Ironic character names

[Cherie]

Something kind of interesting I noticed when playing ffxi and now ffxiv is that there are lots of anime theme character names. I mean, really it's not that interesting because a game made in Japan and anime which is also made in Japan have that opportunity to appear to the same audience that likes the medium. I get some of the names, I mean, I saw a Kurosaki Ichigo... pretty obvious what anime that they are fond of. Or I saw a Naruto Uzumaki. I even saw a Sasuke Uzumaki. Which for that to happen, would those two characters that those names come from would to have had a child together or maybe marry?...but, well they...um... ok, not going into that one. :P

But what is actually more interesting, many of the people with anime theme named characters are often not Japanese. I mean, sure the amount of Japanese people in a large world is not very high considering billions of people in the world, so this is natural right? I guess what I'm getting at is many of the players I have gotten know in those games that are actually Japanese have English themed names.

Maybe those of you that never played FFXI where there were lots of mixed language groups won't understand what I'm talking about as much. But for those of you that didn't play it. If you saw someone named "Tasty Apple" or "Friendly Cloud" odds are, they could have been a non English speaking player. At the same time, if you saw a Ranma Saotome, they were probably not Japanese.

Am I just making a Generalization here or did some of you experience this as well in FFXI? I guess if it happened as much as I thought, I would suggest it was just more or less someone thinking exotic sounding names(IE from a language other than what you speak) sound cooler. Just like how in the past in America, people used to study french to make them seem more romantic when wooing someone they liked. While perhaps the French might look at us silly Americans and wonder what we are doing...

[Enkidoh]

There's an old joke about FFXI, in that there seemed to be more Sephiroth-clones in FFXI than there was in FFVII.

Luckily though that seems to be changing - although instead I see a lot of characters named either after celebrities or characters from Twilight/Game of Thrones/Harry Potter/<insert movie/tv show/novel flavour of the month here>.

It should also be noted that to do so is technically a violation of the Terms of Service, where it states your character name 'must not be taken from another intellectual property', but I don't think SE is particularly strict on enforcing that.

[Mcshiggs]

Just like how in the past in America, people used to study french to make them seem more romantic when wooing someone they liked.

American's need not study French to woo the ladies, you just need a classy pick up line like: "Excuse me pretty lady, can I buy you a fish sandwich?"

[whoopeeragon]

It works both ways, IMO - Japanese players like to pick popular/well known 'Western' names, while the Western crowd likes, as you said, anime/manga popular names.

[Swagcity]

American's need not study French to woo the ladies, you just need a classy pick up line like: "Excuse me pretty lady, can I buy you a fish sandwich?"

swag does it for me^^

[Cherie]

It works both ways, IMO - Japanese players like to pick popular/well known 'Western' names, while the Western crowd likes, as you said, anime/manga popular names.

Yup, and it doesn't have to be just Westerners and Easterners. I mean, I had thought about making a character named "Drop Bear" and I'm not Australian!

[Fantasy9]

My former FC leader had a miqote alt with the name Kitty Purry.

[Naraku_Diabolos]

My character's name is named after Naraku from the InuYasha anime. That was his name on FFXI, until the server merge to Siren and someone was named Naraku on there, too, so I had to rename him to Narakudiabolos. My main character on ARR is Naraku Diabolos.

Naraku Diabolos


My other main character (I have 4 on ARR, which I will play eventually in time) is Hayley Westenra, named after the Celtic Woman singer by the same name. She (my character) even looks the same as the singer!

Hayley Westenra (the singer)




Hayley Westenra (my character)


My 3rd main character is ironically named Inuyasha Diabolos and looks like this. I wish he (as a Miqo'te) didn't have a tail so he could look like the real anime character.

[Paradedc]

My character's name is Beetle Juice because I am awesome

[Alistaire]

There's an old joke about FFXI, in that there seemed to be more Sephiroth-clones in FFXI than there was in FFVII.

Luckily though that seems to be changing - although instead I see a lot of characters named either after celebrities or characters from Twilight/Game of Thrones/Harry Potter/<insert movie/tv show/novel flavour of the month here>.

It should also be noted that to do so is technically a violation of the Terms of Service, where it states your character name 'must not be taken from another intellectual property', but I don't think SE is particularly strict on enforcing that.

They've also not been strict about celebrity names being against ToS. I remember seeing several like that in ffxi (Johnnydepp etc) and here as well, saw an Ellen Page a while ago, like the week after she came out of the closet.