What's the story behind your name?

[Kaizencorr]

Kaizen is a philosophy about making improvements everyday(very rough interpretation, I know it started in business) That mindset of just continually improving just resonates with who I am in real life.

And Corinthian (Corrinthian, because it was actually taken) is my favorite book of the bible. Most of it are letters calling out churches for not doing what they are supposed to do and how they are really supposed to conduct themselves. It's a call to action again to improve.

[Kamatsu]

My characters names come from WoW. Back when I started playing WoW I wanted 'lore' appropriate names for my characters, but didn't really know the lore very well... so used it's name-generator (which used list's of names that were considered 'lore appropriate' for each race) for every character I made. There were some names that I really liked... so tend to use them in games I play.

I tried the random name generator here in XIV, but just couldn't find a name I liked. So ended up using non-lore appropriate names I'd used back in WoW.

[KayRadley]

When I first created my OC in high school, I named them "Keiji" because I was a big weeb. When I outgrew my weeb phase, I changed the name to the homophonous "Kay G."

Radley comes from To Kill A Mockingbird.

[Aeeninwen_Taldel]

I chose Aeeninwen Taldel because it was my DnD name back in the day. I also think it sounds pretty. It doesn't particularly mean anything that I know of, it's just a DnD style name, almost elvish.

[seida]

For my main she was originally Creamy Goodness, but I changed it to Creamy Choux to be... slightly more elezen-sounding, haha.

My alt is a roe named Dhemgeim Fyrlihtwyn, I really like sea wolf names so decided to go lore compliant with it. Looked up the rules and various words and after a while came up with one I liked. It translates as 'dusk jewel, daughter of firelight'.

[MikkoAkure]

Forum name: All the way back in 1.0 I was a hot midlander guy with the name "Mikko Akure" for all of one week, but it happened to be the week that I decided to make a profile on the forums. After that week I decided to go back to my main since I didn't feel like doing everything all over again.

My character's name journey started in 1.0 with my first main character, who was a cute little lalafell named "Mido Azeri". "Mido" from the solfedge musical scale for "mi" and "do" and "Azeri" because it was Basque language for "fox" and I thought it sounded cool lol. When ARR dropped, I retired my 1.0 main (still exists on the server as a hot midlander guy with a different name and an inventory of 1.0 stuff), and started from scratch in a new slot with a male miqo since we couldn't play those in FFXI. I kept "Mido" but changed my last name to "Ajihri" since that was close to my original surname and was also a surname used by at least one mithra NPC in FFXI. When I decided to switch to female miqo'te, I kept the last name but wanted to have my first name be similar to my old name, while keeping the musical theme and still being something short that sounds it would still be a proper miqo'te name, so "Midi" was the obvious choice.

I've pretty much permanently been a midlander hyur now for a couple of years (minus a brief stint as viera) and have given up my miqo'te past, but I haven't settled on a new name yet. I don't RP, but I prefer lore-correct names for all my characters in all different games so it still bugs me. But at this point, everyone I know in-game knows me as "Midi" so it would be awkward to change anyway.

[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.