Re: Re: Inappropriate names

From: Scott Rogers <amaretto_sirloin_at_...>
Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 06:19:03 -0700 (PDT)


Ricky, one of our players had seen one of the X-Men movies, so called his Stormbuller "Huge Axeman" (Hugh Jackman-geddit?). That was shit though.............

Roderick and Ellen Robertson <rjremr_at_...> wrote:

> > Only if your players have the self-control to ignore
> > the associations that the name has for them. For a lot
> > of us, that sort of thing ruins the atmosphere.
>
> I had a long-term centaur character called Shergar. It never interfered
with
> the game, quite possibly because his nickname was Donkey and that was used
> most of the time. However, towards the end of the campaign, if Shergar
ever
> came up in the news, I had a momentary period of confusion as I wondered
why
> they were talking about my centaur character.
>
> Glorantha is full of inappropriate names - just look at the names in
Dragon
> Pass/Prax for a start - and long may it continue.

Well, all I can say is that there's names and names...

Of course, my favorite Greggism comes from Pendragon, where he abjures us from "...using ridiculous names like Exxon, Frodo or Conan..." (Err, Greg, Frodo means "Wise one" (or at least comes from the A-S word for "wise"), and Conan is a perfectly good welsh name...)

However, both are "tainted" with modern associations. Go ahead, call one of the heroines "Red Sonja" or "Barbarella", I dare ya! Some things just scream "I'm wrong" to me.

When I'm looking for a name, I tend to take a word, then apply a bunch of liguistic changes to it - "T" can transmogrify into anything from "D" to "S", Rs and Ls can swap places, etc. What you end up with is something evocative of the original, but suitably different.

RR
C'est par mon ordre et pour le bien de l'Etat que le porteur du présent a fait ce qu'il a fait.
- Richelieu

'Weni, Widi, Wiki.' I came, I saw, I added to the story.

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