a rose by any other name

No picture for the post itself today, because I think that the new header I just put up, using the lovely portrait of Kamalia Vidyala made for me, suits the subject matter perfectly. Llani at Pocket Heals suggested this week’s Blog Azeroth Shared Topic, asking, in brief:

What takes the longest to choose, is the first thing people see, and is the one thing they always remember about you and your character?

Your name.

How did you decide upon the name for your character(s)?

When I was making my very first character, the Native American influences on the Tauren were obvious right from the character creation screen. So as I thought about my Tauren Shaman, I thought about the concept of a “medicine man”. From there, I started thinking about the plants a medicine man might use. I’d been watching the new Battlestar Galactica with friends for the past year or so, and chamalla, the herb used by President Roslin to treat her cancer, came to mind. A little playing around with the sounds and syllables produced “Kamalia”. Using “chamalla” as the inspiration for Kamalia‘s name proved quite seredipitous, as although it was a healing herb, I didn’t know yet that Kamalia was going to be a healer, nor did I know about the strong association between shamans and farseeing, or visions — which Roslin experiences as a side-effect of her chamalla treatments — in the game world.

My second character was an Undead Warlock. I wanted a name that sounded dangerous, prickly. I thought of paprika, a sort of pepper. I thought of Caprica Six, the dangerous Cylon agent from BSG, who had experienced many deaths and “resurrections”. Thus my (long since deleted) undead warlock became “Kaprikka”. I just couldn’t resist the pun inherent in giving that name to a spacegoat, so I eventually changed my Draenei Mage’s name to “Kaprikka”.

My third character, a Tauren Hunter, is “Ketura” because “Keturah”, a pretty name from a Christmas picturebook I liked, was unavailable.

For awhile, I tried to fit all of my characters’ names between “K” and “a”. By the time I really caught the altitis fever, I’d begun raiding, so I also wanted the names I chose to shorten to nice four-letter nicknames for fitting inside my Grid boxes. With these constraints and the additional desire to have the name sound pretty, I ended up with a lot of very similar names for my elven characters — Kaelinda, Kalaneia, Kiraleia, Keriluna, Kelisanna, Katelyra/Katelaira. And I found myself thinking of plenty of “K” names that were pretty, but didn’t end in “a” and trying to force them to end in “a” only made them awkward — like “Kerisibeth”, which looked awkward once I saw it in type, despite sounding pretty in my head, and ended up shortening to “Kerisa” for my Tauren Druid’s name. So I have relaxed the “end in a” rule and only require my characters’ names to “begin with K”.

Some of my characters’ names are derived from relatives or friends. “Kjersti” is one of my cousins; my uncle went to Norway for his LDS mission and brought the name back with him. “Kesha”, a cousin on the other side of the family, sounded like a good name for an Orc, but since that name itself wasn’t available, I ended up with “Keshona” — which is also a permutation of “Kenosha”, a town in Wisconsin I used to drive past when traveling to Chicago. “Keija” was originally intended to be “Kaija”, but since the latter wasn’t available, I had to use the former… which is very much like the name of one of my sisters. “Kelilla” is named after the creator of one of the first online comic books I read and host of one of the first BBS boards I frequented regularly (both sites, alas, have been defunct for a few years now). “Kalani” is the sister of a friend, but since that name was already taken, I ended up with “Kalaneia”.

“Kivrinne”, “Kimorene”, and “Kinevra” are all derived from books I love — Doomsday Book (Connie Willis), Dealing with Dragons (Patricia C Wrede), and Harry Potter (J K Rowling), respectively. “Kinevra” is also a quasi-anagram of “Kivrinne”, as the Human character was originally created to represent the backstory of the Undead character.

“Karelia” is a region of Finland. “Kilauea” is a volcano in Hawai’i — a good name, I thought, for a Troll Elemental Shaman. “Kazuliza” is partially another reference to Dealing with Dragons and partially comes about because I wanted to use “z” in a name and thought it would be a good fit for a Goblin.

I have always tried to give my characters “real person” names, but sometimes I have to distort the spelling quite a bit to find a version that hasn’t already been taken — thus “Kymberlea” for my Worgen (who would have been born a normal Human) and “Kryztalya” as my Draenei Mage’s original name. In the case of the Draenei, I also wanted to make a reference to the crystals of which Draenei are so fond, and give the name a bit of a Russian sound to go with the slightly Russian accent of Draenei voices.

“Kelisanna” was originally “Kelisendra”. I thought it rolled off the tounge nicely… until I discovered that the name was in my head because of Captain Kelisendra in Eversong Woods. “Kregga” was a good somewhat harsh sounding, yet still feminine, name for a character who’d come from an aggressive background into a grim future — my Tauren DK. By the time I remembered Sergeant Kregga in Icecrown, my Kregga was too attached to her name to let me change it. I still felt embarassed when I realized that I’d unwittingly named a character after an NPC again.

“Kaiuna”, “Kaohana”, and “Kikimaia” all resulted from hitting the “randomize” button over and over until I found a combination of syllables that still made a nice-sounding name when I substituted a “K” for the initial consonant or added “K” to the front of a name beginning with a vowel.

I think that’s all my alts….

My naming practices, then, have run the gamut of inspirations and sources. I’ve decided, however, that none of my RL children, when we actually have some, will have “K” names.