Line-of-Sight Name: Difference between revisions

 

{{quote|'''Doctor''': I'll be keeping my eye on you. What's your name?

 

A character needs an alias. S/he only has a few seconds to think of one. The camera follows their eyes as they look around the room. They see one common object, and then another, and then another...

 

Somewhat [[Truth in Television]], as the real-world examples show.

{{examples}}

== Advertising ==

* A credit card commercial where a man at work is asked by his wife if he made any plans for their anniversary. Naturally he must scramble for an [[Ass Pull]]: "Uh, yeah... we're... " * glances at Chinese takeaway box* "taking the Orient Express to..." * glances at stained tie* "a spot in... Thailand!" * glances out window, where a bird lands* "We're going birdwatching!" At the end of the commercial, on the trip that his credit card company was able to drum up on short notice, his wife remarks that "this is such a surprise", and he wholeheartedly agrees.

 

== Anime and Manga ==

** Jo says "Jo Mamma" in the English version instead, quite amusingly.

* In one episode of ''[[Pokémon (anime)|Pokémon]]'' anime, when Ash Ketchum needs a fake name, he sees Pikachu with a bottle of ketchup, and comes up with "Tom Ato". Misty then comes up with "Anne Chovie", and Brock follows on the food theme with "Caesar Salad".

* Toa of ''[[Dragonaut: The Resonance]]'' got her name from {{spoiler|a bracelet belonging to Jin's sister Ai, which was broken in the accident that killed her and the rest of his family (that ''she'' caused.) It originally had "To Ai" engraved on it, but read "To A" when she found it.}}

** Gio got his name because Kazuki saw his designation number G10 and mistakenly read it as Gio.

{{quote|'''Weda''': "Ame? That's a strange name. Almost like you took it from this rain!"}}

* Odd variation/subversion: in ''[[Here Is Greenwood]]'', a few of the main characters are wandering around town when a young woman, clearly on the run from someone, knocks into them. When she's asked her name, she notices the giant poster behind them advertising the album of a singer named Mieko Nitta, so she naturally gives the name "Mieko." The guys help her escape the various people chasing her while trying to guess what her story is, only to finally discover the unlikely truth: {{spoiler|she ''is'' Mieko Nitta. She ran away from her manager and handlers to try and have a day to herself for once.}}

* In the version of ''[[Donald Duck|Paperinik]]'' where he starts out as a member of [[Space Police|The Guardians]] [[The Chosen Many|of the Galaxy]], Donald just makes up the name "Paperinik" from an alien symbol on his shield that looks like the letters P and K entwined when asked who he is during his super hero debut (he has recently been told he must remain anonymous).

 

 

== Film ==

* In ''[[Dark Shadows (film)|Dark Shadows]]'', Maggie Evans is training herself for her governess job interview in the train that drives her to Collinsport. She thinks her real name will not impress the Collins so she looks for another name, sees an advertisement for the "Winter Olympics" (in Victoria) and renames herself "Victoria Winters".

* [[Splice]] combines this with [[Sdrawkcab Name]] to get the central creature, Dren.

 

== Literature ==

* Ford Prefect from ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]'' is a semi-example, as he ''did'' do research, and picked the name as it seemed to be common and inconspicuous. The problem is, he initially thought ''cars'' [[Mistook the Dominant Lifeform|were the dominant life form on Earth]] (the Ford Prefect is a British automobile. Ford is seen trying to "introduce himself" to one of these in [[The Movie]].)

** This is based on "Canada", which, in Iroquois, means "village". The theory goes that one of the early explorers asked where he was. He was told he was in Stadaconda, the native's village, which he took as meaning "Stadaconda, Canada".

*** There's a lot of similar stories in other places. For instance, one myth states that "kangaroo" means "I don't understand your question". According to [http://www.lspace.org/books/apf/the-light-fantastic.html This Discworld Site]: "As Cecil Adams puts it in ''More of the Straight Dope'': 'Having now had the "I don't know" yarn turn up in three different parts of the globe, I can draw one of two conclusions: either explorers are incredible saps, or somebody's been pulling our leg.'

*** The Yucatan Peninsula is another place that supposedly got its name this way.

*** Lampshaded with his first choice of surname. "Bill... Sky." "Sky? ''Nobody's'' named Sky."

*** "One-Man-Bucket" got his name the same way; the tribe were traditionally named after the first thing the mother saw when looking out of the teepee, and his was a shortened form of "One-Man-Pouring-A-Bucket-Of-Water-Over-Two-Dogs". Reportedly, his twin brother, born and named ten seconds earlier, would have given his right arm to be named "Two-Dogs-Fighting"...

* Dale Furutani wrote a trilogy about a samurai whose master's family, household, servants, etc. have been defeated and killed. The samurai uses the name Matsuyama Kaze ("Wind on Pine Mountain")--he took it after seeing it and being struck by its beauty. (Real name is never revealed.)

 

* Cory named his band "The Exits" on ''[[Boy Meets World]]''.

** This is [[Lampshaded]] in the episode because before seeing the Exit sign, Cory glances at better names (like a flier for a 'Blood Drive'.)

* In ''[[Spellbinder]]'', when Ashka is in our universe, she uses the alias "Mrs. Harley" after the Harley-Davidson motorcycle she stole. Later she changes it to "Anna Harley", after meeting a woman named Anna and realizing that in this universe people have "two names".

* In the television play ''The Flip Side of Dominick Hide'', time traveller Dominick Hide takes his new name Gibley from a bottle of gin. He soon discovers that Gibley is not a normal first name in this era.

 

== Video Games ==

** Makes you wonder why in ''[[Mother 3]]'' for the GBA, they named the protagonist Lucas instead of, say, "Gabe".

*** The maker just happened to be looking at [[The Book of Lies|something else]] when naming Lucas and Klaus.

** These are common in ''[[Second Life]]'' also—including at least one "Curious George".

** ''[[Achaea]]'', in an attempt to maintain immersion, has the newbie guides police this sort of thing. Name changes are enforced at their discretion. All of Iron Realms Entertainment's other games do the same.

* A variation (combined with [[Foreshadowing]]) occurs in ''[[BioShock (series)]]'': {{spoiler|in Fort Frolic, you come across posters for the play "Patrick and Moira" by [[Mad Artist|Sander Cohen]]. The names of Atlas' murdered son and wife are also Patrick and Moira, making the posters hints that Atlas is not what he seems. The posters are also hung up in Atlas's (now deserted) headquarters, making it all the more obvious he did this.}}

* In episode 3 of ''[[Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People|Strong Bads Cool Game for Attractive People]]'', Homestar attempts to do this to form rhymes when he sings. You must guide Strong Bad to objects that will form an appropriate rhyme when Homestar sings them.

 

== Web Comics ==

* Similarly, ''[[San: Three Kingdoms Comic]]'' uses this gag for [http://san.pengguo.com/index.php?mode=view=8 Guan Yu]

* ''[[Flintlocke's Guide to Azeroth]]'', set in the ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' universe, features a Horde guild called "Desk Chair Lamp", which is said by the orcs to "sound very intimidating when spoken in Common".

* [http://sluggy.com/daily.php?date=980104 Corey] in ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]''.

* The ''[[The Order of the Stick|Order of the Stick]]'' prequel graphic novel ''On the Origin of PCs'' reveals that the titular adventuring party itself has a Line-of-Sight Name:

{{quote|'''Roy:''' You might as well call us the Stray Rock Guild, because there's a stray rock over there, or the [[Title Drop|Order Of The Stick]], because there's a stick on the ground!}}

* In ''Tempts Fate'', the side-comic of ''[[Goblins]]'', it is spoofed in [http://www.goblinscomic.com/tempts-fate-7/ this strip]. {{spoiler|Morpheus Bilbo Kenobi!}}

* ''[[Greg (webcomic)|Greg]]'': "What's your last name Dave?" [http://gregcomic.com/2011/09/30/storyline-back-to-campus-part-10/ "Hmm... Tit... leg... bee. Dave Tit-Leg-Bee."]

 

== Western Animation ==

'''Hudson''': ''(sighs)'' Then I shall be "The Hudson" as well. }}

** Then subverted by Demona, who names the gargoyle clones after Californian surroundings - Hollywood, Malibu, Burbank, and Brentwood - specifically to point out how stupid she thought this method of naming was.

* Parodied in ''[[The Emperor's New School|The Emperors New School]]'', where Kuzco claims his best friend's name is "Brad Bowllama"... and Melina immediately calls his bluff. (It could have been worse. He considered "Bananastaircasehat".)

* In ''[[Transformers Animated]]'' the Constructicons picked their own names this way. Mixmaster from a decal that was left on him (or just "Mix" for short) and Scrapper from a pile with a sign that said "Scrap".

** In some regions folk myth associates redutible surnames as a characteristic of a certain people that supposedly went under forced assimilation.

* The usual (but now considered apocryphal) anecdote as to how Terry Nation named those most famous of ''[[Doctor Who]]'' monsters is that, struggling over his script, he looked up to see a volume of the encyclopedia covering subjects from "Dal" to "Lek".

*** Although at one time the London Telephone Directory did have four volumes that ran: A-D, E-K, L-R and S-Z.... (dalek is an anagram of the first five letters)

* [[L. Frank Baum]] is said to have named his fantasy land [[Land of Oz|Oz]] by spotting a file box labelled "O-Z". In homage to Baum and possibly this story, Gregory Maguire (author of ''[[Wicked (novel)|Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West]]'') names the witch Elphaba: L. F. B.

* One of [[Jim Henson]]'s [[Fraggle Rock|Fraggles]], Wembley, was named this way. At an early production meeting where potential character names were being tossed around, head writer Jerry Juhl happened to glance at a newspaper article about an event at Wembley Stadium.

* Canadian Inuit typically used only a single name until the government began delivering services in the 1940s and 1950s, at which point family names and southern-originated names started coming into wider use. In some cases the family names were chosen by this method as a person (or government bureaucrat) had to think of ''something'' to put in the blank lines of documents.

** Similar to the Inuit example, most Finnish people got surnames when the Swedes took over, most names were taken from the surroundings, and even today, most surnames are references to nature, trees, rivers, hills etc.

*** Seems unlikely since Swedish surnames do not start to come into general usage until about 500 years after the conquest of Finland. Swedish nobility does have a certain amount of this trope though, as they usually got their names based on the device they bore on their shields. (this started out as a convention used by historians to differentiate all the various people with similar names and patronymics, but was eventually formalized in the 17th century)

*** However in old church registries (prior to etymological spelling or, heck, basic schooling) one could tell who was a New Christian to some limited extent because of the outright horrible spelling of their names as most spoke pidgins of Portuguese, Spanish, Hebrew and Arab.

** This sort of thing happens a lot when a nation suddenly gains improved infrastructure. Many common English surnames come from middle to modern English descriptions (e.g. Brown, Sharp), jobs (Smith, Reeve), etc as surnames were adopted in England in the 13th-14th centuries. The Scots and Welsh held out until the 17th, hence the stereotype of Scottish names being "Mc" constructs (Mc means "son of", so adopting Mc[Parents name] is an easy way to come up with a surname) and many Welshmen having the same surname.

* British musical hall artiste Nosmo King picked his stage name from some partially ajar stage doors that split the warning "No Smoking" in "No Smo King".

* Actor [[Michael Caine]] chose his stage name after being told on the phone in Leicester Square that his proposed name of "Michael Scott" was taken. Caine then proceeded to glance around the square and saw a sign for ''[[The Caine Mutiny]]'', and the rest is history. He has also joked in interviews that if he'd looked the other way he would have ended up as "Michael [[101 Dalmatians|One Hundred and One Dalmatians]]".

* [[Oasis]]' album ''Standing on the Shoulder of Giants'' came from an Isaac Newton quote that is on the £2 coin (except that it is "shoulders", but Noel Gallagher was drunk when he wrote the title).

** Follow-up ''Heathen Chemistry'' comes from a T-shirt Noel saw. Lead single "The Hindu Times" was also seen somewhere (it's an actual newspaper), but Noel can't remember where.

* [[Stephen King]] came up with a last name for his pseudonym while listening to [[Bachman Turner Overdrive]]. Hence, Richard Bachman.

* As an old local rumor goes, the city of Cocoa, Florida, got its name this way. It was founded as "Indian River City," but that name was too long to fit on a postmark. When the time came to rename the place, the postmaster happened to have a tin of cocoa on his desk. The rest is history.

* The way the creators of The ''[[Super Mario Bros.]]'' series got Luigi's name was this: The second player's character needed a name, and a nearby pizzeria had the name of Mario & Luigi's.

* Variation: turns out ''[[The Gunstringer]]'' was a Line of Sight ''Premise'': the creators of the game were forced to scrap their previous idea due to technology issues shortly before the pitch meeting with a Microsoft exec in a Tex-Mex restaurant, forcing them to come up with a completely new game idea while said exec was in the bathroom. They had previously discussed a game involving marionettes and the restaurant had a painting of a skeleton cowboy. And the rest is history.

* The most frequent [[Origin Story]] behind the hundreds of unfortunate babies with the classical [[Ghetto Name]] Usnavy (and its variations) is that the future mothers either saw a boat of the U.S. Navy on the road of the hospital or were attended on Naval installations.

* This is how the Pink Floyd song "Atom Heart Mother" was named—the co-composer for the piece, Ron Geesin, gave Roger Waters a copy of the Evening Standard and told him to take the song title from within. The song came from the headline "Atom Heart Mother Named".

{{quote|I was talking with a friend on the phone trying to decide on a pen name. I was eating strawberries at the time and there happened to be some condensed milk made by [the company] Morinaga right in front of me. Looking back, I feel like I should have thought about it more seriously...}}

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Improvised Index]]

[[Category:Naming Conventions]]

[[Category:Comedy Tropes]]

[[Category:Older Than Print]]