A Good Name Is Hard To Find
Introduction
Let’s talk about the art of naming characters, especially NPCs. This is one of the (thankfully few) aspects of the GMing craft that doesn’t come naturally to me. I can usually get there in the end, but off-the-cuff names can be a real struggle.
To deal with this handicap, I have evolved a system and a process for coming up with character names that does most of the work for me, and that works even more effectively with a little targeted prep time. This series of articles is going to contain that system and process, because what works for me might work for you, too.
As with many of my articles, this started out as a one-post extravaganza, and quickly grew once I started writing. It’s now expected to be a five-part series.
- Part One will discuss the philosophy of character names and the differences between a good name and a bad one.
- Part Two outlines a number of ways of deriving the “seed” of a character name. Like an adventure seed, this is a starting point for a character name, but its output isn’t immediately ready to use in a game. There are 12 such sources for seeds.
- Part Three deals with name formats, their significance, and how they cam be used to refine or extend the hidden subtext within a name. There are at least 7 choices here.
- Part Four will show how to apply the process outlined in part 2 to the naming structure chosen in part 3, using one of the 84+ combinations to generate name seeds for a specific character, and how to turn that name seed into an actual character name.
- And finally, Part Five will review a number of the tools that I use to enhance the process of transforming a name seed into a character name.
At this point, it’s undecided whether or not posts on other subjects will be interspersed between these 5 sub-articles.
having laid out the agenda, let’s get to work!
The Virtue of a Good Name
A great choice of name immediately brings the character to whom it is attached to live in the minds of the audience, or in this case, the players. It can conjure an image of the character, imply speech patterns and mannerisms, suggest a personality profile, hint at a social structure and the character’s place within it. It can convey information on attitude, education, occupation, and intellect.
It can compress a pre-existing character concept into a single, easily-digested concentrate and download that concentrate directly into the minds of the audience. It can prompt choices of action by the players or create doubt and hesitation.
Coupled with other aspects of the character – speech, description, relationships, actions – it can be the glue that holds a character together.
A good name embellishes a character.
Finally, a good name can serve as a touchstone, a shortcut for the GM to get himself into the mind of the character.
If it has the right sounds, it can even get you into the right accent – I’ll never forget Peter Jurasik describing his technique for getting into character as Londo Mollari in Babylon 5: he would simply recite “Good Morning, Mister Garabaldi” in the pseudo-Hungarian accent that he had chosen for Londo and it instantly “locked” him into character. This doesn’t happen often with just a name – but it’s one heck of a fringe benefit when it does occur.
The Pitfalls of a Bad Name
If a good name can do all those things, is it any surprise that a bad name can be just as significant? The wrong name can tear an otherwise great character concept apart, reducing it to mediocrity. It can undermine every other significant aspect of a good character, resulting in an NPC that is full of mixed signals, forgettable, or even just a collection of random characteristics.
Why is a name so powerful?
The reason the name means so much is that most players will hear a description – once. Players ‘experience’ each action that the NPC carries out – once. They have each dialogue with the NPC – once. In order for all these elements to glue together, there has to be some common connective tissue – and the one that will get used repeatedly, time after time – by both the players and the GM – is the character’s name.
Okay, So Names Are Important!
So how do you know a good name from a bad one?
The rest of this article lists a number of rules to follow that will help avoid bad names – but that’s not enough.
Representative
A good name will articulate one or more central themes of the character, and will add substance to the character beyond that theme. Identifying the central theme and choosing the means of articulating it is what the second part of this series is all about, so I won’t get into it here.
The name has to encapsulate the most important, most significant, most central concept at the heart of the character.
Avoid The Famous
Choosing the name of a famous character or real person is the first refuge of those with no imagination, or who make no effort, and this impression swamps whatever content you wanted the name to carry. The results are usually a name that is passable but never right. Consider, for example, “Bankroft Holmes”; it takes only a few seconds to connect that with Mycroft Holmes, the somewhat-indolent-but-a-deductive-genius brother of Sherlock Holmes. The lack of originality makes this name marginal; but how much worse would it be to actually call your character “Mycroft”?
Actually, there are even better reasons not to do so. If you ever hope to publish anything related to your game – and a lot of people do – you don’t want any copyright problems to bother you. Even holding them at arm’s length can be a risk.
I wasn’t always aware of this problem, I must be honest. But because of it, I would have difficulty publishing the novelizations of my Superhero campaign that I wrote in the 90s, simply because there are already several groups in comics named “The Champions”, because Hero Games have put out several game products that refer to “UNTIL”, and so on. In fact, the campaign has a great many cultural references that would require editing – sometimes just the names, sometimes a complete re-conceptualization. And the nagging worry that I may have missed one, or not sufficiently distinguished the re-imaginings from the source of inspiration, would take all the fun out of such a project.
Avoid The Loaded
Some names are associated with traumatic or notorious events in modern history. These should be avoided when naming new characters. The associations can overwhelm the character you are trying to portray, reducing them to a caricature. Obvious examples include “Hitler”, “Bin Laden”, and “Darth” anything.
Avoid the Cliché
In fact, that last point can be enlarged to this one, which pretty much speaks for itself.
Avoid names that end in S or Z
A practical hint. Such names give real trouble with possessives. They not only look strange in print, they are difficult to pronounce clearly, and can lead to unnecessary misunderstandings. Consider, for example, a character named Pass. At first glance, a perfectly acceptable name. But when we try to use the possessive form, we get “pass’s” or “pass'”. Try saying them out loud, and you’ll soon get the point. Even a character named “Past” can get a little tongue-twisting. It’s easier and better to avoid trouble in the first place.
Ensure it’s pronounceable
Practice saying the name out loud half a dozen times in reasonably quick succession. If you have trouble pronouncing it more than once, consider a simpler name.
Ensure it looks right
When you use the name in a simple text sentence, does it look right on the page? “Halla Malloram” might be the perfect name for the character you are trying to create (though I doubt it), but the alliteration looks strange and will almost certainly produce malapropisms and spoonerisms.
Ensure it sounds right
Another problem to watch for is where the ending of one part of the name, combined with the beginning of the next part of the name, combines to give or to suggest an inappropriate word. “Chopper Linquist” might be an acceptable name, or even a great name, but there’s a “pearl” in the middle of it. Okay, so this example is reaching a bit, but that’s preferable to any of the several examples that came to mind more readily involving obscenities.
Contemporary Names
Choosing names that are contemporary with your game setting is a big advantage. Not only does it assist with verisimilitude, and confine your choices to reasonable ones, it automatically builds in an additional layer of meaning. To make this work most effectively, determine the character’s age at the time his name was assigned; this will be the year of the character’s birth most of the time, but in the case of orphans and amnesiacs may be years later. It is this name that determines which names are “contemporary” for that particular character. This approach also permits characters that change their names to choose appropriately.
Walking a fine line: Alien Names
Special care must be taken when crafting names for non-humans. While there is no need to create a whole new language, it’s best to set down some name-generation rules and construct names using it. I’ve written in the past about the language house rules for my Shards Of Divinity campaign, in Ask The GMs: Rubbing Two Dry Words Together.
The same techniques can be applied to character naming for original and alien cultures. Consider the examples of the Borg in Star Trek (both Next Gen and Voyager) and of the Kzin and other aliens in Larry Niven’s Ringworld.
It must also be remembered that the more alien the species and their language, the more they will need to adopt “human” conventions simply to converse with us. It’s easy to invent a species that communicates by releasing different odors, but humans will name individuals for reference, and conversational needs will soon lead to the aliens adopting those names for their own usage – unless they are sufficiently strong-willed to choose their own to start with. At best, the name might have some association with the dominant “scent” of the individual’s name in “perfume-tongue” – Apple, Pippin, or Grannysmith for someone who uses an apple scent, for example.
Don’t be predictable
GMs are like everyone else; they fall into patterns and acquire habits, both good and bad. These can lead the GM to adopt a particular naming style that becomes predictable. When that happens, the players will get used to that naming style and pay less attention to the names the GM gives to his characters – with the result that subtexts built into the names and characters by the GM are often overlooked.
Sound like you, not someone else
Don’t steal your names from Tolkien unless your game is set in the world of the Lord Of The Rings. Don’t steal your names from Star Wars unless you’re playing Star Wars.
In the bad old days, everything was fair game. I can remember a D&D game from many years ago – in fact, the second RPG game I had ever played – in which the PCs were named “Dilbo”, “Grak”, “Darth Violet”, “Alabaster The White”, and “Hank Solo”. They were, respectively, a Halfling, a Half-Orc, a Wizard, a Cleric, and a Fighter/Rogue. (You can groan now.) My character in that game? “Wülfex Stariskos”, usually abbreviated to Wülfstarr, a character cursed to have the appearance of a Lycanthrope for some offence committed by his long-dead parents, and whose central focus was on learning how to remove or lift the curse. Thankfully, gamers are usually less juvenile these days – at least the ones I play with.
Beware the Cute
“Dilbo” and “Darth Violet” (fresh wince) also points up another naming pitfall. No matter how cute the character or its race is supposed to be, avoid naming the character in any sort of cutesy fashion. Not only does it make it look like you don’t take the character seriously, it encourages players and outside GMs not to take YOU seriously. One of my players has only half-learned this lesson; his character names run from the excellent to the abysmal. He thinks he is being funny when he attaches a name like “Spuriouset” to one of his PCs, and can never seem to realize that he’s the only one laughing.
Yes, there will be occasions and characters whose names are deliberately cute, for effect. Save these names for those occasions, no matter how tempted you might be.
Beware the Diminutive
Related to the previous point is this: Diminutive versions of names, often chosen to convey youth or innocence, can often trespass into the realm of the “cute”. Whenever you create a character, spare a thought for how that name will render in the diminutive; and whenever you create a character whose name is intentionally of the diminutive form, make doubly sure that every aspect of that name conveys the subtext and message you intend and no other.
Consider an NPC I created for the previous incarnation of my Superhero campaign, James Fingreiz (pronounced Fing-Greez) – or, as the PCs came to know him, Jimmy Fingers. “Jimmy-The-Fingers” was a teenaged street punk who was there to develop a crush on one of the PCs. He tried to impress by being macho, but that didn’t work. Time after time, he got himself into trouble or complicated the PCs lives by getting in the way. Several Angst-ridden conversations between Jimmy and the target of his affections followed – and, of course, he took all the wrong messages and signals out of these. He took ever more daring risks to prove himself worthy, infiltrating villain organizations (gathering intelligence in the process that the team needed to have) – and then getting caught. Finally, the PC in question (the Player was getting desperate) told him flat that no romance between them was possible because he didn’t have powers and would always be in danger when they were together. Predictably, this backfired, sending Jimmy off on a quest to become worthy of the woman he loved. The final sequences in this plotline form part of the new campaign. (Much to the PC’s chagrin, Jimmy has encountered a couple of romantics along the way who have done their best to help him achieve this goal instead of sending him home where he belongs).
This was a case of very carefully choosing a diminutive version to emphasize the youth (and the age disparity) between the NPC and the PC. The players have never even heard the character’s full name; to them, he first introduced himself as “Jimmy-The-Fingers” and became “Jimmy Fingers” thereafter. Every aspect of the character was designed to contrast with that of the PC who the NPC was targeting; innocence and naivety vs. maturity and experience; petty hoodlum vs. heroine; swarthy vs. Anglo-Saxon (Danish, to be more specific). And the name was then chosen to embody, represent, and reinforce those aspects of the NPCs makeup. He was designed NOT to be taken seriously as a figure of romance by the PC, and the name achieved this perfectly.
First Syllables matter
Complicated names are usually abbreviated for convenience, and more than any other source, those abbreviations derive from the first syllable of a name. “Sebastian” becomes “Seb”, “Barbara” becomes “Barb”, “Donald” becomes “Don”. It should come as no surprise when “Quiximacolte” becomes “Quix”.
It’s also important to be sure that the diminutive or abbreviated forms of the name don’t lead to unfortunate and inadvertent explicitisms. “Falodin Uss” might seem a perfectly reasonable name, but reducing the christian name to a single syllable produces a meaning that is not at all desirable.
Consider the Nickname
Does the name suggest a nickname that is undesirable? Surnames that are also nouns, or sound like nouns, are especially prone to this problem. Consider the obvious problems that would afflict a character named “Richard Weed”, for example.
Real parents have this problem all the time – or fail to consider it, and mar their children’s lives throughout their formative years.
But it’s too strong to advise GMs not to choose names for this reason alone; it is a factor that they should take into account, but there may well be times when an unfortunate nickname can explain the source of character personalities far better than a small mountain of prose. Consider a character named “Geoffrey Rubb” – he will almost certainly be nicknamed “Grubby”. Whether this turns the character into someone who is indifferent to hygiene and cleanliness or someone who is pathological about neatness is up to the GM – but that nickname will have a major effect on young Geoffrey.
As with several other criteria, this sort of thing is fine when done deliberately, but can be troublesome and detracting when it occurs accidentally.
Flavor is more important than meaning
I think every player and GM goes through a phase when they want the character names to mean something, usually when they first come into contact with the use of a book of baby names as a character generation resource.
The problem is that most of these meanings are ancient in derivation, and have little relevance in the modern mind. “Richard”, and it’s derivations, “Ritchie” and “Dicky”, means “Strong Power” or “Hardy Power”. But those are not the connotations that come to mind when I hear those derivations; I associate “Ritchie” with “Ritchie Rich” and “Dicky” with “Richard Nixon” – and both of those are very different to “Strong Power”. A lonely child trying to buy affection from others, and a manipulative Machiavelli, respectively, would be closer to the mark.
So forget the fancy meanings; the flavor that a name imparts in your mind when you hear it is far more important.
Beware Alliteration
One of the staples of the pulp genre, that has made its way into the superhero stable via Superman’s pulp origins, is the alliterative name. “Lois Lane”, “Lana Lang”, “Clark Kent” (pronunciation is more important than spelling), “Felix Faust”, “Brick Bradford”, “Peter Parker”, “Reed Richards”, the list goes on and on.
The problem is that these all smack of “cute” – and “cute” can get in the way of the actual message you’re trying to encapsulate in the name, as mentioned earlier.
Even used sparingly, these can stand out as exceptions to every other character name you’ve offered, weakening the verisimilitude of the campaign. So resist the temptation – unless it’s genre-appropriate, and even then, think twice.
Beware the Follow-on
When a character’s name consists of more than one word, avoid christian names that end with the same sound that is at the start of the surname. This is a recipe for pronunciation difficulty on almost every occasion. “Foccult Tuttle” doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue.
There are occasions when you can get away with this – but it’s additional work, and usually unnecessary work.
Know the Genre Rules Of Naming
We’ve already touched on this rule lightly, but it deserves to be rendered a little more explicitly. Know the “rules” (rarely actually written down anywhere, that would be too easy) for the genre of your game and use the naming conventions to anchor your game that little more solidly into that genre. Pulp names usually have short first names and action-oriented, dramatic or powerful surnames. Superhero names tend toward the obvious. Western Surnames tend toward the practical and occupational.
It is also useful to have some notion of the way subcultures influence names. Many common names in the US derive from Jewish sources; nothing wrong with that, but picking a name at random can lead to mistakes like applying such a name to a non-Jewish character. Names with such derivations would be fairly rare and noteworthy in any era prior to WWI – in the Old West, or in the era of the American Revolution. That’s not to say there might not have been some exceptions to the general rule – but, as with many other rules in this list, do it deliberately, when it’s appropriate, not inadvertently or through laziness.
Intelligence permits clever names
Some names – stage names, supervillain and hero names – can be chosen for effect, or for concealment of a character’s nature. The more intelligent the character choosing the name is, the more likely this should be. At the same time, there is something to be said for deliberately adopting a stereotypical name, in that it can lead your opposition to underestimate you.
Never Be Temporary
There are two types of temporary names: the unsatisfying attempt, and the unimaginative placeholder.
The unsatisfying attempt is a name that doesn’t quite achieve your objectives, but that you use until you can think of a better choice. The problem is that a temporary name constrains the imagination to a range of similar solutions, making it that much harder to find the perspective that will ultimately give you the right idea. Worse still, you can forget that you need to find a better name until it’s too late.
The unimaginative placeholder is even worse, and more pernicious. One of my players has the habit of using “Bob” in this way, every time the PCs meets a character that I have to invent off the cuff, if there is even the slightest hesitation in my giving them a name. Every time he does so, it completely derails the mental process which was busy choosing a name at the time. One of these days, I’ll name a Machiavellian arch-enemy “Bob” out of sheer spite. Once again, the problem is that the placeholder restricts your thinking and, at the same time, pressures you to accept the first half-way decent choice that comes to mind. Both are unacceptable.
A Good Name is Hard To Find
To be honest, I operate as much by instinct and “feeling” when it comes to naming characters as I do by working through a detailed checklist like the one I’ve presented in this article. Many of these principles are in the back of my mind, but few are at the forefront of my thinking.
What I’ll be concentrating on is the character, their personality, and the role they are to play in the adventure at hand. I’ll pick the item that it’s most important to communicate to the players, or to reinforce, and then try to think of names that encapsulate that meaning. I’ll keep trying and discarding possible names until I find one that works – then decide whether or not I’m satisfied with it.
Consider, for example, the name of an NPC from the current Pulp Adventure: Pastor Esteban Dominguez. The title came first, when the background of the character suggested a somewhat-gifted amateur archeologist. We wanted the character to be intelligent, and we knew that he was going to be using religious institutions for his own purposes; both suggested that he be a member of the religious infrastructure. Archbishop and Bishop gave the character too much authority; so we were left with “Priest” or one of the titles that were synonymous with that designation. While the character was to have served in a prestigious capacity as a support worker, we wanted him to be a country boy at heart. The mediocrity and pretentiousness of “Pastor” (as compared to the more commonplace “Father”) seemed to sum up the personality and authority we wanted the character to have.
Secondly, we knew that we wanted the character to be Hispanic in ethnicity – originally from the US, but now living in Mexico. That meant a Spanish-based surname; and the choice was further narrowed by our desire for his name to be fairly commonplace. There were any number of surnames we could have chosen, but Dominguez was the first to come to mind, and it fitted the criteria perfectly.
That left a christian name, and this was the most difficult choice of them all. We could have used “Enrico”, or a dozen alternatives; or we could have given him an Anglo christian name. We went through nearly a dozen choices before coming up with “Esteban” – a name with a slightly formal connotation, a distinctive, and with a hint of both education (it’s polysyllabic), and a hint of both menace and respectability in our minds. Finally, we repeated the name to ourselves a few times to ensure that the combination “felt right” and then aloud a few more times to ensure that it sounded right when someone else announced it.
A good name may be hard to find, but the results make the effort more than simply worthwhile.
- A Good Name Is Hard To Find
- The Wellspring Of Euonyms: Name Seeds
- Sugar, Spice, and a touch of Rhubarb: That’s what little names are made of
- With The Right Seasoning: Beyond Simple Names
- Grokking The Message: Naming Places & Campaigns
- Hints, Metaphors, and Mindgames: Naming Adventures (Part 1)
- Hints, Metaphors, and Mindgames: Naming Adventures (Part 2)
- Memorials To History – an ‘a good name’ extra
- Choosing A Name: A “Good Names” Extra (Revised & Extended)
- The Surprising Value of Clickbait to a GM
- A Good Name 11: Culinary Delights
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February 17th, 2012 at 5:01 am
[…] you ever at a loss for a good name? Mike @ Campaign Mastery is here to help. He’s kicked off a new series called “A Good Name is Hard to Find” and the first […]
February 17th, 2012 at 5:34 am
Thanks Mike – I too really struggle with this sort of thing. I have taken to keeping a list of generic names for each race, lifted from a relevant campaign setting, to use both in play and when creating NPCs. I don’t find this satisfactory and look forward to the other 4 articles.
February 17th, 2012 at 8:06 am
Glad to help, James!
October 6th, 2012 at 6:57 pm
I have to disagree with your advice about names for PCs in campaigns taking place in the classic superhero genres, particularly those set in Golden Age, Silver Age, or Bronze Age eras.
The moment a player submits to me a PC with a superhero codename intended to obscure superpowers and a civilian identity which is neither alliterative nor reminiscent of the superhero codename, I know with sinking heart that I probably have a bad player or a player who just doesn’t “get it” when it comes to superhero conventions.
I can think of no major superhero whose codename follows your advice to intentionally conceal his or her abilities as a tactical maneuver. Superman, Captain America, Black Canary, Wolverine, et al. all convey some aspect with the codename.
Similarly, I would think twice about letting in a player who insisted that Peter Parker and Clark Kent are “dumb names” due to their alliteration. If a person can not muster the imagination and creativity to suspend disbelief about alliteration, how much more impossible will it be for that player to suspend disbelief on all the other tropes and traditions found in superhero tales?
I have a wonderful memory from a campaign in which each player played both a semi-retired early Silver Age superhero from the 1960s and a modern Iron Age superhero from the 1990s. My best player demonstrated once again why he was one of the best when he showed up with a Silver Age superhero whose civilian name was alliterative and whose codename included the word “man” alongside an Iron Age superhero with a boring civilian name and a codename that focused on violent destruction. Now THAT is a player who understands genre and tropes!
October 7th, 2012 at 4:15 am
I don’t think we’re really that far apart when it comes to naming philosophy for superhero genres, Ev. For a start, my actual advice was to “avoid alliteration unless it is genre appropriate…” – most of your comment simply demonstrates that in most superhero campaigns, it IS genre appropriate. I then continued, “…and even then think twice” in referance to overly cutesy names. There have been a number of examples in both comics and RPGs over the years that have simply made me cringe. Others have been good names despite the alliteration, not because of it – because they have avoided being overly “cute” when that was inappropriate.
As for not being able to think of a character who doesn’t put their abilities on display through their names, let’s see:-
And those are just a few.
I’m not saying these are bad names – though I would argue that “Mr Fantastic” is fairly weak, and the ‘secret’ of Green Lantern has its own problems. On the contrary, most of these are very good names that could have been used in any supehero comic or RPG to identify quite different characters from those with whom we now associate them. And here’s the funny thing: setting aside the original Red Tornado and Marvel Girl – and noting that Firestorm has been reinvented in way that contradicts the point I’m about to make – all of these are individuals of considerable intellect. Flash is a police forensic scientist, Bat-man is a detective with considerable science skill, Dr Fate has a gerat knowledge of sorcery, Dr Doom is a scientist of several types, Green Lantern was a test pilot, Firestorm used to be a blend between a PhD-awarded scientist and a high-school kid, Mr Fantastic is an acknowledged genius within his comics universe…
I never said that a character’s name should not be representative of that character; on the contrary, most of the article emphasises the opposite. But being representative of the character doesn’t mean you have to telegraph the nature of your powers, and the smarter thing to do would obviously be not to do so.
October 12th, 2012 at 11:43 pm
I wasn’t going to dispute you at first out of respect for this site as your territory, but your examples show a disturbing lack of understanding regarding the basic history of these names.
The nickname “Flash” has traditionally been a nickname associated with athletic speed since the early part of the 20th century. Hence “Flash” Thompson, the high school jock who tormented Peter Parker, and “Flash” Gordon, the ace polo player who ended up in outer space. Moreover, in one of the earliest appearances of Jay Garrett’s Golden Age career as The Flash, he used his powers to win a football game. So the nickname made a great deal of sense at the time.
Similarly, The Batman began as an avenger of the night rather than the world’s greatest detective, and the bat has long been one of the four animal images that appear creepy to Americans (the other three back then being the spider, the snake, and the wolf — and much later the shark and a few other creatures joined in while the wolf has had its reputation improved over the decades). Bob Kane himself admitted that the character was inspired in part by the master thief The Bat from the film *The Bat Whispers*. In addition to this, Bruce Wayne’s original heroic costume included actual bat wings and for much of the character’s history his cape included scalloping that allowed him to hold it out like a bat swooping down upon its prey (a popular image of bats despite its lack of zoological accuracy).
Doctor Fate states in some of his earliest appearances that he is an agent or self-appointed agent of the metaphysical notion of fate or destiny itself — in one of his early adventures, he even speaks with God! The name is also reflected in his connection with the Ankh (associated at the time with fate more than with life).
Stan Lee has stated he named Doctor Doom “doom” because of the word’s menacing association with inevitable death while Jack Kirby has stated that he designed Dr. Doom to look like the classic image of death as a skeleton, with the armor standing in. Since these two created the character, one can assume they knew why they gave him the name with its associations of inevitable death so clearly reflected in his costume.
The original Red Tornado used the name “Tornado” because she was a brawler and “Tornado” and “Cyclone” were relatively common nicknames for boxers (or boxers and wrestlers) at the time. (Haven’t you heard of the Tornado Kid, the Tijuana Tornado, or the Gimpy Tornado?) She appended “Red” because of the red longjohns she wore as part of her costume and because she was trying to imitate Green Lantern for Scribbly.
Green Lantern was originally intended by his creator to have the civilian name of Alan Ladd in honor of Aladdin, another character who also gained his powers from a magic lantern. In our hero’s case, however, his powers came not from a genie (or djinni) but from a glowing lantern light in the shade of green. The name also connects him to the then-popular image of the lantern as a comforting sign of protection, rescue, and guardianship in those long-ago days when railroads evoked more romantic connotations than they do today.
According to Gerry Conway, the creator of the character Firestorm, Firestorm derived his superhero name from the term “nuclear firestorm”, which was somewhat common at the time. It therefore references both his origin in a nuclear accident and his flaming head.
Although it sounds sexist to our modern ears, Mr. Fantastic was named after the group The Fantastic Four as “head of the family”. There have been claims that his name was also chosen because “fantastic” rhymes with “plastic”, in honor of the legendary malleable superhero Plastic Man, just as Johnny Storm was openly named after the Golden Age The Human Torch, but many people suspect these claims to be apocryphal.
I think you get my point.
I’m afraid most of your examples fail your point and support my own. They also surprise me, as the facts I have listed above should be fairly well known to anyone who has investigated superhero comic books.
So, as you can tell, regardless of whether you personally believe the “smarter thing” is not to “telegraph” the nature of one’s superpowers, the creators of the majority of the most iconic superheroes — of the ones who have stood the test of time — apparently have very different opinions from your own.
The fact that superheroes have been around for approximately 75 years with such “telegraphing” names as Superman (the ubermensch), The Batman (the avenger of the night), Captain America (military patriotism incarnate), The Human Torch (humanlike and aflame), Green Arrow, The Spectre, Hawkman, Hourman, The Sub-Mariner, et al. have lasted so long — and been joined since then by the likes of Spider-Man (powers of a spider), Captain Atom (atomic powers), Thor, The Invisible Woman, or the more recent Static, Jenny Sparks, and Atom Eve — seems to be the most pertinent argument of all for anyone who truly loves and respects the superhero genre: if you want to replicate and honor the superhero genre in your RPGs, you do not sully your suspension of disbelief and lower yourself to gratuitious iconoclasm by decrying the majority of all past incarnations over dull, claylike, joyless worries about a “smart” cringing from “telegraphing” ones talents.
October 13th, 2012 at 12:52 pm
Actually, Ev, I have been reading comics since 1965 when I taught myself to read at a high school / college level at the age of three using some Spiderman, Iron Man, Fantastic Four, Thor, and Avengers that my Uncle had brought en route to military service in Vietnam. My collection extends back even further by another 2½ decades and runs through the 90s, when they became priced above my means.
I already knew most of what you have pointed out above, and it is largely irellevant to the point, which was that the expectations of what the character would be able to do from the name alone differ markedly from what the characters, as created, could do.
I would suggest that you are having trouble seperating your evident knowledge of the genre and its history from a perception of a hitherto-unknown character of the same name.
The fact remains that when discussing a roleplaying game of the modern era, the players will derive from that modern era, and as a result genre must accommodate the foibles of that audiance. While some staple conventions of the era can be tolerated, and indeed have to be tolerated in order to maintain the overall verisimilitude of the genre experience, any that strain that verisimilitude and can be set aside, should be, simply to reduce the strain on the player’s suspension of disbelief.
It’s just barely believable that people would adopt an obviously false identity from which to persue their caped-crime-fighting activities; many stories in the comics themselves have examined the price to be paid for the revelation of a secret identity. Adding the requirement that an otherwise smart, even genius-level, character would knowlingly telegraph his abilities to his enemies when he could decieve them just as easily is often the straw that breaks the plausibility-camel’s back.
You also seem convinced that no character can have an impressive or dramatic name that is not derived from their abilities, something that I would dispute. Green Lantern’s name reflects his power source, NOT his abilities. Firestorm’s name reflects his origin, NOT what he can do with his abilities. Hourman’s power reflects the limitations on his abilities, NOT what those abilities are. Yes, some iconic names reflect the abilities of the character, I never denied that. But modern characters don’t have to do so – and I maintain that many characters would be more truly reflecting their capabilities if they did not.
All that having been said, you are welcome to continue to disagree with me. You’ve certainly presented a passionate case for the alternative; ultimately, it’s up to the readers to decide what will work best in their own campaigns. The things that we have in common – clearly including a love of comics – are far more significant than the minor points of disagreement. You’ve obviously gone to quite a bit of trouble to write and post your comment, and I appreciate and respect that. So thanks for contributing to the discussion, even if you do still disagree. Your comments are welcome on this or any other article at Campaign Mastery.
Mike recently posted..By The Seat Of Your Pants: Using Ad-hoc statistics
October 21st, 2014 at 8:41 am
A great list of what to do (and not do) for names! It seems to me that gamers either can easily choose a name, or its the most difficult decision they’ll ever make with their character. For GMs, they obviously have to think of many names. So this is a great list for any GM!
Samuel Van Der Wall recently posted..Verisimilitude: The Importance of Names
October 21st, 2014 at 10:48 am
Thanks for the Kudos, Samuel. I really think that names need to be chosen by players in cooperation with their GM. No-one knows more about the game world than they do.