Naming a Character - The Complete Guide
The majority of this guide are simply guidelines and are a matter of opinion and judgement
1. Introduction
People say, never just a book by it's cover, but that is never the case.
As with people judging peoples skill by simply glancing at their gearscore on the tooltip, or if they have a title such as 'the Light of Dawn', people judge you by your name.
There's no denying, with Death Knight's being infamous with their naming skills, when you see a Death Knight called 'Deaddknightt the patient' most people will pass them by without a second thought.
What a large amount of players do, especially when it came to creating a Death Knight, is simply skip over in just a few seconds what is actually a vital part of their character.
While I see people taking ages choosing a perfect set of skin tones and hair styles, it will never effect you later in game if you have a different shade of skin.
The Lich King was not happy with the names of his new army.
For most games you simply have an alias, a alternative name so that you can be anyomyous, yet still have an identification. In those kind of games, you're able to use names such as my own alias, "TinySlayer".
However, in World Of Warcraft, it's the name of a character, a virtual person that you can shape and mold into whatever you want it to be. While for many cases, it's only the roleplayers who take care when choosing their name, but it is still important to have a name which makes you unique from everyone else.
The key part about this guide, is nothing is 'must' (apart from the blizzard rules), you can choose what parts of the guide you listen to and still have good use of the guide 
2. Terms of Use
There are certain names which are against Blizzard Terms of Use.
- You can see here the blizzard article on names.
- The complete terms of use can be found here.
I suggest that you read the fulll article if you're really concerned, they may force you to rename your character and suspend your account.
Essentialy you're not allowed:
- Offensive names in any form
- Names related to Politics
- Illegal activities
- Blizzard Employees
- Trademarks
- Gibberish
- Famous figures
- Include titles eg. "ChefTom" or "GruntFred"
On Roleplayng servers, you're not allowed:
- Real Life References
- Partial or Complete sentences
- Contain "leet" or "dudespeak"
This is the only serious part of the guide and the only part which must be taken into account when naming a character.
3. Real 'Names'
The use of real names such as "Bob" or "Fred" or whatever, are fairly common it doesn't really matter if people use names such as these.
However, from a personal point of view, this should only be used for your own name, to avoid general confusion.
Currently I only have one character with a name which you will find in real life. His name is Simon, just like myself.
Some people will never do this though because of the how idea of an alias to hide your own name.
There is one type of name though that you should never do. Please do not use a name of the opposite gender.
If you go onto someones vent and you hear your raid leader called something like "Alice" start using a very deep voice, you'll probably be quite disturbed by the type of person leading your raid.
4. Standard Charaters
This part is quite important to follow to generally make you life easier.
Most people will have had something of the sort when you're asked to invite 'Bob' or 'Tím' the group and their name has some strange characters in.
You can't do '/invite ßob' or '/whisper Tím' if you don't know how to type the unusual character.
If a name is unavailable on the realm you're trying to create a character with, you don't want to end up being called exactly the same as someone else but a 'é' instead of a 'e'.
If you have someone with the same name as you, but with all standard characters, then it causes confusion.
You will either get a bad reputation because of that person, or you'll be looked down on because the other person has a good reputation and you just seem to be trying to steal their glory.
The only advantage is that you get a name that you want. However, the disadvantages outway this by far.
You often have to personally whisper a raid leader rather than just having your name past on, it just becomes annoying to everyone.
To summarise the problems with these characters:
- Difficulties interacting with other players
- Confusion about identities and reputations of others
It's not much, but it makes so much difference to your playing, I've even seen people rejected from groups because a leader can't be bothered to find out how to type your name.
If a character isn't in the 26 letters of the alphabet, don't use it.
5. Creating a name
Firstly, creating a name with less than 4 letters which is a viable name is difficult, so I generally leave that out.
You can choose lots of length names, but I like to keep my names to two syllables. Three is acceptable but getting onto four or five syllables, probably isn't a good idea.
Vowels are important in making your name pronouncable and something that someone would actually be called. I keep a vague 1:3 ratio of vowels to Consonants as the lowest I go. Most of the names I create have about two vowels and three Consonants.
It also becomes very hard to make names which follow all of the other guidelines if they have over three times as many Consonants as Vowels.
While the roleplaying rules are there to keep the roleplayers happy, they are actually very good guidelines of creating a characters name rather than simply an alias. Even in the original WoW, this is never actually good:
NEFARIAN IS SLAIN! People of Orgrimmar, bow down before the might of Pwntehnwbs and her allies for they have laid a blow against the Black Dragonflight that is sure to stir Aspects from their malaise!
This defeat shall surely be felt by the father of the Black Flight: Deathwing reels in pain and anguish this day!
At least it will never look like this from the ring of blood:
Searing Totem has defated the hero of Warmaul, Mogor! All hail Searing Totem!
If you type in a series of letters and it doesn't actually look like it could be a name, you'd probably be best to choose something that you like better.
Here's a summary of rules I keep when creating the word that becomes my name.
- Four or more letters
- Two or three syllables
- At least a third of the letters are vowels
- Follows the roleplaying rules (even on normal servers)
- Most importantly, It looks like a name
6. Adjectives, verbs and addons>
This is quite simple. If you're name sounds like, or is a adjective or verb, it really isn't very suitable.
While they can make amusing moments and provide some quite funny things people can ask you to do, they aren't names.
As a little side note, names of addons such as 'GearScore' which I have seen on various realms, might provide your character with a lot of attention, and if you want that, then you can do that. However, from most people the attention is more on the lines of raise eyebrows, rather than praise of your character naming skills.
7. Pronounciation
Many people use TeamSpeak or Ventrilo (or even the ingame voice chat) to communicate between raid or guild members.
While some people may use their own names when they're familiar with these people, often you might have to use voice communication for a PUG and so will have to use your characters name.
The problem with a lot of names is their hard to pronounce, or at least, nobody pronounces it the same way that you do.
It's not vital, but you may want to ask people through Ventrilo, Teamspeak or even someone in real life, to pronounce a name before you create the character.
It's all to do with personal preference, but you hearing other people say your name could make you think you need a slightly different name.
Of course, if they can't even pronounce your name at all, then you really should consider changing it.
You don't want to get to a point in a raid when at a crucial moment you're asked to do something and it goes like this:
"Veh- Verh- Vaf- whatever your name is, do..."
While saying things like "Death Knight, don't stand in that fire" might work for 10 man, you'll often get more than one in 25 man groups.
(Being refered to as 'the *classname*' isn't wanted by most)
8. Alts
There are two options for creating alts. To make things easier for guild members to recognise alts, many people will like to only make a small change to their names. The other option is to create a new name completely for each character you make.
The option I use is to change the single vowels in a name. For example, my main character is 'Tumak' and my shaman is called 'Tumik'. This allows my guildies and friends to easily identify me and what characters I could switch to to help them. (What ever you do, only use standard characters to do this.)
Of course, the option you choose is completely up to you and they are both equal in their advantages.
9. Blizzard Services
You choose your name at the start of a game and often people regret their name for various reasons.
It could be hard for people to type or pronounce, or actually means something in a language that you don't want it to mean.
Luckily, Blizzard provide services to help you with this!
You can find these services on your account management page for your WoW account.
A standard name change costs £6, €8 or $10. If you wish to use this feature, make sure you have the name you want to change it to thought of beforehand, and make sure that you create a new character to see if the name is available! Remember, you can't just check on armoury as characters that are inactive or below level 10 might not be seen.
If you ever take part in a realm transfer, (paid or free) you may wish to take advantage of the feature and get a name change. All you have to do is create a level one character with the same name as your character, and when you transfer it will ask you to change your name. This will happen free of charge!
If you don't have enough character slots to do this, ask a trustworthy friend to create a character for you, or simply start a trial account and create the character there.
I hope you follow some of the guidelines laid out here, and can experience the joyful moments of creating a perfect character name.
Just remember which is better:
Pwnkilldednight, Champion of the Frozen Wastes
All images from this guide are screenshots of Blizzard Entertainment games and websites. The guide is solely the creation of 'TinySlayer'.
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Naming a Character - The Complete Guide
ill allways try to get a name that dosent exist on the armory.
Originally Posted by aggression
