ways_back_room | DE: A rose by anyother name

Alanna has mixed feelings about her name. Her mother had a hand in choosing it, but so did her father. It is a link to him she can never quite escape. It's a constant reminder her father would have rather had twin boys. But it does shorten nicely to a name she'll have no trouble answering to while pretending to be a boy, so in the end she's fine with it. These days, she's curious about being a girl and secretly wishes more people knew the truth.

Karou doesn't yet know the significance of her name, so it remains a mystery much like the rest of her life. That doesn't bother her. Much. There are other mysteries she wants to solve first.

Elizabeth quite likes the way her name sounds when Will says it. Also, it is a name with a long, important history, suitable for a Pirate King.

Grace eyerolls at her name but can't imagine having any other. Better to flaunt the implied expectations and restrictions.

Doctor Evil is definitely not named "Dougie." He rejects your claim that "Dougie" is on any formal certificate of his birth, and directs you instead to admire his diploma from evil medical school while he prepares the laser sharks for your inevitable, but extremely lengthy demise.

Jim Craig has no strong opinions about his first name, but his last is a link to his father and thus he is proud of it.

Gene - loves his name, owns it entirely, wouldn't want it to be anything else.

Bruce Wayne - it was always more a curse than a blessing. He can never be anonymous because of it, and it carries the whole family history/tragedy with it. It is inextricably linked with Gotham, and he'll never get away from it. But these days, if he thinks of it as another mask, he can choose to put it on and make use of it, rather than it just being a burden.

Bruce Banner - ambivalent about his real name. Does not like the Other Guy's name, because it makes him a solid person in his own right rather than a thing he'll be rid of one day.

Valjean - ahaha. Interesting. There's a passage about his name in the brick, which basically points out that it equates to voila, Jean. His sister is named Jeanne - probably not hard to imagine that their father must have been Jean also (there is also a long-running fandom joke that everyone's first name is Jean, because Hugo seems to love it so). Anyway, it's a simple name, for a man that started as a simple peasant. The only reason it comes to have meaning is that he eventually has to get of it, and assume various false names. Hearing the name Valjean means being uncovered, being vulnerable; also, it is the name he had when he was a criminal. But now, at the end of his days, he would like it back, and not have to hide. Hugo does let him have that at least - on his deathbed, gdi.

Javert - is only ever known as Javert. Whether or not he even has a first name is a matter of debate - Fantine was specifically never given one, as a mark of her standing. As he was born in poverty, and of mixed background, there's a chance he only had one. He also may have renounced his first name if it was not French enough, or it may simply be that as he had no personal connections in the world, a first name was entirely useless to him. Either way, he seems to like Javert well enough. It encompasses him, and he would never dream of hiding behind another.

Current millicanon is that he only has that one name, due to never having been referred to as anything else as a child. When he finally chills out a bit, I might let him pick a first name (Etienne, Phillipe and...Jean - heh - vie for my affections), but he'll probably never use it even then.

Edited 2014-02-10 14:07 (UTC)

Ibani likes her name! It's the only thing she has of her birth family, whom she doesn't otherwise remember. Her last name will mean a great deal to her too, once she gets one. >.>

Annabelle Newfield likes her name as well. It was a name that made bad guys quake in their boots and sparked the envy and awe of gunslingers everywhere.

Kreyu came into existence with her name. While she's used other aliases over the years among humans, the idea of 'choosing' a new name puzzles her more than anything.

My pups generally don't think much about their names. The big exceptions are Charlie and Cyborg.

Charlie was saddled by an orphanage with the name Charles Victor Szasz. He has no idea why anyone would give him an unpronounceable last name that he shares with a psychiatrist who denies there is actually such a thing as mental illness. (I have no idea why Denny O'Neil retroactively assigned this name other than that it was close to Vic Sage.) As an adult and a TV reporter, Charlie renamed himself Vic Sage - I am pretty sure it's his legal name. But he never felt any better with that name than the one the nuns gave him. And let's also note that he didn't actually choose "The Question" so much as it just sort of suited him and stuck. As a man with no past and no real sense of his true self, he ultimately stripped him self-identity down to just Charlie. I have no idea what he might do if ever required to have a full name again.

Because the Teen Titans cartoons go out of their way to avoid secret identities - apparently they would have confused younger viewers - Cyborg is never referred to directly by his real name Vic Stone. (Weird. I have two pups named Vic, which is my brother's name. And one named Alex.) There is an oblique reference on the show to his real name, but nothing else. The way I see it, he think of himself as Cyborg now because that's who and what he is. That other name, which he uses for legal purposes and to attend college classes, is someone else. I have to wonder if he's distanced himself from it because of ambivalence about his father. Being a Stone means being Silas Stone's son. And right now, Cy doesn't want that. (I really should have them reconcile since it's been done in both the pre- and post-reboot timelines in the comics.)

Ichabod likes his given name and will not let anyone shorten it, thank you.

Michael Carpenter also finds his, first and last, very fitting for the person he is and what he used to do.

Gavroche will never tell anybody what his used to be, and chose Gavroche for himself when he was about four. That's his name now. He's also abandoned his birth surname and doesn't consider the Thenardiers his parents because they sucked at it.

Edited 2014-02-10 14:22 (UTC)

Ichy, lol.

You know Sunshine would call Ichabod 'Ichy', and mean it in all fondness. ^_^

I suspect Jenny Mills is also going to call him that at every opportunity, whether he likes it or not.

>_> I hope she gets that opportunity!

*eyes your shifty face*

The car died. Ugh. Now back to living on public transportation.

Joshua is alright with his name. He doesn't really feel connected to his middle name (Alan), but he likes his confirmation name: Isaac. (Yes, he chose Newton's name as his confirmation name.)

Mark is meh about everything related to his name.

Valentine would much rather not have such an out-there name, but she's not going to change it.

Fantine's name is... just that, a name. She doesn't think about it much. Meta-ly, it is a sign of her lack of status in the world.

Helena really loves her name. It feels elegant and Shakesperian to her.

Newly-apped:

Peter hasn't ever thought about his name, as far as I know.

Edited 2014-02-10 14:26 (UTC)

Tommy's full name is Thomas Michael Gavin. He's good with it. The Gavins have a long family history in the FDNY, so there's that to be proud of. I'm sure his father named him, since Michael is his father's name, and so given their strong family ties, Thomas might be one of his grandfathers' names. When meeting people, he always gives his name as Tommy. He likes it, it's informal, it's old-school, it's him. Occasionally people will call him Tom, but nobody ever calls him Thomas, except for the nuns at his school or when Kate is scolding him.

Kenneth Shea is Lou's given name. He gives different versions of his name to different people he meets or becomes friends with. I can't remember if anybody on the show actually called him Kenneth-- probably his ex-wife. Usually to formal acquaintances or people he wants to make a good impression on, such as attractive women, he's Ken (like the doll) but this is pretty rare. To friends, he's Kenny. To the guys at the firehouse or special exceptions, he's Lou, short for Lieutenant.

Ooh, fun question!

River likes hers a lot. It's pretty, it suits her, and it's her name. She used to be more enthusiastically in favor of it when she was younger; now it's just her name, the kind of background satisfaction you don't really think about.

Regan used to have pretty mixed feelings about her name. It's Shakespearean, it's classic, it's pretty and it's easy to spell... and the Shakespearean character by that name is a huge jerk. WHOOPS. She's come round to liking it without that baggage, though! (That said, there's a reason neither of her kids have Famous Historical/Fictional Jerk names.)

Thor likes his! Thor likes most things about himself, let's be real. I haven't quite decided to what extent there's any legacy to live up to in the name, though, and if there is he does feel the weight of needing to do so. (If not, he still feels plenty of weight of legacy to live up to from other sources.)

Trowa's name is... complicated. In that he doesn't have a given name; Trowa Barton is, uh, a taken one. (He helped cover up the murder of the original Trowa Barton, and took his name and his place. Er.) So for a while he didn't really feel that it was his so much as a borrowed alias, but he's come around to it. IIRC it's Duo who points out to him that a name is just what your friends call you, and now he has friends and a sister who call him that, and that matters.

(I know his birth name, but he does not. He has no particular opinion on the name; it's the name of his sister's long-lost baby brother, whom Trowa silently assumes died as a toddler.)

Enjolras doesn't object to his given name or anything; it's just a name. He doesn't really think about it too hard, and he certainly doesn't use it too much, because he's a young man of his era without any brothers to get confused with, and no nearby relatives nor a girlfriend to address him with it. (Very close friends might, but we don't see that in canon, although admittedly we also don't see much of Enjolras in private situations without a bunch of people around.) His given name is also 100% millicanon, because hardly any Les Mis characters get first names -- hence, as Write says, the running fandom joke that they're all named Jean. His millicanon name of Jean-Sébastien, which I finally had to put into a thread the other day, comes half from that and half from St. Sebastian on account of reasons.

Clare cares fiercely about her given name because of (of course) Teresa. Clare and Teresa are the names of sister goddesses. When Clare (my character, not the goddess) first met Teresa, she was so traumatized that she didn't/couldn't speak. "Well," said Teresa, "I guess I have to call you something. What about Clare?" and Clare about nodded her head off, because that was actually her name. Teresa mentioned the goddesses, and said "That shows that we had parents who loved us." The name Clare is thus very important to her, both as a bond to Teresa and as a bond to the parents she barely remembers at all.

It is not like Amascut's name is that unusual. She comes from an ancient Egypt/medieval Arab inspired culture after all, so considering the real world names Sekhmet, Bastet, Ammut, Nit, and Hatshepsut, it is not even an unusual female name probably.

She doesn't seem too attached to it given how much time she spend pretending to be other people. But it is a name the world tried to forget, which sucks for her, especially since she is a goddess. And then there's that superstition about saying her name :D.

Fairy Fixit... I don't know, the fairies have weird and inconsistent naming conventions. Fixit seems more like a function or job description. I do have a "real" name for her just in case it ever comes up, but I still haven't played her enough to figure out how attached she is to the name Fairy Fixit.

Edited 2014-02-10 16:24 (UTC)

Yrael has many names. For the length of his imprisonment, he was known as Mogget. When he gained his freedom, he shed that name like a skin. He chose to return to his first and truest name, to show that he is no longer under anyone's heel.

Sunshine hasn't used her true name since she was six years old. When her mother took her and left her father, Raven became Rae, with her mother's maiden name to help hide them. Then, when Rae's mother married Charlie, she became Rae Seddon. Charlie is also the one who gave her the nickname Sunshine. Rae doesn't like thinking of her birth name. It is her True Name, despite it not suiting her, and she would vulnerable to it if it were known. Thankfully, the names she uses - the names that suit her - are sunlight-words, and thus difficult for Master Vampires to even utter without pain.

Zelgadiss doesn't think much about his name. It is his, and it suits him. Just don't call him Mr. Bunny. >_>

Gordon doesn't know much about his given name, and doesn't much care about it one way or the other. He does, however, find it embarrassing that people are naming quite a lot of children after him, both male and female.

Adrian Shephard doesn't use his first name much, so he doesn't fuss over it a whole lot. His family uses it, or they call him 'Ado', the nickname his twin younger siblings gave him. He's aware that it was derived from Emperor Hadrian of Rome; as far as Roman emperor names go, he figures he could do a lot worse. The old Corps called him Shephard; the new Marines he's training call him Sergeant-Major Shephard; the Vortigaunts call him 'the Marine'; and the Mexican Resistance members and anyone trying to reach him over the radio call him by his callsign, Zanahorias. He's fine with that.

Stacker Pentecost wishes his parents had named him after someone with a slightly less peculiar first name, but they were both impressed with that one American missionary friend of theirs and, well, no point in putting up a stink over it now. People who use anything to do with his first name generally stick to calling him Stacks instead.

Varric is just fine with his given name. It probably means something, and he probably lies- sorry, embellishes- about the meaning.

El Santo does not use his given name and is not about to tell anybody, least of all me, what his given name is. 'El Santo' is all the name he wants or needs.

Edward Kenway's fine with his first name. If it has a meaning he doesn't know it and doesn't much care about it. It was probably his grandfather's or great-grandfather's name or something; we don't have that information at the moment.

Mordin Solus- hoo boy. Salarian naming conventions ain't like human naming conventions. A full name includes – in order – the name of a salarian's homeworld, nation, city, district, clan name and given name. Since a salarian named Gorot II Heranon Mal Dinest Got Inoste Ledra would be called either by his clan name, Inoste, or his given name, Ledra, that means that Mordin's given name is probably Solus, as he does not strike me as having rearranged his name to suit offworlder customs. Hell if I know what it means, but he's okay with it regardless.

BLU Medic has a name and under the contract he signed with BLU, he does not use it with anyone outside the company. Even his grandparents. I strongly suspect he lied about his name on BLU's paperwork anyway, which is nothing unusual for their recruits.

Ellen's name means a torch or a spark; she's aware of that. She's pretty good with her given name, but people in the Wasteland seem kind of hellbent on calling her 101 instead, and she has given up trying to dissuade them.

Mark would prefer that you do not call him "Markus," thank you very much. He's not really sure where his father got that one. He'll leave his middle name, Sebastian, as is. It's his mother's father's name (says the headcanon), and it's his only link with his grandfather. (Debbie's family never appears in the book, so as far as I'm concerned, her parents died when Mark was too young to know them.) No one's ever called him by it (except as part of his full name), so he doesn't have too strong an opinion of it.

So now to answer my own question.
Jessica likes her name as it was chosen by her mother and it's about all she has left. She also likes her middle name (Miriam) as it is so close to her mother's first name, Merriam. She is fine with how most people shorten it, though she prefers Jess since that's what Carol uses. She's on the fence about Spider-Woman. It's got great brand recognition but it is kind of old. Only problem is there aren't a lot of choices as far as spider themed names go and she refuses to use Arachne since that was the codename given to her by HYDRA.

Hank likes his given name, Henry, though prefers the nickname Hank. In my headcanon, Henry was his grandfather and so Hank likes the tie to him. The name he will eventually use, Beast, was given to him by Alex Summer and he's not too comfortable with it. He uses it to remind himself to be careful or he will truly become a beast.

Brimstone is proud of his name. Using headcanon here, it was given to him by his now deceased master and while other chimera chose new names, he took the name his master had given him in mocking and made it his own. There's a quote I can't quite remember about making your life your act of rebellion (I want to say it was Henry Miller?) and I think that is the best reason I can give for Brimstone's name.

Quinlan likes his name well enough but names are just another mask to wear for him.

Andrea loves her name and how it rolls off the tongue.

Mulan is proud of her name, both her given and family name. She doesn't use her family name, Hua, for fear of dishonoring it.

Anton seems okay with his name as well. It is short and to the point and very useful.

Edited 2014-02-10 17:59 (UTC)

Cata has yet to tell me what her birth name is. She maintains that since joining the Guild, it doesn't matter anymore. All I know is it's not Catherine, that being the name Mizzamir's meddling stuck her with.

Sam doesn't remember what his mother called him, and turned down the chance to find out. 'Sam' is actually a nickname, but he owns it so thoroughly that he can't imagine using anything else.

Claudia hates her middle name (Patricia), and never got confirmed (that would require being able to sit through Mass without going 'I DON'T GET IT' every five minutes).

Apollo likes being himself, thanks ever so.

Imp's name is... not precisely common in Llamedos, but not completely unheard-of either; it's only outside of that area that he gets funny looks for it. And he will never go by Buddy again. (Related fun fact: When I started reading Soul Music I knew there would be a Buddy Holly joke... and then I found out I'd been reading it for the last hundred pages.)

Regulus is not the first 'Regulus Black' by any stretch of the imagination; he considers himself lucky that his predecessors didn't ruin the name. For his kids, since there will be at least one, he's planning to think outside of the usual family pool a little, especially for a girl - the family's usual girls' names are either terrible or have been ruined by the people who had them (see: Bellatrix). He figures he can preserve the dignity of the tradition while giving his kids a chance to be their own people.

Red's nickname stuck so thoroughly that pretty much everyone she knows uses it (including her grandmother). Post-curse, she quite likes Ruby.

Woolly rather likes his name, in the end analysis. He just wishes Helena could be bothered to use it more often (then again, how would he know the situation's truly dire if she did?).

Helena wants to know what the fun would be if she did something as boring as using Wooley's actual given name.

X-23 has a lot of feelings about names. If she is calling herself 'X-23', she is either severely not-okay or trying to scare the shit out of whoever she's talking to. 'Laura' is a name that has a lot of personal connotations, and she doesn't allow its general usage, except for the couple of people that she's known longest and who . . . helped her figure out how to be her version of normal -- so Parker and Meg, Jamie, and I know there is at least one other person and I don't know who it is. 'Joe' is okay from Lilly and Constantine, for reasons of friendship and not really being phased by her oddness, and also not pushing her beyond what she can handle. She chose the name X herself, because it's one she likes, and it -- fits.

No one else really has strong feelings about their name. For most of them it's who they are and that's great.

(Raven is smug.)

I'm going to start with the ones who have opinions on their names.

Moist hates his name and avoids using it and hides the knowledge of it, he knows his parents meant well for giving it to him but its an unfortunate name. The von Lipwig actually means more since that's a place in Uberwald and shows he has connections there.

Ivan's full name is Lord Ivan Xav Vorpatril and he's happy about it, Xav was the name of a historic prince of Barrayar and he's proud of his family name.

I wish I knew more about Sameth's name because it has some sort of connection to the past of the Old Kingdom. Since this is a world where all the Abhorsens have names like Lirael, Sabriel and then there's him and he's not an Abhorsen. Its a bit of world building that I'd love to poke at, who chose his name and why.

For both my Wills, William is a common name in that era just for different reasons. Though they both are Will or William, I can't imagine either of them ever being called Bill or another variation. Even though I never write Will in William's narration, he is called that, I just write it all out as it keeps them separate in my head.

Jane and Charles are happy about their names, and I don't believe they have any great meanings. Jane was I think a fairly common name in that era. The only thing with Charles is that he's also Charles not Chuck or Charlie, it doesn't suit him at all. That's partly why Logan enjoys messing up his name, it gets to him.

Tumnus is a mainly made up name though there was a Roman god called Vertumnus who was a god of seasons and change, which makes sense. I'm sure there's a connection.

The Pirate King doesn't have a canonical name other than the Pirate King which he prefers.

Carol has a lot of different nicknames that all meant things to her at different points of her life, and her current superhero identity, Captain Marvel, has a lot of significance. As for her given name, Carol Susan Jane Danvers, it's a somewhat old-fashioned sounding name for a character who would now basically be a Gen-Xer (stupid telescoping timelines) but it's hers. She's had it stolen before, so she's kind of attached to keeping it.

Lady Mary has a name that's extremely traditional, every bit of which evokes her status in society. She'd love to be Lady Grantham someday, but for the moment, Lady Mary suits her just fine.

Stiles was named after his Polish maternal grandfather, because, no, his parents didn't actually name him Stiles Stilinski. (He has no canonical first name because TPTB like to be ~~coy~~ annoying.) There's only so many times as a little kid that you can stand having your first name completely butchered by everyone you know before you give up on it completely.

Natasha and names is interesting! Her parents named her Nataliya Alianovna Romanova, which really just translates to Natalia, daughter of Alian Romanov. Currently, my theory is that her dad gave her such a completely normal first name because his own name is so very, very weird and obscure (dear comic-writers, I have no idea what you were trying to imply with 'Alian' - that Nat's dad is Jewish? WHERE DID YOU GET THIS NAME. When even my Russian translator is lost, there is a problem here).

Of course, being Russian, mostly she went by Natasha, and that's the name she tends to associate with herself-as-herself, hence why she's kept 'Natasha' and not 'Natalia'. It's a name, a very ordinary one, but it's hers.

In English, she translates her surname into the masculine, with 'ff' on the end instead of 'v'. This boils down to a) masculine is regarded as neutral in English, and b) aesthetics.

(But she adds her mother's name as her middle name in English, just to even things out. Natasha Xenia Romanoff, Nataliya Alianovna Romanova)

The variants and meanings of Natasha's names reminds me of when I read (or tried to read) "The Brothers Karamazov" in college. For example, one of the main characters is Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov, but his other names are Alyosha, Alyoshka, Alyoshenka, Alyoshechka, Alexeichik, Lyosha, Lyoshenka omgFFFFUUUUU

*cracking up* I actually adore Russian nicknames. THEY ARE SO GREAT. Nat is can also be Natashka (either spoken casually by a close friend, or as an insult), or Natashenka; and other Nataliyas might be Taliya, or Natsuik, or other things (in my head canon, her husband Alexei - whom she called Lyosha - called her 'Nata', and he's the only person in the entire world allowed to call her that).

Anastasiya is the name I REALLY love - it has three sets of nicknames, each derived from a different section of the original name.

Russian names are FUN.

:D

Edited 2014-02-10 21:58 (UTC)

I'm still dealing with the Kaidanovskys in Pacific Rim. One of them is Sasha, one of them is Aleksis.

Problem one: the novelization and the movie and (I think) Pacific Rim: Man, Machines and Monsters do not agree on which of the two is the man and which is the woman.
Problem two: It doesn't MATTER because they're nicknames for the same damn name!!

Thanks, Russia. And thanks, Mr. Beacham, Mr. Del Toro.

Well! A little thing to help you - Sasha is normally the feminine transliteration. Sascha is more likely to be a guy.

*helpful*

(Them both being varients of Aleksandra/Aleksandr still cracks me the hell up, though)

I would not put it past both of them to use both just to confuse people, really.

Henry Mills doesn't really think about his much. It's just his name.

Eriond feels rather more... himself, I suppose, since going by Eriond. He liked Errand just fine! But he's Eriond.

Lois Lane is Lois Lane. She owns it, is herself, and yeah. Institution, yo. In-world and meta level.

Tavi doesn't think about his name as such. Certainly not whether 'Tavi' has any significance. There's also a thin line between thinking of himself by any particular name, as being as immersed as possible in 'Rufus Scipio' tends to be helpful. The only thing he ever thinks about with regard to his name specifically is of using 'ex Cursori'--a job description--rather than 'of Calderon' or 'of Bernardholt,' and sometimes about how he doesn't have a family or father to indicate with his name.

At least, at current Bar point.

In the future? He chooses his own name, partly to break the pattern his family had been in for a millennium, partly to make a point to several people, and partly because it just... fits him. He does not choose the 'great' part, though, that's other people. Even so, knowing that he was born with his father's name does carry weight with him.

DE: A rose by anyother name

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject