characters in the Lost Tapes episode "Hell Hound".
• Invoked in one episode of The Mighty Boosh where Vince starts dressing like a goth and calling himself "Obsidian Blackbird Mc Night" in order to impress some goth girls. Unfortunately, Howard ruins it for him.

Video Games

• Morty, a Ghost-type Gym Leader in Pokémon Gold and Silver.
  • Pokémon Red and Blue's Sabrina also fits.
  • And Pokémon Black and White's Gothitelle and Elite Four member and Dark-type user Grimsley.
• Parodied in Sam and Max Freelance Police: Night of the Raving Dead, where, while singing in a Goth nightcub, you can have Sam and Max use the stage names Count Cryptwind Deathgrasp and Baron Bat-Anguish von Nightmare.
• The Goth family from The Sims: Mortimer, Bella, and their daughter Cassandra. Bella doesn't really count, since the game came out in 2000, years before Twilight was around to link the name with vampires.
  • The family's ancestors in further games hint that this is a tradition, what with Gunther, Cornelia, Frieda, Victor and Gretle.
• One of Sonic the Hedgehog's many Evil Twins is named Shadow the Hedgehog. His fur is just as dark as his name is. (Well, minus the red streaks, but still...)

Webcomics

• Mr. Raven and His mother, Pandora Chaos Raven from El Goonish Shive.
• Penny Arcade parodies this trope with Dr. Raven Darktalon Blood, a deliberately awful yet commercially successful fictional creation of Gabe's.
• As seen in this strip, when Haley of Order of the Stick was a gloomy goth teenager, she went by the name Dark Mistress Shadowgale.
  • In one strip, Celia the sylph disguises herself as an evil necromancer and uses the name Darkblood Gloomgloom.
• Inverted handily by Gilly the Perky Goth from Dork Tower.

Web Original

• Survival of the Fittest's Meredith Hemmings, or as she prefers to be called, Pandora Black. According to her it's her "soul name."
• When The Nostalgia Chick tried to cast a spell on Dark Nella (herself an example of this trope) she sought the advice of a random Goth chick named Grayvyn, who described herself as "halfway between Edgar Allan Poe...and the grave."

Western Animation

• When Lisa Simpson tried being a goth for a while, her new name of choice was Ravencrow Neversmiles.
• In 6teen Jude turns goth for a day and says his name is now Judas.
• On Total Drama, Gwen is an Aversion, but in the TDI special she mentions three of her friends named Reaver, Pixie Corpse and Marilyn. (The latter may be an Odd Name Out or a reference to Marilyn Manson.) From their pictures they all seem more into the Goth culture than Gwen is.
• On South Park, Stan starts going by "Raven" after temporarily becoming a Goth. This is presumably true of the other Goth Kids, but they're never named at all except for Henrietta (and she's only called that by her family, so she likely goes by something else with her friends).
  • The Vampire Kids also use this in "The Ungroundable." Of course, those vampire conformists are not Goths!
• Debbie from American Dad has a Goth friend named Pandora.