What's the story behind your name?

[MagicAura]

When I started playing June 2020, the name I used for my then main was Aurora Nightbreeze. I love names starting with A and the surname had a certain quality I could see in the character, plus my own love for any kind of soft breeze and especially night soft breezes carrying the beautiful smell of the sea together with the soft embrace of the beach by the sea waves. At some point I made another alt on a different server but decided to use the same name and look (Hyur midlander).

This January I decided to change some things, including making my own FC, if for nothing else just to experience that side of the game, so I created a new character (again Hyur midlander because reasons) that became my new main. This time the name was Aura Nightingale. The name Aura is of Greek origin and it means soft breeze (see a pattern there?) and nightnigales are my favourite birds, small and insignificant in how they look but with beautiful singing that can melt hearts. In certain parts of the world you only hear nightingales in the early hours of the night, hundreds of them, a sweet magical symphony that together with the soft and warm breeze of the spring night, can transfer you to a different world, free of the everyday ugliness we usually experience.

My forum name is a wordplay between Magic and Aura, which can be interpreted in various ways but keeping to the name conventions I described above.

[M1551NGN0]

My original name was taken when I switch servers so I thought of something from the top of my mind. Just stuck with me ever since.

[Nightroad]

My characters name come from Neverwinter Nights.

A clumsy healer that causes more harm when ever she tries to help.

[Iscah]

For first names, Aurelie got her name just because I liked the sound of it - at some point I'd read a book with a character called Aurelian and that stuck in my head as a name to use for a character sometime, and that came back out while I was trying to think of a good name for the Midlander girl I'd put together. (Now with more lore-familiarity it's probably rightly an Elezen name, but I'll make the excuse that she's Gridanian and there's some degree of cultural crossover.)

And surname was nearly Riversong, referencing a few things but then I realised people would incorrectly take it as a Doctor Who reference, so I changed it. Moon turned out to be a significant pick in the end! For a while I was then using ___song for all characters' surnames but I've decided I don't like that any more and I'm edging away from it.


Beyond that, I've tried to pick character names that are lore-accurate but not from the random name generator.

Brynwyda got her name after several hours searching through the Roegadyn dictionary. I avoided finding a proper surname for her prettymuch because I didn't want to go through it again, but at some point I was imagining a conversation between characters and someone just spontaneously called her by a full name, however that works unbidden in your brain - and I was like "okay so that started with a H and I think there was a 'ts' somewhere in the middle; let's go looking based on that" and ended up with Holskachtwyn. So she is "Spring Willow, daughter of Swift River".

Sylviel came from looking up NPC lists on Garland Tools, which lists all characters in a zone, and focusing on areas that would have high Elezen population. I decided to be clever and Google-translate "Earthsong" into French for a surname; I only discovered later that Terrechant actually is a valid Duskwight surname anyway.

Raen names are just Japanese, so I got Haru from a general name dictionary website. I still don't know a proper surname for him.

For my Seeker Miqo'te characters (U'zolwe, Zi'aba and Zi'lani) it was easier to take names from the generator and customise in ways that wouldn't get directly generated. Zolwe's name came from the female surnames list, since those are actually the father's name, then I tried it with different letters until it sounded right - I wasn't really wanting to have him come from a known tribe, but I did want him to be from the desert and I didn't like the sound of any other combinations.

And I think I had the Zi tribe name in mind first - weird but valid, inspired by extra lore about male Seekers being able to split off and form their own tribe if they really wanted to, just that it doesn't tend to go very well - so it was a matter of picking given names that sounded good in combination. I probably should have worked through the list but instead I got as far as Aba (ie. first alphabetically) and went "great, I like that".

I was a bit more thorough for Zi'djalani, but that was probably because I was more indecisive - in the end, on top of having a unique tribe name, it's a spelling variant on "Dyalani" as it appears in the name generator. There are a few other names that officially start with "dj" though, so it seemed valid and I liked the look of it better. She's normally "Lani" in any case.

[Equitable_Remedy]

The name was from a character in a book—I just like the name and use it frequently in video games.

[Seera1024]

My main's name, Chymea Sum, came from my main in Guild Wars 2, Chymea. Chymea was a name I randomly thought of then when making my first character there. Chymea in Guild Wars 2 is an Asura and their home city is named Rata Sum. So for Chymea's last name in FFXIV, I took the last part of the home city of Asura, making her name Chymea Sum. I even chose a relative race here in FFXIV to Chymea, as Asura and Lalafell are small.

My other two characters, Zozore Zore (another Lalafell) and Rivienne Cahernaut (Elezen) are from the random name generator. I just hit random until I found names I liked.

My forum name is what I was told was the Japanese version of my name along with the month and day I was born.

[KaijinRhada]

My character's whole name is from my WoW RP character way back in Burning Crusade (though didn't really exist in-game until Legion). I needed something Night Elf-y. Settled on the last name to be Stormchaser, but was stumped on a first name. I was brainstorming and watching Saint Seiya, specifically the 3rd movie. Starts introducing antagonists, and I'm like "y'know, Jaou (it was the way the sub group spelled it) is a pretty neat name." Not the most lore-accurate name for a Night Elf, but it stuck. Most people wouldn't know it came from Saint Seiya, particularly since it's not that popular in NA.

I took that name with me to GW2, and then to here.

[SpiritedMare]

I like to stick to race naming conventions when I can. My first character was a Hellsguard Roegadyn, and I had read that their conventions were [Adjective] [Noun, preferably a plant or animal if female]. So I just played around with several combos that I liked until I landed on "Spirited Mare", and it just sounded... right!

Unfortunately, I made multiple mistakes with my current character. I had read Au Ra use Japanese names, so used Google Translate to get "Nesshin'na Fuketsu" from "Zealous Filly" (yay synonyms ). Mistake list time!

1) Didn't research long enough, simply stopped at "Au Ra have Japanese-sounding names"... only to find out after I'd created the character that Raen Au Ra have Japanese names, while Xaela Au Ra (which she is) are supposed to have Mongolian names.
2) I don't know how it happened, but while I swear I plugged the word "filly" (as in, young female horse) into Translate to get Fuketsu, every subsequent time I tried to reverse-translate it, it said "fuketsu" actually means "filthy"! Noooooo!!
3) Any time I joined a party, the party list shortened my displayed name to "Nesshin'na Fuk...", which I didn't love, heh.

So, when I married my IRL hubby's in-game character, I just paid the extra few bucks to change my character's surname to his, just like IRL! And now even though it's not a strictly fitting or conventional Xaela name, I've nonetheless grown attached to it by this point.

[spf1200]

I just copied names from Magic the gathering. Xantcha was Urza's companion for a time and I quite like her (it's?) character. Argoth is the site of the final battle of the Brothers' war that started the dark age and ice age. I may have some of that wrong it's been awhile since I read the books

[DamianFatale]

The red giant Arcturus exists in the real life Boötes constellation. It is the brightest star in the northern celestial hemisphere.

I just changed that into a Miqo'te sounding format, to make an original name. His last name is Lyehga, because it is appropriate for a moon cat, and that it sounds good with my chosen first name.

That's how I got the idea for Arctur'a Lyehga.