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{{trope}}
[[File:
{{quote|'''Doctor''': I'll be keeping my eye on you. What's your name?
'''Peter Griffin''': Uh, m-my name? Uh, uh, uh, uh...''[spots pea on plate]''...Pea...uh, uh...''[sees girl crying]''...tear...uh, uh...''<nowiki>[</nowiki>[[Unusually Uninteresting Sight|sees a gryphon fly by
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...
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* In ''[[Letter Bee]]'', Lag gives Niche her name because he found her in an alcove of a train station.
* It's eventually revealed that the titular character of ''[[Naruto]]'' does in fact have a name someone made up while eating a bowl of ramen (a naruto is the circular fishcake with a red spiral in it you put in it). {{spoiler|Jiraiya did it when trying to think up the name for the hero of his (non-pornographic) novel, and Naruto's parents named him after the character}}.
** {{spoiler|Kabuto turns out}} to have been named like this too. In his case, he was found wounded and suffering from amnesia after a battle, and he didn't remember his own name. When the people who found him decided to give him a new name, he happened to be wearing a {{spoiler|samurai's helmet}}
* In ''[[Clannad]]'', Tomoya is at first impressed when Fuko quickly comes up with Isogai as a fake last name, until he realizes she got that name from seeing it on the nameplate of the neighbors house.
* In ''[[Dragon Crisis]]'', Rose's name is chosen by Ryuuji by him thinking the pattern on her hand looks like a rose.
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* The superhero ''[[Invincible]]'' got his name when, after a fight, his high school principal told him "you aren't invincible, you know".
** One assumes that this scene would work equally well with the writers' original idea, "Bulletproof".
* In ''[[Sandman|The Corinthian]]: Death In Venice'', a beggar attests that he named the titular nightmare after the first thing he saw with his new
* Loser Ringo Fonebone tried to commit suicide by hanging himself but failed, and ended up falling out his window on top of a robber on the run from the police. The robber blurted out "You ''klutz''!" When the thankful police asks him who they have to thank for catching the crook, the dazed Ringo mumbles "I'm just a klutz, captain..." Since circumstances has meant he ''is'' wearing a superhero costume (his long johns, the towel he used as a rope, a hat that got stuck on his head) they assume he is Captain Klutz, the new superhero. The name stuck. (The Captain's adventures were illustrated by Don Martin and published in ''[[Mad Magazine]]'').
* [[Nightwing]] rival/enemy/ally Nite-Wing took his name from a restaurant's neon sign advertising that they had "all nite chicken wings".
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* The mermaid from ''[[Splash]]'' takes the human name Madison after a street sign on Madison Avenue. Since ''Splash'' came out, in [[Real Life]], [[The Red Stapler|the name Madison has eclipsed Madeline]].
* Occurs in ''[[The Princess Diaries]]'' when the Queen invents the "Genovian Order of the Rose", after spotting a sign for Rose Street, to get Mia out of a spot of trouble with a police officer.
* In ''[[The Muppets Take Manhattan]]'', Kermit the Frog, suffering from [[Easy Amnesia|amnesia]], wanders into an ad agency and when he is asked his name by some frogs who work there, he sees an ad on the wall that says "Fill'er up" and says his name is
* ''[[City of Angels]]'''s protagonist, Seth, tries this on his love interest and is immediately shot down when he claims to be called "Seth Plate".
* In ''[[The Associate]]'', [[Whoopi Goldberg]]'s character needs a name for her mysterious friend and her eyes falls on a bottle of alcohol at the bar: Robert S. Cutty.
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* In the 2004 version of ''[[Around the World in Eighty Days]],'' Jackie Chan's character makes up the name Passepartout in this way.
{{quote|'''Fogg:''' I'm sorry. What was your name?
'''Passepartout:''' ''* sees a man with a passport out the window* '' Passport! [[Beat|* beat*
'''Fogg:''' "Pass-por-tou?"<br />
'''Passepartout:''' ''* nods and smiles* '' }}
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* ''[[X Files]]'' episode "Unsusal Suspects" - Suzanne Modeski, being on the run and desperate for information regarding the frame-job her former bosses put on her, spun a [[Wounded Gazelle Gambit]] to get Byers involved. He asked her for a name, and she called herself "Holly," after the packet of sugar on the table. [[Word of God]] said Byers later paid tribute to that by creating a new identity for her as "Holly Fitzgerald," a combination of the sugar name and his middle name.
* In the ''[[Charmed]]'' episode "She's a Man, Baby, a Man!", [[Gender Bender|Prue is unexpectedly changed into a man]] as part of a spell to catch a succubus on the loose. She uses the name "Manny Hanks" since she was turned into a man and in order to adequately play a man, should emulate a man that she admires, namely [[Tom Hanks]].
* ''[[The Sarah Jane Adventures]]'', "The Curse of Clyde Langer": Clyde is under a curse that makes people hate him when they see his name or hear it spoken. When he ends up sleeping on the street and is found by a homeless girl, he sees a box from Enrico's Pizza and tells her his name is "Enrico Box". She knows he's lying, but doesn't press him for a real name. {{spoiler|Later, when trying to find her again, he sees ''her'' name on a poster and realizes that she was also using a
* In the ''[[Unforgettable]]'' episode "Lost Things", a suspect trying to throw the detectives off invents a story about the victim using a dating service. He gets the idea of a dating service from the screen of a nearby computer, the names of guys she met through it from wanted posters, and the name of the service from a different poster.
* ''[[Hannah Montana]]'': Miley is doing a radio interview from her kitchen while eating spaghetti and claims to be speaking from a cafe in Italy. When she is asked where she is, her father passes her the pasta box. She reads the first words she sees and claims to be in the small village of "Sodium Free". She immediately ammends this to "Sodium Freme" (said in an Italian accent).
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*** The maker just happened to be looking at [[The Book of Lies|something else]] when naming Lucas and Klaus.
* [[Real Life]] / [[Video Game Tropes]] example: This is probably the root cause of some of the most jarringly [[Fourth Wall]]-breaking names encountered in any given [[MMORPG]]. On ''[[Final Fantasy XI]]'', there are [[Player Character]] names as Sony, Millerlite, and Dietmrpibb.
** These are common in ''[[Second Life]]''
** ''[[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.
* However, the video game ''[[Final Fantasy IX]]'' does has a variation of this trope. Garnet, the runaway princess, has to go incognito for awhile and needs a [[Code Name|fake moniker]]. Seeing the hero's weapon of choice, she names herself Dagger.
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* [http://sluggy.com/daily.php?date=980104 Corey] in ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]''.
* One word: [http://thenoobcomic.com/daily/strip003.html Ohforf'sake]
* 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
{{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!}}
** The other prequel, ''Start of Darkness'' also has one. The main villain, Xykon, can't be bothered to remember his minions' names (and blasts people when they have names too long to remember), so when the [[Anti-Villain]] goblin brothers team up with him, the one who would become known as Redcloak introduces them as "Redcloak and Right-Eye". We never do find out their real names, even though Redcloak is a [[The Dragon|major character]] in the main comic. Right-Eye, especially, treats the new names as a symbol of subservience to Xykon (ironically never calling him by his name either, though he uses the more affectionate "brother"), and it becomes obvious he's given up on his brother when he calls him "Redcloak".
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* [[Idol Singer|Cherry Jam]] does this in her debut episode of ''[[Strawberry Shortcake]]'s Berry Bitty Adventures'' when she meets Strawberry for the first time. Since she was invited by Strawberry's friends as a surprise, she introduces herself as Buttercup, after spying some nearby flowers.
* Spot Helperman from ''[[Teacher's Pet (TV series)|Teachers Pet]]'' actually got his alias, "Scott Leadready II" while posing as a human student from looking at a #2 pencil manufactured by the Leadready writing supplies company.
* An episode of ''[[Regular Show]]'' has Rigby use this method to come up with his new name;<ref>Having been convinced to change it to two random words after seeing a documentary about a rock band</ref>
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* [[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.
** It was still a Line of Sight Name, but it wasn't from a file box. There was a store with the name Oz in it in his hometown in central New York.
** In a subtle [[Shout-Out]] in the webcomic ''[[Skin Horse]]'', one strip shows a filing cabinet labeled "A-N", implying that the bottom one is "O-Z". (Yes, this was
* When Larry King began as a DJ in Miami his manager thought his birth name of Zeiger was too ethnic. Minutes before going on air, he saw an ad for King's Wholesale Liquor.
* 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.
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* Seen in [http://bash.org/?583201 this] Bash.org quote about a baby named Dasani.
** I've heard of a (Spanish) girl called Iloveny after the "I love NY" T-shirts.
* When Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-Sen was in exile in Japan around the turn of the 20th century, his friend registered him at a hotel as Sho Nakayama. He took this name from a palace near Hibiya Park in Tokyo. In Mandarin, the kanji for Nakayama would be read Zhongshan and it is now the most common name used for
* Chris Martin said he named the [[Coldplay]] song "Yellow" after a Yellow Pages directory he saw while composing. He also stated: "In an alternate universe, this song could be called '[[Playboy]].'"
* In her autobiography ''Anarquistas, Graças a Deus'' ("Anarchists, Thank God!"), Brazilian novelist Zelia Gattai tells her childhood neighbour was supposed to name his daughter Haydée, but lost the paper with that written. So, he asked the notary to name her Olga after the brand of cigarettes he smoked.
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* The programming language Java got its name this way. The creators were drinking coffee from Java when they were thinking of a name for their product. Originally, they wanted to name it Oak (because they saw an oak tree through the window), but that name was already trademarked.
** Similarly, the Code Red computer worm was named after the Code Red Mountain Dew that the people who discovered it had been drinking.
* Some Berber tribes in North Africa have a tradition of having the women gather and read the Qur'an while a woman is in labor. The word that was being read when the baby was born (how that's defined depends on the tribe) is the name of the child. It helps a bit that there is probably a bit of latitude in terms of which word is chosen (delivering a baby, after all, takes time), and that many Arabic
* The band Mest got their name from a can of Milwaukee's Best beer.
* Ever wondered how Emerald Hill Zone from ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog 2]]'' got its name?
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* At the end of the [[The American Civil War|US Civil War,]] many former slaves that had previously been listed with their master's surname or no last name at all made up their own. "Freeman" and "Freedman" were popular choices, for obvious reasons.
* 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
* [http://www.jmanga.com/features/girl-friends-final-volume An interview] with [[Morinaga Milk]] reveals the story of how she got her pen-name:
{{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...}}
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