How did you choose your name?

[DarkMasamune]

I usually choose my name according to things that inspires me, or that I like. I just recently changed my main's name (so it might not be uptaded on the forum!) from Mika Kusakari to Frida Nohansen.

"Mika" was one of my childhood's cat's name. Kusakari was just a random choice thought.

Frida is actually a name I heard in an old cartoon I used to watch as a kid, called Silverwings. I can't remember for the life of me if it was a movie ou a mini-series, but it was quite short, bit like Redwall if you know what that is. The story was about bats of different colors, belonging in colonies. The leader of the silver wings colony was called Frida, and I always thought it sounded elegant and stylish. I never let go of that name, so I decided to use it.

As for Nohansen, it is simply princess Zelda's surname -in the majority of the games if not all of them- and since it's my favorite game series of all time, I thought it would be a great idea to use it, since it sounded so nice with Frida

[Sated]

My elvaan in XI was "Ratle", which was the random combination of consonants and vowels my brain came up with at 3am, the alt-making hour.

When I decided I wanted to play elezen I wanted to give him a nod and keep "Rat", so Ratinel Leresaunt is that just fancied up a bit.

[Voltyblast]

My account's name is referred to an old Square Enix games called Radiata Stories, specifically to the special move that the characters called which was in fact called Volty Blast.
On top of that when I started I saw that warriors used an axe and that hyurs could have pigtails: because of that combination I went with the name of the secondary protagonist, Ridley Silverlake, and I practically stayed that way for years until "reasons".

On the case for my lalafell is more of a slang between me and my sister: in our country, Pucha (written differently but pronounced the same) is actually the short version of a type of name however me and my sister say Pucha whenever we mean something is "above cute". So my sister, instead of calling my lalafell cute, she calls her "pucha" (she was called differently back then) and when I decided to go full Lalafell I took the slang and made it into the naming convention: Pupucha Pucha. It would've worked the other way around too with Puchacha Pucha, but people liked to call me Pupu for crappy reasons.

PS: my sister's lalafell is instead called Kakapo Kapo, after the well known ground parrot from New Zealand, the Kakapo. To this day I feel amazed by how she makes the silliest names with no effort.

[Wynn_Storm]

Ehh mine isn't that interesting.

It was the name i chose for my character in D&D.

I just decided to reuse the name for my FF14 character.

[Whelp]

I'm a writer. I often game instead of writing. My name is a self call out.

[Khalithar]

It started with an old RP character of mine from 18 years ago, a Drow named Khalith. "Khalith" is the Drow word for "courage." It's been a favorite of mine for years and been something I've stuck with forever. As for "Mateo" it just means "Matthew" in Spanish which is a shout out to my Latino roots and "Mateo" means something along the lines of "favored by god" and since I main Paladins, it made sense since Paladins are traditionally holy knights of some deity or another.

[ScarboroughFairy]

It's a play on the Holy Sword Excalibur.

Caliburn = the alternative name for the blade
Cross = X

X-Caliburn. Excalibur.

[AvenoMatt]

When I first made my character i didn't know anything about Miqo'te naming conventions or anything but i noticed the ' in the race name and thought that they would probably use that a lot in their actual names. Why i chose Khi'ra Djo'qet is simply because it is the first name that came to my head. I also tend to name my retainers with the same conversation as well even though they aren't miqo'tes.

Been thinking of changing my name and have a first name I like but no last name at the moment so I ain't changing yet.

[WhiteArchmage]

Personally, Samniel is a made-up name that's meant to be a fantasy-sounding gender-neutral point between Samuel and Samantha, the -el suffix is angelic. Atkascha is from Final Fantasy Tactics, so it's meant to reflect a royal/noble-natured individual.

Ranmaru Stormcaller was back when I was hoping we'd get a Ramuh-egi or at least egi glamours, so it was meant to be a fancy sounding epithet for a Raen Summoner. The first name is a reference to Mori Ranmaru, Nobunaga's page/male lover.

Johannes Lenneth is... longer lol Johannes is the German version of the latin Ioannes, a reference to St. John the Baptist, and one of my characters is from the town of Lenneth (itself a reference to Valkyrie Profile, since changed because I fear SE's lawyers lol), hence he was normally referred to as the son of (Mother's Name) of Lenneth, shortened to (First Name) Lenneth.

I'm a writer. I often game instead of writing. My name is a self call out.

As another writer with the same problem, I feel called out

[Sigma-Astra]

Usually, whenever I go into an MMO or any other game that allows me to customize the name and appearance of a character, I fall back on prior role-play characters that I've used beforehand from role-playing campaigns that are run through IRC. I've been in a long-standing campaign with two friends for at least...11 years with over 30+ PC's/NPC's that I've had to micromanage since it's just us three together. I've had to get plenty creative in order to make sure that one PC or NPC doesn't necessarily blend into each other, whether by personality, appearance, or skills.

The first name, "Soma" is the first name of one of my more important and well-developed PC's. It's actually a Sanskrit and Indian male name, but in both of my characters using the name they are actually female. Personally, I think the name could be unisex honestly as it carries a masculine tone and a feminine one at the same time due to the "-a" at the end and the way it is pronounced, "So-muh".

In Sanskirt and Indian, the name means "nectar of immortality". In other languages, it can mean different things. In other forms, it can also mean "moon" or "moonlight". In other parts of the word's etymology, especially on the Hindu side, the name Soma is also the name of their moon god or a god similar towards the Roman's version of their wine god, Bacchus, bringer of wealth and good health. In both of my character's cases, I went and played with the meanings concerning moon and immortality. In both of my character's cases, they had white hair...which can be associated with the moon and though the first using the name was actually immortal, I think it's safe too say that the WoL may as well be too at this point. The use of relying on the darker skin of a Moonkeeper also plays heavily into the first name where I wanted my character to reflect her name and keep this exotic sort of feel about her. And come on, playing as a Moonkeeper was an obvious choice in the matter.

The surname is "Kagami" which is the Japanese word for "Mirror". The Japanese surname actually has nothing to do with the role-play character and this was just something that I wanted to use specifically for my XIV character. It rolled off the tongue better when combined with the Indian name, so we get "So-muh Kah-gah-mee". It's kind of challenging to take one name from one culture/region and pair it with another where they both pronounce things differently. Altogether, the name can be translated into "Moonlight Mirror" or "Mirror of Immortality", etc. It can be taken in various ways, but they're all lead up towards the same place.

The first character called Soma was heavily affiliated with the moon, she was an armored warrior, and was immortal. Her surname, however, was Tsukino. So, in the case of the Japanese surname already being "of the moon". She was basically "Immortal Nectar of the Moon" or....we could go with "Immortal God(dess) of the Moon".

The XIV discount version is Soma Kagami. A Moonkeeper WoL whom is governed by Menphina and may as well be immortal. It would have, of course, made more sense for her main job to be paladin, but it's black mage (because that's what I like playing as). So, we can tie in "mirror" as having something to do with the aspects of magic. Manaward is kind of reflective in some sense.