Fitz
America - it's actually what some people think my friend's name is. In fact it's just a misheard version of "I'm Erica"

lol :)

People named after countries is also common. The most famous example is a videogame developer named American McGee. America is nothing more than a romanized twist on Amerigo Vaspucci or whoever the heck named this place.

yeah i dont pay attention to history

Don't underestimate your knowledge, it was Amerigo Vespucci indeed :) McGee's no stranger to me, either. I played a bunch of his games, too, including Alice and Scrapland. And I knew the name America wouldn't be untypical. The chick who plays "Ugly Betty" is America Ferrera.

What always made me wonder, though, is how the name Cristobal Colon morphed into Christopher Columbus?

Fitz
What always made me wonder, though, is how the name Cristobal Colon morphed into Christopher Columbus?

He probably changed it after immigration. Cristobel sounds like a girl's name and who'd want to be called Colon?

This way, he even gets to direct the occasional movie.
;D

Most of my titles are pretty straightforward - I'm not too good at thinking them up =( As for character names -

20 Galaxies
Ru Hadley) Back in seventh grade I gave Ru some long Japanese name I don't remember now. People complained the name was too long to remember, so I just shortened it to one of the syllables, and that became her permanent name. Hadley came from George Hadley, a meteorologist.

Jayson Hadley) This character was based off of my brother, and my brother really liked the name Jason, so he got this one.

Colleen Citcraeci) I just liked the name Colleen. Citcraeci = icearctic backwards.

Randy Corona) Randy came from someone in my classes who looked like the character. Corona - relates to his light elemental.

Lraenu) Odd thing about this name - I pulled it off the top of my head, but someone later pointed out you can rearrange the letters to spell "unreal" which fits really well. o~o All the Lraenu are named after birds, mostly raptors, except for those with a significant difference from the other Lraenu.

Most of the places on Earth in the story are also named after birds, mostly songbirds - Tanager Park, Vireo City, Cardinal Street, Sanderling Ridge, etc. I think this came from the town I used to live in Minnesota, there were a lot of streets with bird names.


The Many Misfortunes of Lady Luck
Most of the characters' names I just searched around for in a name dictionary. Some of the characters were based off of the names I chose.

Whirlwynd
Ru Hadley) Back in seventh grade I gave Ru some long Japanese name I don't remember now. People complained the name was too long to remember, so I just shortened it to one of the syllables, and that became her permanent name. Hadley came from George Hadley, a meteorologist.

Excellent. Say "NO!" to Jpnese names!

Or atleast say no to regional names if your character isn't from that region. I wouldn't name a natural born, blong hair blue eyed german Fu Man Chu...

angry_black_guy
Or atleast say no to regional names if your character isn't from that region. I wouldn't name a natural born, blong hair blue eyed german Fu Man Chu...

You sure can, cuz you won't find any Asian man named Fu Man Chu.

MAG-ISA

Tagalog word meaning "to be alone", "to be by myself"

I used that title because after reading my script for that comic... that is a common denominator for ALOT of characters there.

I picked Tagalog out of any other language out there... because I'm Filipino and a couple characters thare are Filipino.

mlai

angry_black_guy
Or atleast say no to regional names if your character isn't from that region. I wouldn't name a natural born, blong hair blue eyed german Fu Man Chu...

You sure can, cuz you won't find any Asian man named Fu Man Chu.

I beg to differ. [en.wikipedia.org]

"Soapbox Hill"

Was entirely random, which I later explained away into the story as the name of the town.

"Late Entry"

I started the comic late into the "Civil War" Event, so figured it'd be a fitting title. Also have been late with updates...

"War Machine"

Its got fighting robots.

angry_black_guy

mlai
You sure can, cuz you won't find any Asian man named Fu Man Chu.

I beg to differ. [en.wikipedia.org]

Yup, like I said. You won't find any Asian man named Fu Man Chu.

I think the idea of Asian supervillains is great. My 2 big problems with Fu Manchu are:

(1) The stupid name. It's not a good Asian supervillain name. It's like naming an English supervillain Dick Little or something.

(2) The Qing look. Granted it's a great villain look. Unfortunately, it's stereotyped as a Chinese look when it really isn't. Chinese ppl really didn't like the Manchurian ethnic minority's mandatory haircut, and got rid of it from the cultural consciousness as soon as the dynasty fell. IMO it was the ugliest hairstyle in the history of China.

Well the following names: Blaine VanJulivan, Adria,Vito, Heyt, Leonard, Labelle, Umatilla, Rosemary, Claire, Paris (as a last name)Marlowe, Dickenson, Porter, Cusick, Zeno Chavez, Zealand, Weston Eastern,Burton, Clyde, Lemrya, Corrine,Oswego, Onekamari, Meerse, Visser and Samrick are all names, first and last and some modified, that I got from the names of streets near where I lived.

A couple interesting ones otherwise:

Zerlocke Bonham Petrucci"Zerlocke" is a name I thought I heard was a colonial American name, turns out I imagined it myself somehow since I've found no record of such. I used it as a name for a school project we did, as well as a short story before the official comic Zerlocke showed up. Bonham and Petrucci are named after musicians, John Bonham the late drummer of Led Zeppelin, Petrucci is a member of the band Dream Theatre.
Rodericke James Robinson: The vampire king, the last two parts of his name are unimportant but the name Rodericke was another I thought I made up...until I found out the contrary. Hadn't heard of it until I did a 'net search! Also a character in a short story.
CharbyA friend of mine was programming another friend's name into his cellphone's address menu, and when asked what name he should put it under his younger brother said "Charby". Apparently he got the idea for the name from the Movie "Airheads", because he combined the main character's first and last names: Chaz Darby
Apparently it is also the name of some French singer...I do not enjoy the ill repute of her name however since it's usually accompanied with the words "nude"
Hexavier Edwin Ducayne I wanted to make a lame villain for the lame super-hero parody comic I was doing at the time. So I figured out Hex+Xavier is Hexavier, and he'd be an evil witch doctor. Now he's a zombie boy with magic powers. The last name I got from a modification of "Dufraine", the name of the main character in "the Shawshank Redemption"

Kavonn Lee McNixon A good friend made an account for a Star Wars game under the name "Skyp Kavonn", which was his friend's last name backwards with another "N" tacked on. McNixon is the middle name of one of Peter Steel's kids (supposedly).
MenuWerewolf who eats a lot, so I named him Mwnu and by bizarre and wonderful happenstance, Menu is also the name of a god of the Moon (short for Menulis)

Crispo Reginald Esquire FeytonThe first name is from a naming book, but the "esquire" is from both a friend of mine and...Bill & Ted's Excellent adventure. It's placed oddly but that's where I like it.

EliasOf the "Big Boy" franchise (Elias foods) and because I knew a cat by the name.
Coobs Friend's nephew's nickname, alteration of "Jacob" He's a wolfelf cub.

AnthonyNamed after my lecherous friend who liked my Bunny character...so I made him a giant blue rabbit with sideburns.
Sanguine & Malaria What better names for two mosquitoes?
Munchie BearInitially "floaty bear" until Roman Dirge stole it! (kidding, kidding) but the emergence of a toy called "floaty bear thingy" forced me to change the name (though I had it first!) to Munchie. Munchie was also the name of the dog that the Zerlocke from the short story I wrote kept.

As for the title, "Vampirate" (vampire and pirate of course) was what got the idea for the comic rolling in the first place but I wanted to name the comic something else initially...but I had no idea what, so I just stuck with what I had already. I think it worked out for the best (as long as I don't get fans of the yaoi vampirate comic on my case, they think I stole the name even though I had it online for an entire year before ^_^)
And I got more names...but they aren't all that interesting.

I'm pretty sure Floaty Bear dates back to 1991 when Roman was a poor magician performing tricks for spare change. It wasn't until he met Jhonen Vasquez in the late 90s (hehe, he'll never escape vasquez's shadow) and signed on with SLG that he became popular.

Really? See, I'd never heard of it until they made the toy, as far as I know it was something he designed in 2004-5 or so to be made into a toy. I'm fully aware he's been doing Lenore that long, but owning both GN's there's not even a single character resembling it. I could be wrong, in all likelihood it was something in a comic I never read (I don't get into too many print comics but a friend did give me his copies of Lenore when he moved out and I didn't see such a character)Other than that I'd never heard the name, even did a google search of practically all my character's names before I posted online and never got any relevant returns until the toy came out. Unless I find proof that I'm making a complete idiot of myself (which I'm good at) I'm still lead to believe that "Floaty bear thingy" is something he came up with in late 2004 along with his "Monsters in my Tummy" book, or something he just designed for the vinyl figurine to be made.(I'm researching this as I type in fact, still no dice, just a lot of product hits from 2005 on the toy)Thanks for informing me though, I hope I'm not coming off as defensive! (but I am derailing the conversation T_T)

The title of the comic is actually a misnomer, the comic doesn't really have to do with America or anything related. When I made the comic (at least, the days of copy-paste characters and tongue-in-cheek humor), it was going to have a political side to it (think South Park), but with sprites. In this case, the comic was called 'American007' because it was meant to be set in a sprited version of America, called "Pixie City" (still called this in the present-day incarnation). The only reason I kept the name today was because it was such a catchy title that I wanted to keep it, even though the comic you know today is much different.

Diving in deeper, some of the characters in American007 have names based on other works of literature. Scott Ridley is a parody of Ridley Scott, just switched around. Clyde Jeeves is based on the website Smackjeeves. Tybalt is taken from the character in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Samuko is an Asian character, so she'll need an Asian name. Raphael should be a familiar name for fans of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

The rest of them are named after English-geared names (Tiffany, Jordan for example). Their nicknames are based on their powers. Elementiss (Tiffany) can control nature (except for fire), Sonic Morph (Raphael) can transform body parts into knives, stabbing weapons, and other types of weapons. He can also morph into other entities with intimate contact (like impaling), and he can regenerate lost body parts. Others, like Chill, Inferno and Mindbruise are quite obvious, based on their powers.

Cricket was named after a character in show I saw when I was in grade school, (I think it was Goosebumps but I'm not sure.) The character Cricket from the show was this gothy girl that was obsessed with insects. Not all that much resemblance to the comic character Cricket but I liked the name so I used it.

This lady I've met has a tiny poodle dog named Creature. I liked this name so I decided to use it as well, So the way I wrote it was that Cricket used to have a dog named Creature and she later names Creature after her dog.

I liked the aliteration for "Cricket and "Creature" so I used it as a title.

One of my comics, Bionicle Zeroes is kind of a play off of the video game Bionicle Heroes. In Bionicle Zeroes, all of the Toa's names are completely made up to sound Bionicle-ish. However, Turaga Evaus is the word "Suave" backwords (I was in the shampoo aisle when trying to think of his name) Turaga Kinko was also aptly named except it occured as I walked past a Kinko's store on my way home. Maita kind of comes from the words "might" and "Makuta", the main Bionicle villian. There are other future characters in BZ that are either words backwards or based off of real Bionicle names.

Pokemon Yellow Comics is a very self-expanatory name. In PYC, the names Bklcbkl and CDwxx come from my Yellow Version. (Basically just mashing the buttons when naming yourself and your rival. Many characters that haven't appeared in PYC yet have non-randomly generated names.

Unofficial Pic Comic X is named because it is an Unofficial fancomic depicting stock Pictures (usually took from Google or Yahoo) in a Comic form. The "X" was put on the end to purposely sound tacky.

As for That's Ironic... from what I remember, I used the name simply because "Ironic" rhymes with "Sonic".

Character names are fun to come up with. In Xylia, I'm using a lot of ancient Greek words for inspiration for names that relate to the characters. Some of them I bastardize a bit for my own uses, of course. Xylia, Tychia, Claudius, Brimaz, Deimos, and Ambrosia are a few of the names.

In Talismen, I came up with the characters' names over twenty years ago! So I really don't remember where I came up with them. ^_^

~B

What a good topic!
Pinky is named after her hair. It's a logical nickname... Her real name is Tatyana Anova, because she comes from the Crimean empire... Well whatever, basically her people are sort of more Russian than anything else. But I like the name Tatyana, Anvoa also sounds like a new star!
And that informs the naming of some of the other characters: Captain Rasovich. The name also sounds like "irascible", which is what he is.

The other main character is Cc. Her real name is Cynthia Crow. Hmm... Crows are seen as negative, crows are also like Ravens which were spies for Odin- Cc is a spy. Also, she was originally named after a song by the animals: See, see Rider. (actually it's an old blues song, but I like the 60's version by The Animals)...

A new character is called "Ace Kincaid". The story behind that name is too long... But basically it's the PERFECT name for a larger than life 1920's American Adventurer.

Other characters I've named like Betty, Colin, Dave... I just love those names... I like to play with them. They're too Anglo Saxon for the comic really, but I don't care, Pinky TA is a massive soup of anachronisms, a few more can't hurt.

Beauty Into Beast is a modern retelling of the short story "Fear" by Kazuo Umezu. I tried to think of a better title than Fear, and Beauty Into Beast was what I came up with. It's recognizable and doesn't take away from what the story is about.

As for the character names, I at least wanted to keep the same first letter of the characters. In Fear, the older sister was named Momoko and the little sister was naimed Aiko. In tribute to American McGee's Alice, Aiko became Alice. It took some thinking, but Momoko became Minerva after the Animaniacs character Minerva the Mink (very very beautiful). Everyone else had everyday names (Ian's character in Fear was named Takaya. Lisa was called Hanano).

Great topic, btw, I love hearing how everyone's mind works.

I am horrible/have no patience for putting any thought into the names. When I do end giving one them names its usually necessary to set up a premise, so the name contains some necessary expository information: Toothy the Angry Tooth, Bitch man, Literal Man, The Justifier, Dr. Ninja, F. Unicorn.... etc.

As for the faceless victims/crying children that occupy about 1/3 of my draws, I usually give them extremely generic names. I guess to emphasize how disposable they are, or maybe because I'm lazy about it.

Children at Play came from, in college, when we would steal roadsigns to decorate our prison-cell sized dorm rooms. The Children at Play sign we got was over out DJ gear. The three of us formed a small DJing company and we called it Children at Play, we DJed alot of the schools functions, dances and the like. Eventually when I started doing the comic it was about the three of us so it made sense to name it Children at Play. It also references our maturity level in the comic, while despite the fact that we're college age we tend to act and enjoy things a child would, that then evolved into the crayon element of our backgrounds as well.

Most of the characters in it are either based on real life counterparts, or are intuitive.

I get the name somewhere and then slowly build the idea around it, the charecter the person the family and of course the story.

I like the sound of the name The Nonstandard Assembly; I think it sounds like a punk band.

Shin: his name is not shin actually; it is Shih Po Tan, a wandering monk from China. The name is sort of passed down, and there is still a Shih Po Tan kicking around with the title so he cannot take it yet.

Stitch: It is like a media nick name. Originally attributed to the Plain dealer in Cleveland. Some video cam somewhere got an image of him with his white covering and thick black stitches and started calling him Stitch.

Gretchen Cooper: Named after the famed detective Dale Cooper in the Twin Peaks TV series.

Sgt. Layne McCord: named after Layne Staley the lead singer from Alice in Chains, and McCord was an Air Force base I lived near.

Boaz: The Hebrew name for strength, and one of the two pillars… oops, almost said it.

Jonny Axx: When thinking up character, there was a re-run of SNL on and the Akroyd was a shady toy developer and one of the toys he was selling was “Johnny Switchblade, Adventure Punk” I really liked the idea and adapted it to “Jonny axx, Adventure Punk” Instead of being a greaser with a knife, my Jonny was a nihilist with a flaming sword.

Ultimo Crusher is an amalgam of numerous wrestling personalities.

Constituent Zero: was just a cool name for an anarchist.


http://www.drunkduck.com/Amniotic_Shock_in_the_Last_Sacred_Place/


http://www.drunkduck.com/The_Nonstandard_Assembly/