Wednesday DE: Nomenclature

[angry_friendship_wolf]

Pulling from the Suggestion Box today, with many thanks to abyssum_invocat for today's DE.

What does your characters username (and/or given name in canon) mean? What associations from it do you use?

Comments

[andinfluencepeople]

What Chuck finds it’s most difficult to do is “make friends”; so I used the latter half of the title because I am a terrible human sometimes and thought it was funny. I’m pretty sure he calls himself Chuck after a Chuck Yeager, but not because he’s some huge fan more because he was looking for a nickname that would not make American Shatterdome people make fun of him and Chuck Yeager is a cool dude (pretty sure he’s a Charles in fact, but he never goes by it).

Legolas is “findsthesun” a) because of the chapter “the ring goes south” where he CHEERFULLY and IRRITATINGLY declares he goes to find the sun on Caradhras, but also because Legolas lives seeking the bright side and the funny side of things. He’s not innocent- he’s been a warrior for centuries. But as a young elf he’s not marked by existential sorrow in the way many older elves and many humans are. He used to be (on LJ) “called_greenleaf” because it’s not a nickname or surname, it’s a translation *fistshake*

Clint is “hasthehighground” both because he typically does, and because he prefers to play an observer role first and foremost - he doesn’t give himself away quick because once you have you’re no longer in a defensible position. He’s not a fan of nondefensivle positions.

[thebattycakes]

Cisco Ramon makes_the_toys - After learning he suddenly has superpowers Barry Allen spends a day out on an airfield with the S.T.A.R. Labs team testing out his newfound abilities. After hearing about the jobs Dr. Wells and Caitlin will be performing on his trial run, Barry asks Cisco, "So what do you do?"

To which Cisco replies, "I make the toys, man."

Francisco is the stuffy name his parent gave him and he dislikes it greatly, mostly because he's got a huge chip on his shoulder regarding his family. As time goes by and he starts to reconcile things he doesn't mind it so much and one of the Wells's even uses it on him and he doesn't protest, although there are the occasional eyerolls

Barry Allen run_barry - "Run Barry, Run!" is a line that was dropped in the first episode of the show and has become a thing throughout the series. It's a peak moment, and the phrase resonates in different ways when it pops up again. Sometimes it's encouragement, sometimes it's a jeer, and sometimes it comes up and just breaks your freaking heart and I love them all. Unfortunately, run_barry_run was already taken, so I had to drop the last run off. :/

I don't quite remember if it's head canon or canon-canon, but I have it down in my brain that Bartholomew is Barry's grandfather's name, on his mom's side. His middle name Henry is for his father.

Matt Murdock man_without_fear - When I decided to re-app Matt with the new canon I thought I'd have to think up something clever and I was so worried because I was in a rush to grab him because I wanted him so much and I was afraid of him getting snapped up. I'd missed playing his character and I loved the new Netflix version of him. So, on a semi-desperate whim I plugged in 'manwithoutfear' and was unsurprised to find it taken. But, I wondered 'what if... ' and boom, plugging in the underlines yielded an available journal name. And I like it better anyways, so laa!

Daredevil is labeled 'the man without fear' throughout his history and it just sounds cool, so I love having it. Even if it isn't some clever word play or thing taken from the show.

Matthew Michael Murdock is most likely his mom, who was a devout Catholic and had been on the path to becoming a nun before falling for a boxer named Jack, taking the names of saints for her son.

Logan adamantiumloner - Geez, I've had this journal for so long I don't even know anymore. Adamantium for his claws, and loner because... he's a loner? I mean it works, and hell if I know what I'd change it to if I ever decided to do that. I'm not particularly proud of it, but I like it.

As for Logan.... somethingsomething Howlett, somethingsomething murder... on the run and Canada... brainwashing and other stuff... there was a leprechaun... truth was revealed or was it?... other other stuff... I'm serious about the leprechauns... stuff and things! :D?

Hellboy bprd_agent_red - Another journal I've had forever. He's a BPRD agent and the color of his trackery-do thingy is red, and his nickname is Red so... it works!

Hellboy came from his father and the soldiers who found him during WWII when he was a wee little demon-tyke.

[angry_friendship_wolf]

Okay, let's see if I can do this on my terrible netbook with its too-tiny keys and general oversensitivity.

So, Yamato's username is pretty straightforward. He's outwardly pretty angry seeming, he has the Crest of Friendship, and he's heavily wolf-themed. Simple.

His actual name is more interesting. He and his brother Takeru together form a reference to Yamato Takeru, both the name itself (which in folklore and maybe in history, although that is heavily disputed, was a name assumed by whoever the strongest warrior of the time was, and acquired from its previous bearer by killing them) and its most famous (and according to mythology, last) bearer, Prince Osu.

So, the tragedy of YT-Osu was that while he was extraordinarily clever, skilled, and brave, he had a bloodthirsty streak and a near pathological need to prove himself: His father, fearing him, sends him on a suicide mission to kill the current YT when he's 11-14 or so, and after he succeeds, Osu, now Yamato Takeru, continues to take certain death quests and pursues greater and greater challenges and glory, hoping that by doing so he'll be permitted to return to court. He never is, and eventually it kills him when he tries to challenge a god and gets cursed with illness.

As far as references to be making with a name goes, it's a pretty on the nose one for Yamato, who is intelligent, athletic, brave, skilled -- and utterly obsessed with making himself useful to people and proving himself to them because he can't understand anyone actually liking him otherwise, and who, like YT-Osu, is effectively just running on a neverending treadmill, because he'll never be able to out-prove his own self-loathing.

Since the historical Yamato Takeru's name is spelled with katakana due to scholarly disagreement on how to spell it with kanji, so is Yamato's -- if you were to spell it with kanji, the two options that academics debate over would be [yama]-[he], 'mountain gate,' or [jichi]-[to], 'sword of sunlight.'

His surname, Ishida (at least when spelled with that particular set of kanji), actually links him to the Ishida clan, a bottom-rung clan of samurai who briefly rose to prominence under the auspices of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, only to be disgraced and fracture into a dozen smaller clans, of which Yamato's family seems to be one.


Well, that got long.

[have_no_mercy]

Tess - Her username comes from Oliver nicknaming her Mercy, and that her licence plate says "No Mercy". Lutessa Lena comes from Lionel Luthor, though I have no clue where he got Lutessa from. Lena Luthor is Lex's sister in the comics. Tess Mercer is a play on comic Lex's bodyguard Mercy Graves and Miss Tessmacher from the original movies.

Kylo Ren - He's a Kight of Ren and a member of the First Order. Pretty simple. Ben Solo comes from his dad, Han Solo, and was named after Ben Kenobi. Where he got Kylo Ren from, I have no idea.

Victor Creed - A play on old man Logan. Victor is named after his mother, Victoria.

[skyhigh_seance]

Klaus' username has a double reference, beyond using his public superhero name (The Seance). First, of course, is that our boy is high as a kite the vast majority of the time. The other is a reference to Vietnam. Gonna be a ride. :)

[bjornwilde]

Viv is dreamingofelectricsheep to riff of Philip K. Dick and one of my favorite panels of hers. Vivian is her full name. I am not sure about connections to the martyrs or to the Lady of the Lake, but Viv is pretty otherworldly. She also used Vision as a family name, though that is more for records since she is the only Viv synthizoid. I think she also uses it as a gesture of affection for her father, the Vision. I think she prefers Viv, verses Vivian, as it feels more personal for others to use it, implying she's making connections.

Sabine is explosive_artist because she is and that's the character shorthand they gave her in the Meet Sabine promo that was aired before Rebels hit the screens. I am not sure about Sabine as a name or where they got it. There is the Sabines, an Italic peoples of the ancient world, but given what happened to the women of the tribe, I don't like that association. I don't know enough about wrens to speculate on that connection.

Ahsoka is jedi_interrupted , because she was well on her way to becoming a full Jedi but then got framed for a terrorist act against the Republic and the Order kicked her out and threw her to the wolves. After she was proven innocent, the Order invited her back but she walked away. Since she's come back in Rebels, I'm tempted to update to something like light_in_balance to reflect Lee's Anakin (forceimbalance ), since I see Ahsoka as a scion of the Light side, but I haven't taken the time yet.

I don't know of any meaning to Ahsoka as a name.

Tybalt is shadowandsnark as he is snarky as all hell throughout the entire series and uses shadows as short cuts between places (think teleportation between shadows but he does have to travel some distances between the shadows). As for Tybalt, it is the name he chose when he became a king of cats. He is a great fan of theater and saw Shakespeare plays when they were first performed. I imagine he was also a fan of the Bard, and so he chose the name. The fact Mercutio called Tybalt a "prince of cats" in Romeo and Juliet just sealed the deal.

Jessica Drew is snarky_spider because as I was debating re-apping her, I was outlining some fanfic in which she and the other spider ladies form a team. Jess being Jess, she comes up with obnoxious code names for the girls; Cindy Moon was Baby Spider, Anya Corezon was Sporty Spider, and Gwen Stacy was Posh Spider. Yes, these names are based on the Spice Girls and Jess did that on purpose. The girls tried to strike back by calling her Snarky Spider, but she was delighted instead. I need to get to writing that.

BTW, Peter is Dorky Spider, Miles is Nerdy Spider, and Natasha is Scary Spider.

And I just found out the first use of the name Jessica comes from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. I don't know what to do with this information yet.

[for_everyone]

I kind of think Sabine may be a sideways reference to Satine, their last particularly prominent Mandalorian.

[ceitfianna]

Cassian's username childofrebellion is fairly self-explanatory, he started fighting when he was six. I don't remember if I looked for any other usernames before that one. His full name is Cassian Jeron Andor. Cassian is a Latin derived name that means empty or hollow, I saw it on one gifset defined as void, but I don't like that.
Hollow makes more sense because he fills himself up with the Rebellion. He's not someone who's ever comfortable with his name being shortened to Cass. I think a big part of this is that he spends a lot of time using aliases, the known ones in canon are Willix, Aach, Joreth Sward and I've added that he's used Jeron as well. So when he has a chance to be called by his actual name, he wants to hear all of it. This DE reminded me to find a nice set of stills with all the crew's names.

Quentin's username heatherandsteel is what his magic smells like, this is an important detail in his canon. Some older Fae like the Luidaeg can actually figure out a character's lineage from the smell of their magic. Quentin is a variation of Quintus and means five, I don't know why he has that name. I suspect its going to come up later in canon since a close relative of his also has a name that means five.

Charles' username balancingminds wasn't my first choice but I don't remember what the other ones I tried were. It ended up being perfect because I think he really sees himself as a balance and that contentment and peace comes from balance. His name Charles a fairly classic name and seems to mean man or free man. He's another one who doesn't do well with nicknames, I think Logan is the only person who gets away with calling him Chuck.

Moist von Lipwig is a very Pratchett type of name in that it sounds Germanic to fit being from Uberwald and is also embarrassing. There's a reason why Moist much prefers to go by one of his aliases, the one he uses the most in Milliways is Alfred Spangler. His username was trickier, another one where I don't remember what I tried but I ended up with morethanprops because as a conman, the props he uses are helpful but not all that makes him successful.

Demeter's username wheatencrown is from one of the ways to identify her in art is her crown of wheat. In terms of her names meaning, it looks like there's kind of a chicken and an egg thing going on because according to one thing, the two parts of her name in Greek mean Earth Mother. Yet she's also the goddess of Agriculture so the name and the words might be interconnected.

Will was my very first character and so has the simplest username because I didn't know that usernames with more layers was a thing, he's just will_scarlett.

William's username comes from how he acts and sees himself in canon as not his father so not_his_pa. For both character's, William is a classic English name that's apparently made up of words for will and protection or helmet. I think in both cases, the character's name came from someone else in the family. They both go by Will or William but not other nicknames. For me writing and talking about them, I always call William Evans, William.

Sameth's username makesthings comes from a line of his in canon where he's saying that all he's good for is making things. I'm still amazed that no one else had grabbed this name. I can't find a meaning of Sameth since its a name that's a combo of real name and added end bit to be fantasy.

Ivan is the Russian equivalent of John, which fits him, in canon, he's the closest to normal in his family. His username vorpatril is pretty self-explanatory as that's his last name. I wasn't able to get any of the other usernames I thought of like Ivan, you idiot or a variation on that, but I do like this one since in canon he's sometimes called by just his last name.

Tumnus seems to be derived from Vertumnus who was a Roman god of orchards, gardens and seasonal changes. His username is one that chat helped me think of friend_of_lucy and its really perfect as it covers how he thinks of himself and his role in canon.

[splash_of_blue]

Sam's username is necessary_child, which is one of the names he's repeatedly given in canon. He's his father's necessary child, the one who was created only because his brother Balder was killed and Sam's father needed someone to wield the Light. His father treats him only like the tool he was created to be, and Sam would very much like to tell you he's made his peace with that...

Lucifer, his given name, means Light-bringer. Which, uh...

All the alternative names he picks for himself in canon (Sam Linnfer, Sebastian Teufel, Luc Satise) reference any and all of his names or famous nicknames. Lucifer, Satan, the Devil, etc.


Molly's username is cute_bruiser. It's a TV Tropes reference; she was originally the page image, and is arguably the trope namer, given that she's cute as hell and her big brother Chase calls her 'Bruiser'. She's named after the little sister of her creator, Brian K. Vaughan: Molly Hayes Vaughan.


McGonagall's username is lionlike_tabby. It's a reference to her Animagus form, a tabby cat, and her Hogwarts house affiliation: Gryffindor House, whose symbol is a lion. It's also a reference to her courage, which is one of her most notable personality traits.

Minerva is the Roman name for the goddess of war and wisdom/knowledge. It's appropriate, given that she's both a fighter and an academic. 'McGonagall' may be a reference to the (in)famously godawful Scottish poet, or it might just be JKR deciding she wanted another alliterative Scottish name and picking that one at random.


I was totally going to do all my pups, but unfortunately I am absolutely bloody knackered. Soz lol.

[for_everyone]

notallofus comes from a line in the Rebels pilot in which our sort of teenboy-audience-insert-protagonist Ezra tells Kanan, "I thought the Empire wiped out all the Jedi," to which Kanan answers, "Not all of us." Which I think I said before but, out of context every time I see it now I think #notalljedi, oops. But it's meant to refer to his being among the few (or uh not so few but in the context of his story, few) Jedi to survive Order 66.

Kanan's birth name was Caleb Dume, and he adopted the name when he went on the run. His adopted name is in part a way of acknowledging Janus Kasmir, a conman/thief who helped Kanan survive the immediate aftermath of Order 66.

I don't have much for his names apart from this. More than I think most other Star Wars properties, Rebels draws names pretty directly from Tanakh/Bible/Mythology sources with little alteration, such as Ezra (and his parents Ephraim and Mira), Caleb, Sabine, and Hera. Kanan is a real world given name, but I think also likely drawn from Canaan. I don't know if many of these have much specific thematic relevance. Caleb was one of the Twelve Spies sent by Moses to scout out the land of Canaan as the possible promised land of the Israelites? idk.


for_everyone is taken from the book A New Dawn (in which John Jackson Miller writes an amazing Hera, I'm just saying). In probably my favorite iteration of the "Who are you working for?!?!" dialogue exchange, Hera answers with, "I'm working for everyone." Hera specifically rejected working only with her father's Free Ryloth Movement, and left her home to build a wider-scale rebellion. In the book, she discusses her view that no individual or even specific group can dismantle the Empire, that those with various interests and backgrounds would have to come together and work collectively to defeat the regime. SO I really like that as a focus for her character and what she brings to the Rebellion.

'Hera' seems to be obviously referring to the Greek goddess associated with motherhood, among other things. But there's no Greek mythology in the Star Wars universe, and I didn't want to basically import it. For various reasons I came up with a headcanon that Twi'lek children choose their first names, rather than being 'given' them, when they're around four years old. (They also adopt a clan name, which doesn't necessarily have to be the clan they were born from.) I invented that Hera chose her name as a name-version of the word 'heraal', a Twi'lek word meaning 'to carry.' I thought it played nicely with her character, and also had some connections to motherhood that are there without being... super direct.

ETA: oh I'm going to add that I made up Hera using an alias, Isis Vao, when she was younger, which I'm mentioning because that was a lot me being a dork. 'Isis' is a reference to the character Hera Agathon from Battlestar Galactica, who was briefly called Isis, and 'Vao', which I had Hera describe as a large clan on Ryloth, is a reference to Mission Vao, a Twi'lek character in Knights of the Old Republic.

[configuration_birdwatcher]

I wanted to reference the technical nomenclature of Bastion's three different forms that they can change between and contrast that against their personal interests, hence configuration_birdwatcher.

"Bastion" is the name of their general model, and E54 a specific iteration of that model (there are also B73 Bastions referenced in-game; Null Sector got ahold of some in 2069), but they don't have any better ideas for what to answer to and haven't needed to distinguish themself from any other Bastions or E54s since the war, so they've accepted both as nicknames. Of course, for official out-of-universe purposes they're known as Bastion, and that's also what the majority of characters call them in-universe. (Orisa calls them E54 more often than anyone else does.)

Their name is, of course, also a word for a stronghold or a protruding part of a fortification that provides a good defensive firing position, which I'm sure was intentional in-universe since the first version of the model was designed by humans, and fits well with them being basically the Platonic ideal of a Defense character in sentry configuration - tough, pours many bullets very fast into the enemy team, completely stationary and mostly immune to knockback - before Offense and Defense got combined into Damage.

Wilson ended up with takethatnature because it was one of the few quotes that wouldn't easily get him mixed up with a character from another fandom whom he had some broad element in common with, but that showed a fairly prominent side of his personality, namely his petty vindictiveness and distaste for many aspects of the outdoors.

I think he got his first name as a reference to Cast Away but etymologically it doesn't mean anything more sophisticated than "Son of Will". I don't know if he actually has a parent named Will, I've never bothered to give his parents first names and neither has canon. His surname, Higgsbury, seems to have been invented for the express purpose of sounding like a stuffy upper-class English name because it basically doesn't exist on surname origin websites. They find Higgs and sometimes similar-sounding names like Hooksbury or Hawkesbury, though the latter's still not very common. I have to wonder if Wilson's parents or grandparents changed it on purpose while immigrating. His middle name is only shown as an initial in-game, but one of the devs said on the game forums that the P stands for Percival, which also seems to be intended to sound stuffy and stereotypically posh.

Cirava was given a flash-card introduction profile like the rest of the cast of Hiveswap Friendsim/Hiveswap Act 2, and one of the three bullet points was "MOISTUREWAVE ✌️ AESTHETIC". moisturewave_aesthetic was one of the most quotable things said to or about them that would fit in the character limit, and accordingly the version without the underscore was already taken by another Cirava blog.

According to the MS Paint Adventures wiki: Cīvaras are religious robes that Buddhist monks wear. Hermod is a minor Norse god of war. He rode to the underworld on Odin's eight-legged horse (Sleipnir) to (unsuccessfully) beg for his brother (Baldr) to be revived.

I don't know what the significance of any of that is to Cirava's life or personality, but there you go.

Aradia got her journal name, death_fangirl, from an amusing epithet Terezi used for her in one of their first conversations after they reunited by the Green Sun. The original 12 trolls from Homestuck Act 5 were all named by fan suggestion, which I believe is the last time Homestuck ever did that; Aradia's name is a combination of two different people's suggestions. Aradia is a goddess of witches from neopagan folklore, and Megido (usually spelled Megiddo but altered to fit the spelling requirements for troll names) is the location, an ancient city and a small man-made mountain, from which we get the term Armageddon. According to Christian eschatology that's the site of a significant battle of the end times, and from there the term got generalized to refer to the whole apocalypse. The MSPA wiki adds that Megiddo is an important archaeological excavation site, and Aradia does like archaeology.

Her first name's symbolism honestly seems to fit her dancestor Damara a lot better than it does Aradia herself, since Damara is a member of the Witch class in Sgrub instead of a Maid like Aradia and had an alternate universe counterpart who learned time magic, but both names revolve around Aradia being responsible for the trolls' apocalypse and just generally a harbinger of doom.