Guild Wars 2

Simply out of curiosity xD
If I dont start thinking about it beforehand, I sometimes end up on character creation for more or less 30 mins trying to come up with something.
And the other day I was observing a friend play and he came up with something in what really couldn’t have been more than 5 seconds.
I’m just a lot more picky due to roleplaying, I suppose.
So I’m just curious as to whether or not most peoples name creating experiences are more like mine or if they just come to you almost immediately. (:

No problem here. I came up with my main character (ranger) name way before game release – Jon Darkwood. And since I make only humans (don’t know why, just can’t look at Charr, Asura or Sylvari, maybe Norn will be good), I always end on changing the name leaving the surname as it is. Gonna get hard time thinking on the Norn . Or I will just check the list of common nordic names O.o .

I spent a bit of time on “Antonius Duarte”, but that was all spent on the wiki reading over GW’s human naming conventions. I settled on choosing a Krytan name due to them being based on Southern Europe. Southern Europe includes Portugal. My real name is Anthony Duarte, my father is from Portugal. So I just put an old-age twist on Anthony; Antonius. It suits my character well.

I make my human names based on either GW1 characters, or taking the name of a famous figure in GW history and adding the GW1 surname. I chose Nika for my thief ankittenrying to make the character look like her.

I’de spend 30 minutes up to 2 hours (of course while I do something else) on naming my characters. I ultimately end up deleting those characters no matter how much time I spend. You would think I would have gotten nowhere in this game with habits like those but I have two names that I’ve been spamming for almost 10 years (I’m 21 now) on my male and female characters. They’re easily my favourite names, but they’re also a curse since I can’t seem to come up with anything that rivals the nostalgia each one carries.

My favourite of which was created by me not noticing a default name when I input my own name into FF tactics advanced (bad kitten game) and the letter limitation replaces the last letter with each new one that was selected giving me Marcheten. Edit: My forum name is also my ff tactics clan name lol.

When I’m making a character I intend to keep I spend a lot time creating them in my mind before I ever touch the character creator. My latest for example, an asuran guardian called Xexxi I was working on for weeks and a lot of that was debating the name.

When I’m making a temporary character I go completely the other way and throw options together relatively quickly. I’ve got a norn warrior at the moment called Ronark Askirson and I have no idea where that name came from, it’s just whatever popped into my head at the time.

Although sometimes I do end up liking a ‘temp’ name. In GW1 I’ve had a series of short lived characters called Ilex Hedera (latin for holly ivy) which came about just because the first one wore green and was being made shortly before Christmas. That became the name of my engineer main in GW2.

I decided on my main’s name instantly… because it’s mine, and I’ve had it since GW1.

As for my alts, I tend to take about ten, fifteen minutes coming up with something that fits their race/lore, biography selections, and how I intend to roleplay them (even if just in my head)… and then another ten, fifteen minutes altering it because it’s already taken. >_<

Took me two months to think of my 4th character name: Arcueide Titania.

What deters me from creating new characters the most is name creeation………..

The name of my first main, Nergal Junior, I use in all games. Nergal Junior is a cartoon character I enjoy, and I had him in GW1. So I didn’t spend any time developing his name, I just reserved it and it crossed over from the previous game.

My other main, Nyoka Gorefell, is a different story. I knew very early on—way before release—that I wanted a female charr. I spent days writing down numerous names and letter combinations, combining first names with surnames, and mulling things over. The name that finally stood out as just right was Nyoka Gorefell, so here we are.

Tionvrath Gorefall, another charr of mine, took significantly less time. I had to think up the first name, but since he’s Nyoka’s brother and lackey, I already knew I’d make the surname similar to hers. Fell and fall lol

Albane Memorykeeper, I thought up on the spot. Albane is a family name from something unrelated that I’m writing, and Memorykeeper came after I spent 5 minutes thinking about the character’s personality.

Took me about 15 mins trying to find a suitable name. 5 seconds thinking the english equivalent, 14 mins spent switching between target languages in Google Translate.

Well, two out of 4 chars anyway. I’ve had 2 names I usually use, Vonelis (engineer) and Acriphia (ranger). Dang internet took my “Vonelis” (my connection went awry when the name is registering, and it’s eternally taken by a non-existing character) so I had to go with “Voneli”

For my Elementalist and Mesmer, the name thinking happens. “Vievand” (I-forgot-which-language for “holy water”) and Krasivaya Illyuziya (russian for “beautiful illusion”, ’least uncle google said so)

I don’t take names lightly. Wouldn’t wanna be remembered in history as “Mr Doohickey von Incompetento” now would we?

I’ve never made an alt. I only have 1 name I want and I took it before anyone could get it. I won’t be bothered looking up 1 word names now that almost everything else has been taken. I wanted Mockingbird and I got it. I also got Mocking Bird for an alt but I don’t plan on using that yet.

I just make up bondgirl/drag queen esque names like belle towers or lilly livers

It only took me a few seconds to type in “Rymr Ahlstrom”, since I used it for another character on another game and fell in love with it(although I spent hours thinking of it). Other names, I spend about 25~75 minutes thinking of and trying to make everything perfect. I usually end up hating the character, like my poor Mesmer, Nyx Riyit, who will most likely be deleted soon. I don’t think it helps that I keep wanting Norse god references in my character names, especially since that’s more of a Norn thing.
However, I actually made a Charr recently, and I’ve been enjoying her name, Aveza Lionstorm. I think it fits her well.
And I named a Sylvari Keises (which was taken from Keisetsu, a type of azalea), but her whole theme, and name, is bothering me since I actually put her in game.
I think unless a name just kind of clicks with me and the character, I tend to delete them and try to remake them with a new name/concept. I used to be quite a roleplayer, so I think a lot of my problems with naming characters just to play comes with that. xD

I tend to reuse names I’ve used in the past. Otherwise I too can spend what seems like hours in the character creator. I’ve been there so long in the past that the the game timed out on me. Currently I have mostly humans and they all share the same surname. My lone sylvari is a single word name that’s a variant of the humans’ surname.

When I made my male elementalist I spent at least an hour coming up with one. Ashwrin stuck cause his favorite element is fire. I kinda liked having Ash as a nickname for him too. I also spent time thinking of a lastname but nothing sounded good with Ashwrin.

I tend to blaze through character creation, but only because I’m recycling ideas that I’ve already refined in Tabletop Games, other MMORPGS and single-player games, short stories, comics, etc. The only characters I really struggled to name were the ones with more specific racial naming conventions – I agonized over warband names for my three Charr and rerolled each two or three times before I was satisfied, and hassled friends for dozens of options and opinions before settling on Sylvari and Asura names. My Humans and Norn though were all based on characters I’d already named in other media.

I have a problem with naming, it’s actually the reason I don’t run alts. All the names I want are taken and I just can’t be bothered to look at the screen for an hour trying to think of something I could live with.

It’s really bad, like if a name is short let’s say Sara, her last name can only be 4 maybe 5 letters long or it will bother the hell out of me and I’ll delete and remake. I also don’t like the look of some letters in the default text style so I will never use them in names… yeah tell me about OCD.

I’ve also never truly been satisfied with a name except when I played WoW I got the name Rukia and used it for years, still have the character too. Same in Diablo 2

I could have gotten it, if names were server based. Horrible idea they went with imo, I even logged in at the very moment servers went live. I can only imagine someone had it reserved on GW1.

In protest I make all my names absolutely stupid now.

I make u sammich k, etc. I just don’t care anymore too many great names are taken thanks to how they are shared across all servers.

I can only hope ESO doesn’t do the same thing, since they will have one ‘mega-server’ but I’ll try to get it there too, and if I do… say goodbye to me lol. I can’t take a game too seriously unless I get the name I want, it’s really annoying but my brain is stupid so.

All the ones I tried(30 min or so), were taken. Now my Guardian is named Fifty Seven, I then made him an orphan in a very strict orphanage that gave the children numbers instead of names(in my head). I’m actually quite fond of the name now, especially during cut scenes when someone says my name.

Fernshade is always my main name, and always a thief (my favorite class in any game). I have had it forever, about 15 years or so, back in the days when I played Gemstone III. For my alts, I haven’t spent more than 10 minutes on any of them. Sirennialis, human mesmer, I think “siren” fits well with the mesmer class. Taren Felwind , human warrior, because warriors should always use a family name IMO. And Kallvach, norn ranger, I like the hard k sounds for the norns.

I was in the preorder rush so I felt bad about not using the names that were reserved for my from GW1. So for my human characters at least they are just copies.

They all have Quw usually somewhere in the surname as that’s my guild identifier, and then the first names were pretty easy to come up with. Usually when I see a character’s face I can figure out what their name should be pretty easily. This time around I was working from names to make the faces, but they’ve turned out good.