Quote from: Jackalope;265028In fairness, I named this character after N'Longa, from the Solomon Kane stories.  It started out as "N'Bonga" but I changed the g to a k after reading some articles on African languages.  But I REALLY should have said it outloud a few more time before playing the character, because in actual play it was a kinda silly.

Go tell that to Lon Duc Dong and Harry Balzac. I'm pretty sure they'd back you up on the name.

!i!

My first long running D&D character was a thief, Debris Deritus (I misspelled 'detritus' on the character sheet). Aside from the name, he was a pretty straightforward character. The DM had a few silly names, like a high level wizard, who sometimes got a little confused, named Bollux.

I tended to play thieves, so I made variations like Delerius, etc. Our wizard in that party was named Mister, so we could yell out "Help me, Mister Wizard!" The cleric, a devotee of Set, was named T.V..

Every so often we would go on themes. We had an entire pary of sportscasters. I played Brent Morsberger, but I kept mispronouncing it 'Moose-burger'. Another was all Spanish names. IIRC, my character was Real Sangria.

When my one friend's college buddies would play, the crudeness got turned up to 11. I  remember one character named Jizz Coonkiller. :eek: Mercifully, I remember little else.

Some memories:

Pendragon - Sir Brillig and his brother, Sir Slithy; Sexhard the Saxon; Sir Stendix (from a brand of stationery).

RuneQuest - Queng Wisequack, a duck; Tobor, a Grotaron; Marrakesh and Krakajak, morokanths; Genrik, an NPC who got used by drop-in players and players without chrs; Gitchie-Goomie, a Dorastan werewolf; Henry, a troll.

Star Wars - Gar Triihugga, a simple farmer on a forest planet.

Quote from: One Horse Town;264957Graham God-Botherer.

:killingme:

One of the PCs in my short-lived Traveller sandbox game was named "Shazam Goon".

Quote from: Jackalope;265028. . . an awakened raccoon with levels in Scout, inspired by both the National Park Service mascot (Ranger Rick) . . .

Ranger Rick is a character in magazines published by the National Wildlife Federation; he's not a mascot of the National Park Service.

My worst character name ever was Lotto Rumblebottom, a flatulent halfling thief. Mercifully he was slain in our first encounter, as by then the joke had worn off.

I created a magic-use character named Wuffa Weirdbeard, but never ran him. Wuffa is an Old English name if I remember correctly, and 'weird' in this context meant magical, so while it was a bit strange sounding, it wasn't really a 'silly' name. At least not deliberately . . .

Two things have been mentioned here that I gather used to be common, but don't seem to happen any more:

i) punning names.

ii) direct use of pop culture elements. For example, if a DM really wanted to have Klingons, it seems like in ye olde days they'd be actual Klingons (whose spaceship had crashed, if it was fantasy). Whereas now it seems like it'd be expected that you change them to fit the world: in science-fiction change the name, or in fantasy change them into barbarians or lizard-people or something - unless you'd specifically said you were playing in the Star Trek universe, in which case you couldn't have creatures from another franchise.

Is that perhaps because in those days the players saw D&D as a mixture of elements - if you've already combined Lord of the Rings and Conan and Elric, why not add something else - whereas now most people see hobbits and barbarians and evil magic swords as elements of the same thing?

My Dad, in the one D&D game I got him to play with me, was a Magic-User named... "Resucigam"

I had a theif from way back named "Robin Everyman"

My first Cleric was "Brother Maynard of the Holy Outhouse"

Our Recon squad patrolled the Phuoc Yu river in 'Nam...

I played with a guy who had a D&D character called Sir Duc Sean of the Innocent.

Quote from: Pierce Inverarity;265106:killingme:

:hatsoff:

It loses a bit of its shine when you find out that he adventured with his twin brother Tim God-Botherer, who was a...Thief. Yes, it was the family name.

My first DnD character was a halfling named Frodo.  Which was funny I suppose because I was one of those kids who hadn't yet read the LotR novels.

All of my dwarves come from the Staggerhome clan that me and my old roommate created, complete with detailed family history, heirlooms, and a book of grudges that we added after we discovered WFRP.

Names can be important, but not always. I have one player who's a great gamer, and killer at characterization-but rarely bothers to name his character.