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ways_back_room2015-11-03 12:58 pm
yakalskovich) wrote in ways_back_room2015-11-03 12:58 pm
Entry tags:
DE: What's in a name?
Let's talk pseudonyms, nicknames, nom-de-guerres or aliases: do your characters have any, and if so, where do they come from and what do they mean? Do other people mangle their names, or persistently call them things they don't like?
Conversely, do your characters nickname other people, either to their faces, behind their backs, or in their own heads?
Conversely, do your characters nickname other people, either to their faces, behind their backs, or in their own heads?
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Shephard's younger brother calls him Ado, because little kids hand out nicknames and keep it up to be annoying. Shephard's radio call sign is Zanahorias, because a couple of Mexican members of the Resistance overheard him wondering when the hell he ate carrots after a particularly bad helicopter flight. The Vortigaunts call him 'the Marine'.
Ellen's primary nickname, which she is annoyed about but cannot do anything about, is 101. Her father briefly checked in with the Capital Wasteland's lone radio host after escaping the Vault and mentioned that he had a daughter. He never told the radio host her name, so all future radio references to her were to 'the kid from Vault 101' or just '101'. It stuck. Her official Brotherhood of Steel designation at this point is Paladin 101 and she's given up trying to convince anyone to use her actual name instead.
Stacker Pentecost's name is Marshall, thank you very much. The only human being alive who calls him anything else without being fed to a kaiju is Herc Hansen, who has permission to call him Stacks or something similar when they are both off duty.
El Santo is mostly just known as Santo; if he's ever called anything else it's 'el Enmascarado de Plata', the Silver-Masked One, which is usually rendered in his movie's subtitles or translations as just 'Silver Mask'.
Fawkes is just Fawkes. Nobody's nicknamed him yet and nobody's likely to.
Varric's only nickname I can think of is 'Tethras, you son of a bitch'.
Wee Mad Arthur earned his moniker by starting off life with an act of self-defense: he throttled a bird of prey that tried to eat him as a baby. He's done a lot of that kind of thing since.
I've dropped Edward Kenway. I'll be apping another character this month but until I've read a few more issues with him in them I'm not sure of what nicknames he might have.
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ETA: Found it.
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Hank is actually a nickname. His legal name is Henry McCoy. I don't know that there is ever a canonical reason for the nickname.
Rollo will earn the name, or epithet of "Ganger"; assuming Vikings continues to be inspired by history. Ganger seems to mean someone who leads, but I get the impression it's someone who leads the unruly or some such.
I am quite sure at least one of Izana's friends calls her Iza-chan.
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As to nicknames, well she gives nicknames to those she
cares aboutdeems not so bad and useful. Quentin is "the kid", Tybalth is "the cat", May is "the Fetch", and Toby is "the Death of Me".no subject
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Tess itself it a short form of her birth name, Lutessa.
Watchtower is more of a code name, so I'm not sure if that counts.
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Yrael actually made a game of collecting names from people who thought he was just a white cat, for a while there. He gathered quite a few, but I can hardly remember them all now. The name "Mogget" still lingers in use occasionally.
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(Fandom has latched onto Apollo as a nickname for him, but there's no actual mention of this as his nickname -- a random soldier who doesn't know him mentions that some revolutionary leader, somewhere, is called that, and guesses that maybe it's this blond guy -- and it's sort of hilariously inappropriate and he'd haaaaate it, so I don't go with that as a nickname. Grantaire's maybe called him it a time or two to annoy him, but Grantaire has a wide variety of ways to pull Enjolras's metaphorical pigtails, so. Fandom has also latched onto "(the) chief" for Enjolras, because he's called the chief of the Amis, but there's no particular indication that he gets addressed as that by friends.)
As a kid he got called Bastien occasionally, but his dad isn't really a pet name sort and he's not the kind of guy who attracts perpetually childish nicknames, so he hadn't been called that in years even before he moved away to Paris where everybody uses his last name.
Cosette's name is itself a nickname; her full name is Euphrasie. (Apparently this is a bilingual pun. Because Victor Hugo never met a pun he didn't love.) She got called the Lark as a kid, but, uh, that's a nickname full of traumatic awfulness and let's not use it even if she does keep getting lark symbolism.
She doesn't really have other nicknames -- well, Mlle Noir, but that's just "you know, that girl who's always walking in the park wearing a black dress" from people-watchers who didn't know her actual name -- but she'd be happy to acquire some. Maybe some of the other convent girls came up with some.
Thor will answer interchangeably to "Thor" and "Odinson" (though one is a lot more formal than the other; they're not actually interchangeable per se), but he doesn't really have other nicknames. What he does have are a bunch of kennings. I figure a bunch of the Norse ones (though not all) are ones he'd know, and that Asgard has its own too. These aren't exactly nicknames -- if you say "hey, are you the one called thunderer and giant's bane?" he'd say "Yep, that's me!" but nobody's going to go around saying things like "hey, whetstone-skulled, driver of goats, want some mead?" except as a joke or a poetic turn of formality. But they're pseudonyms of a sort, and he's proud of at least most of them.
He's not much of a nicknamer as a rule, aside from his tendency to interpret a name ending in "son" as a patronymic even in cultures where that isn't true anymore. But if he ever had cause to formally praise someone for their deeds, he'd totally come up with a kenning or two if they didn't already have a suitable one, because that's what you do. He's no skald or scholar to really come up with an awesome one for the ages, but he'd do his best.
Kazul doesn't have any nicknames, actually! Not canonically, anyway. Neither does she give them. She'd probably be huffy about one unless she really liked it, in which case she'd be transparently pleased (but maybe fake-huffy.) But mostly she feels "Kazul" is more than short and simple enough to say correctly, thank you.
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Raven . . . has adobebutt! From Ace. And probably lots from Coyote on a bad day. Or a good one. Generally, though, his name is his nature is his title is his function. So here we are.
Galadan Ahahahaha no.
Diana -- Princess? It's kind of a nickname? And Wonder Woman, of course, which is not what she calls herself. Um. I think that's it?
Michael the Archangel -- I guess some assholes could try to call her Mike or Mikey, but they would get the wrath of god laid down on them, so. Nah. She also doesn't nickname people.
Dean Winchester -- he doesn't really have nicknames? He does have terrible rockstar aliases, though. Those . . . kind of count? He is also an inveterate giver of nicknames, especially to Sam. But anyone is fair game. Specifics happen to other people.
X-23 actually has nicknames. Laura is one! Joe is another! Joe is secretly her favorite. It's just so unconnected to anything complicated that it's kind of nice. And Twenty-Three, which is what Stitch calls her.
Nynaeve -- has none and gives none, unless calling someone a bloody foolish sheepherder counts.
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Names are important in his canon, and especially to Hotspur: he makes a particular point of calling people (*coughhalandhisdadcough*) by their surnames rather than titles he thinks they don't deserve.
Cesario is like a nickname? ...it's not a nickname.
Liz is Liz to her friends even though she introduces herself to strangers as Elizabeth, and Arabella is called Bell by her husband (and by other people in the TV show, because they rightly recognized that it's an adorable nickname).
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...Brienne needs better associates, is the point. (ETA: she also has the unofficial title of Maid of Tarth, which is where the username comes from. I think it's GRRM's riff on the Maid of Orleans, Joan of Arc, and it reflects her avoidance of the usual life of women in her world).
Jean Prouvaire has adopted the medieval spelling of his first name, Jehan, so I guess that's kind of a nickname. Fantine and Combeferre have no nicknames.
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(I kind of want to get her action figure too).
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Fantine also nicknames her daughter Euphrasie as Cosette.
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Charles has been called Charlie, it makes him wince, Logan in the future will call him Chuck and he won't like it. Raven calls him professor as a joke and then she later names him Professor X which sticks.
The only real nickname Quentin has is kiddo which the Luidaeg and Toby call him.
Sameth gets called princeling by Yrael and Sam by Nick and other people, it makes him squirm.
Moist chooses his own name and isn't a big fan of nicknames, Claudia Donovan calls him Al and it makes him grumble.
Jane doesn't have a nickname.
William is sometimes called Will in canon, I tend to write his name out to keep him separate from Will Scarlett but he answers to both. In Bisbee, he's sometimes called Evans but that's to be rude or when someone forgets his first name.
Demeter is sometimes called Dem but she like Thor has titles which she will answer to if you're summoning her. Depending on which one you pick and how you say it, she might even be nice about the summoning.
Ivan is just Ivan, though his almost canonical nickname is 'Ivan, you idiot.' At this point in time for him, he doesn't mind that too much, he hasn't been that much of an idiot in a while. Miles has jokingly called him his donkey though its meant with affection. His wife Tej called him Ivan Xav, Xav being his middle name.
Tumnus doesn't have any nicknames.
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Henry: No, not really. On the other hand, the entire town has two names in his head, FOR GOOD REASON.
Evelyn: I have no decided if she'll ever use shorter forms of her first name with people (complicated by my housemate's cat being named Eve and the namespace collision hurts my head). She will, however, get called (Lady) Trevelyan, Herald/Herald of Andraste, and the Inquisitor before she's done. She probably does sort of nickname some people in her head later on, usually when labeling them as some form of idiot.
Star Wars: While my app is often called by just the first half of his name, there is, of course, Anakin--who only gets called Ani by Padme and probably Jar-Jar, at this point. He does sometimes give some people nicknames, sometimes! Notably, he calls Ahsoka 'Snips.' My personal nickname for his later alias is 'FaceMask IdiotHead.'
Lois: Very rarely gets called 'Lo' by her dad. I have headcanon that there are about two people allowed to call her that. Oliver sometimes calls her 'Legs' (for good reason). She gives nicknames out like candy, though! Also superhero aliases. She's good at both of those.
Tavi: He doesn't really give people nicknames, although I expect his son does not usually get called 'Desiderius' because that's a mouthful. If someone has a nickname they like better, he'll use it. Tavi himself? Well, Max calls him Calderon and Kitai calls him 'my Aleran' or 'chala' (in fact she almost never says his name, unless she has a Reason--flirting included). And very likely nowadays he'll get called Gaius by people, that'll take getting used to. Actual names... argh at least his variants aren't as different as all of Aragorn's or I'd tear my hair out: Tavi, with alternately 'of Bernardholt/Calderon,' 'Patronus Gaius,' and 'ex Cursori' depending on his age; Rufus Scipio during that hilarious two years where he stole a Legion; Gaius Octavian by birth; Tavar by the Canim; and given how his name is in the history books, I figure when he's confirmed he switches to Gaius Tavarus.
He disclaims all responsibility for the 'Magnus' history appends to that and hopes it isn't in his own lifetime because no thanks.
There's a reason he stays Tavi to his friends, okay.
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My money is on . . . . . Seneschal Bran.
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eeeeeee flemeth
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Dixie: Is Dix pretty much exclusively to Brisco, but sometimes to some of her closer friends.
Juliet: Is Jules to Shawn.
Pinkie: Has been called 'Pink' a few times.
Eponine: I think Gavroche has called her 'ep' a few times.
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