Bottom 10 Names In (Or Related To) Fantasy — Suggestions?
I wanted to do a list like this for fantasy, but I so tired tonight. Pretty sure “Renesmee Cullen” is going to make the cut, but I can’t decide on the other nine. But then I thought… “No matter what I put down, our readers will doubtless tell me what I missed. So why not make them tell me pre-emptively?”
So, I’m lookin’ for dumb names. Not silly-comical names like a Terry Pratchett character or, you know, every character in Guilded Age, but names that actively work against the function of the thing named, whether fictional or real (so long as they’re fantasy-related), whether names for persons, places or things.
So, go nuts. I’ll collect the best suggestions and mix in a few of my own, I’ll write it up, and we’ll call it a team effort.
Drake. Draco. Drakonus. any name given to a dragon in anything ever.
Sauron+Saruman. nobody caught the connection before he beat up gandalf and burnt down fangorn forrest?
Frost. Mourn. Frostmourn. it’s cold and it makes people sad when you stab them with it.
Gloin. (tolkien dwarf) he could never go to japan.
Saruman/Curunir totally had that name a few centuries before he turned evil and decided he really wanted some bling. And Gloin? I’m pretty sure all the dwarves have old Norse names. If you ever read the old Eddas you start to find a bunch.
Tom Marvolo Riddle. I get that Rowling had to stretch a bit to get her anagram for “I am Lord Voldemort,” but “Marvolo” sounds like a cheesy stage magician’s name: “Behold! I, Marvolo the Magnificent, will saw my lovely assistant in half. And hide a horcrux in her.”
Harry Potter is a stupid name, too. No wonder he likes “The Chosen One” much better. Harry Potter sounds like something you’d buy for half off in a shady arts and crafts store, or a fuzzy variety of marijuana.
Drizzt Do’Urden is also pretty bad, especially for a race that prides itself on sneaking, hiding, spying, and not getting caught. Just SAYING the name, it sounds like something MEANT to be heard: A comb being shoved through a fence, only to fall through the other side, landing halfway on a cow patty, and a moment later, the other end hitting a clod of dirt.
I’ll think of more, later.
Pfft. Harry Potter is just an ordinary name, like, oh, Jason Green or Peter Long. (OK, that second one has snigger potential if you’re really reaching.)
Horatio Archibald Longbottom Esq, Baron Longbottom, Knight of the Order of Golden Roosters, Chancellor of the Exchequer to the Kingdom of Arundell.
Any setting that mixes name like “Bob” and “Harry” with names like “Magnifico Stellaris” or whatever without providing a proper reason for the difference (cultural differences, real name vs stage name, whatever). Internal consistency and verisimilitude aren’t just fancy words!
Hear, hear!
Internal consistency is important – one of the most important factors for immersion, in fact. So whenever there’s an unexplained name mixing like that it usually means one of two things: the writer is a hack or one of the characters is a Mary Sue…
(The two are not mutually exclusive)
And especially, anything in The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant/Unearth/whatever connected with the name “Kevin.” High Lord Kevin Landwaster, Kevin’s Watch, Kevin’s Lore, Kevin’s Dirt I believe (the rest I got from Wikipedia).
Eragon. Apparently it’s supposed to be ‘dragon’ with one letter changed? But I keep reading it as a cheap knockoff version of ‘Aragorn’.
Durzo Blint, master assassin from… that book about assassins…. Anyway that name always rubbed me in every wrong way. Maybe if he was some kind of half-orc or something it would make sense.
He’s pretty badass if you don’t count the name, though. So, when Durzo Blint turns out to be a fake name that he chose for himself, all I could think was “Come on man, surely you could have done better.”
(Also, the main character’s name, Kylar, is apparently a word in some sort of ancient language that means “someone who kills.” Who would have thought.)
To be fair, Durzo mentioned that when he made up that name, he was drunk off his ass. And when Durzo gets drunk, he chugs a keg or something. It was supposed to be “Flint”, but, serious inebriation there.
Well for starters, you can just use Star Wars again. Fits this category far better, in fact. ;)
Artemis Fowl. Seriously? The name of a goddess (it’s a boy!) followed by the most blatantly significant homonym of the decade.
Tasselhoff Burrfoot. Also Fizban. Also Zifnab. Also Haplo (hooray for Significant Names, though at least that one’s pretty obscure to English-speakers). Weiss and Hickman are repeat offenders across multiple worlds…
No offense to the character, but Raistlin Majere is a -terrible- name.
Ignore the qualities and persona of the character and just look at the name. It looks and sounds like it was cobbled together by rolling syllables around a bingo cage and seeing what came out.
“Wrestling Major”. Heehee.
I think the worst fantasy name I’ve ever seen is “Byron the Berserker.”
Why even call him a berserker if he doesn’t berserk?
Inverse Gold Star.
Black hole?
I came up with the manliest name ever. Here’s the method I used to get it:
Michael is a good first name, you don’t want that to be TOO manly or nobody will be able to talk to him right. Where the REAL manliness comes in is the LAST name. Think about manly activities; Hunting. That’s a manly activity, and another thing that men do is Sweat.
So that’s why the manliest name ever is Michael Huntsweat. Seriously, look at how manly that is “Michael, what are you all sweaty from?” “Hunting”
MANLY.
The only problem is that if you shorten his name, it becomes Mike Huntsweat. Saying that out loud doesn’t sound quite so manly.
crap, that wasn’t supposed to be a reply. I apparently forgot to cancel it or something.
Ethenielle Kirukon Materasu, By the Blessing of the Light, Queen of Kandor, Protector of the Land, Shield of the North, High Seat of House Materasu
or almost any other name in the wheel of time, mainly ’cause you have to remember practically all of them for the story to make sense 4 books from now
Eh, at least WoT’s name are usually fairly consistent within a culture.
However, I can never read “Myrddraal” with a straight face – DAMN YOU, SOCIOLOGY!
… that’s supposed to be “WoT’s names”, not “WoT’s name”. DAMN YOU, TITIVILLUS, DEMON OF TYPOS!
it’s unavoidable. every second female supporting character in japanese shonen manga must hight “karen”, regardless of setting. be it renaissance fantasy, medieval horror, space age sf, contemporary romance: “karen” it is. *sigh*
Chade. The assassin from Hobb’s trilogy. It just feels a bit… Pratchettesque.
Grignr the Barbarian, from Jim Theis’s infamous novel “The Eye of Argon”. I mean, you can barely even pronounce it, it has one vowel and five consonants. And even if you do pronounce it, it just sounds silly.
Kain. For numerous reasons.
It, and the word “dragoon” were thoroughly ruined by final fantasy.
Also, it only ever seems to be given to the “badass” character. You name the “cool” character after a walking aide? “Cane the Murderer; Aide of the Elderly”.
Not to mention how over-done it is. Everywhere you look, Kain, Kain, Kain. “Kain the Badass stabbed his badass arch-rival, Cain, in the chest with his badass cane that was given to him by his badass mentor, Kane.”
Yes… because naming a bad guy after the (biblical) first murderer makes no sense at all.
It is a bit cliché(sp?) though :p
(Also; Kain in FF betrays Cecil who is like a brother to him – whereas the biblical one kills his brother. It fits a little at least.)
okay, hold up. it makes sense in terms of plot, but realistically speaking, it’s like naming a kid hitler. what parent would look at a newborn baby and say “yup. definitely a bad egg. where’s the evil baby name book, honey? bloodblades is a little corny, let’s find something biblical.”
While I can’t speak for every instance of the name being used, FF4 doesn’t really take place in our world. Christianity isn’t a thing there, the bible was never written, and presumably kain is a perfectly acceptable name within the setting.
Basically because of the setting they can make the name a reference to kain in the bible for us, but simultaneously assume that the name holds no such connotations for the characters in the game.
Also, as far as I’m concerned kain is a fantastic badass name, but it is overused. At this point I’d only use it if I the character was a decidedly generic trope, as then it would fit with the overall design. eg, I might use it for a dark, brooding warrior who, while cool, is beyond the ability to properly hide the fact that we’ve seen this character countless times before.
fair call.
I’ve only ever heard Kain being used in FF4 and the Legacy of Kain games, which there are two of. Three games, SO over-used. :P (By what I’ve seen so far, I’m not sure what other games it might’ve been used in, I just know that a lot of kids or whatever would use that name probably).
I’d see it more as a “What names do people instinctively gravitate towards to use as an online RPG character name?” THOSE are the over-used ones.
The protagonist of many of the late Karl Edward Wagner’s books, set in a definitely pre-Christian era, was Kane.
He wasn’t named after the First Fratricide – he was the First Fratricide; cursed to wander the Earth forever
Xenogears is an even better example in support of your argument. That game is deliberately full of biblical references, including Cain and Abel, and – surprise, surprise – Cain kills Abel. It worked well enough.
There’s kind of a historical precedent for murderous characters being named Cain, like, extremely historical.
Well, since you said place names were applicable – Mount Doom. I think Hugo Weaving is the only man on Earth to ever make that sound even remotely threatening, and even he looked like he was sucking on a lemon every time he had to say it in a serious voice.
military intelligence?
Darkseid and Scott Free were pretty bad. But I guess they’re only technically fantasy.
Scott Free was actually more of a pun than anything. But totally with you on Darkseid.
“Darkseid” is a play on words, also – or do you pronounce it (incorrectly, according to Kirby himself) as “Dark-SEED”?
oh, we’re allowed to enter final fantasy names?
ok then: mentioning the dark elf leader “lord astos” always evokes vivid mental images for me :D
“Astos? Mo’ like, yo’ ASS is TOAST! Am I right?”
There were many ass-pulls in the run of that comic. It was made of ass-pulls. That was its very ‘thing’. But I say this: Honestly, I never thought of the plot development, after BM says that, to be one of them.
Balrog. Shadow (I’m thinking of the one in Illusion of Time/Gaia, for making zero sense). But for me it’s difficult to conceive how a name could be just *terrible* except for being unpronounceable, overlong, or just god-ugly. When any name can sound pretty if you personalize it enough, this makes the space of bad names merely a lesson in phonology.
Wait, my screen name. My originality just TOTALLY failed me, but I simply -had- to share my love of this webcomic then and there. *headdesk*
Pug. Seriously, I know it’s to represent his humility or something but…
C’mon! When you’ve got the option to be called ‘Milamber’?
No, no! Milamber was a TERRIBLE name. Honestly it ruined the rest of the book for me.
Huh. Never thought I’d ever meet anybody other than myself who’s read Feist.
Considering how manymany copies of the books and the games have been sold … why did you think that?
Comic books are the worst offenders here, but it’s present in fantasy as well: any name based on nominative determinism. “Durr I’m going to name this villain after what he’s going to become durr I’m clever”
Otherwise? Pretty much any name by Steven Erikson.
“Whiskeyjack”
“Tattersail”
“Ocelot”
“Crokus Younghand” (yes seriously)
The worst example I can think of, offhand, of the “nominiative determinism” thing was in the first storyline of the Sandman spinoff, The Dreaming, in which the serpent of Eden was called Tempto. :p
Which brings me to a related naming pet peeve in comics and animation: the lazy practice of naming a villain by taking a descriptive noun or verb and tacking on the suffixes “-o” or “-or.”
The only monster here is the gambling monster that has enslaved your mother! I call him Gamblor.
tiny… we get it… its ironic because the dude is huge. Are we ever going to see someone named/called tiny that isn’t a hulking brute?
You know what would be fun? Have a member of some proud warrior race nicknamed “tiny”, but he’s a hulking brute. Then you meet other members of his species and it turns out, by their standards, he is tiny.
Aaron Allston did that in “X-Wing: Wraith Squardron”
Hohass “Runt” Ekwesh, 2 meter tall bipedal Equine, with 3x the strength of a similar size human, and notably small for his species.
I’ve made up some awful ones in my years as a D&D player.
I had a king (who was supposed to be all badass with mystical powers and a dragon slaying sword)…his name was Penishar. If the filter even lets you SEE that…it was meant to be pronounced PEN ish ar but, you can imagine what nearly everyone decided to say instead.
Or Genedon, which SEEMED like such a good name until people started saying it quickly. >.<
Book names, names from published works of all sorts? You guys have covered most of 'em.
I always had a beef with Red Sonja though. But then…my name's Sonja. Do you know how annoying it is to have EVERYone ask you if you dye your hair brown to hide the red?
Drizzt always really REALLY annoyed me. And the name Nynaeve al’Meara. That was a chore to pronounce
It may be a chore to pronounce, but it’s probably a more-or-less legit name in a Celtic culture.
In one book, you’ll find the following: Hekatah (guess what she is, I dare you), Saetan (he’s a good guy!), and Lucivar (another good guy, BUT DARK!).
Offender: Anne Bishop.
Siegfried.
it’s been done.
Butz, from FFV. I could never keep a straight face with a name like that, and I always had to change it to Gutz or Guts.
The name Marle from Chrono Trigger never really struck me right either, but just because it doesn’t sound very much like a girl’s name, particularly not a princess.
Totally fair for you to say, though if you’re a native English speaker with no other fluent languages, I think it’s just the “automatic” silent E that’s tripping you up. In most other languages – including the Germanic languages we got English from – the E at the end would be pronounced, even if only as a schwa sound. Our typical silent ending E, combined with the fact that exotic names ending in soft vowels sound more feminine (in our culture) than those ending in consonants, totally messes with “Marle,” which would otherwise sound a lot more like either “Marla” or “Marlay.” Of course, your mileage may vary on those, too. ;)
Why are you complaining that ‘Marle’ doesn’t sound like a princess’s name? As you may recall, that wasn’t her real name. It was a pseudonym that she used to hide her identity as a princess. It works.
Good call on ‘Butz’, though. And while we’re on the subject of FFV, let’s not forget that the villain of the story was a freaking tree named ‘X-Death’. Man, that such a bad game.
I guess this doesn’t count, because it’s a nickname, but “Grima Wormtongue” always bothered me. “What shall we do in this time of crisis? Let’s get some advice from Grima Wormtongue!” It’s ridiculous, like if an influential advisor to the leader of the free world were nicknamed “Turd Blossom” or something.
how did that guy even get a job?
That’s a nonsensical complaint. The person who sought advice from him (Theoden) didn’t call him “Wormtongue”. Wormtongue was an insult and it was meant to be an insult, and it was used solely by the people that despised Grima.
Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax.
Real person.
Lord Dunsany’s younger brother? Wow, that is one hell of a name. Too bad his brother never named a character after him.
Gamble Nelkin (female). Tax collector, therapist or actuary.
Stabbs Faysus
Really? I have to look this up, what from? XD
as a WoW player i am always annoyed with the people that name their characters off of their class. Gnomershaman, huntard, stabsyorback, etc etc etc
I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for “OprahWindfury”, though.
did the list ever go up?
Here was a time when the ‘double descriptor’ surnames would get on my nerves, but considering how most modern surnames have origins from generational occupations (potter, wheeler, smith, etc.) I learned to let them slide forthe most part.
The ones that pop to the front of my mind are from my old days of playing EverQuest.
Lord Doljonijiarnimorinar (forever referred to as simply “Lord Bob” by players)
ANY of the ‘boss’ or zone names from the Gates of Discord and Omen of War expansions. Toss a cat on the keyboard, add any vowels or apostrophes for flavor and done. ::sigh::
He-Man, and just about every other character in the show.
Oh, come on. You couldn’t emphasize the amount of testorteron the man had enough. He was not just MAN, he was HE-man!
it happened in germany – way back in the olden days, a bunch of avid d&d-players-gone-entrepreneurs released the first german RPG system, inanely named “the black eye” (but hey, for us native speakers “das schwarze auge” holds some quite different connotations , so they can’t really be blamed for that blunder).
everybody and their lawyer gave it a try, only to discover that the magic system was TOTALLY absurd; somebody had had the brilliant idea to add some flavor by having the players chant their enchantments, and rhyme their invocations – from memory, or the spell would fail :)
“FLIM FLAM FESS – AWAY, DARKNESS !” … roughly the “black eye” version of the 1st level “light” spell – the dungeon master was actually encouraged to force the players to recite these little gems …. and it got worse from there :) :)
Ah, yes… I’ve heard about that. I’m glad I’m not playing a mage. Even in the current edition, they still retained most of the silly spell names.
Recently A Fish. Is it even a name?
Any relation to Ham Fish and Preserved Fish?
SF, not fantasy – but SF is a subset of fantasy, really – Vonard Kleesp, from The Wizard of Karres the multi-authored sequel to James Schmitz’s The Witches of Karres.
Schmitz loved odd-ball names, anyway – i still have a fondness for “Gefty Rammer”, even after forty years – but “Vonard Kleesp”? Hard to keep a straight face when Vonard Kleesp is acting all menacing…
No mention of Simon R. Green yet? While a descent author, he really has to have the worst character names I’ve *ever* read…
With him we get gems such as Merlin Satanspawn, Leo Morn, Harry Fabulous, Janissary Jane, and The Blue Fairy, etc.
Can we talk about nonsensical and unnecessary apostrophes? Like in Farscape, D’argo’s name is pronounced… “DARgo”. Not “Duh Argo” or however it would be if you decided to acknowledge the apostrophe.
James Clemens, author of the “Wit’ch Star” series, is a repeat offender and sprinkles apostrophes throughout his writing like glitter on a decoupage project. I daresay I do NOT want to sit down at the tab’le with my friends Er’ril the hu’man and Tol’Chuk the og’re for a piping hot cup of co’coa. Are you f’ucking kidding m’e?
Sir Roderick Ponce Von Fontlebottom the magnificent bastard
(5 internet points to whoever recognizes the name)
any character in a sara douglass book.
I mean, ‘Axis Battleaxe’ – thats probably one of the better ones.
I read one of her series and would inwardly cringe at every character’s name, especially ones like ‘Stardrifter’. I can only forgive that kind of thing in a 70’s paperback.
Fawk. Fawk Skidivee
Argent- latin word for silver. Got a character related to silver? Or better yet, a silver dragon? Name him this.