What's in a name?

Well as I sit here on this week long underway with nothing to do but stare at my laptop screen, I figured I'd write a blog about something that we all have and each have a different story for. Your probably wondering what I'm talking about but it's really simple, character names. I know a lot of the time I'll sit and create a character in a few minutes only to sit staring at the screen trying to think of what the name of that toon should be. Every character has a unique story to their name be it personal experiences or the random name generator. So here is a rundown of the names of my characters and where I got them.

Nashamire (Level 81 Balance Night Elf Druid)
This one is an easy one to explain. I grew up in Arizona and I'm a huge sports fan. Growing up in Gilbert I was always a big Suns fan. So when I first started playing wow this was the second toon that I created and I was lost on what to name him. So I decided to name him after the two best players on the Suns at the time, Steve Nash and A'mare Stoudamire. So I took Steve's last name and the back half of A'mare's name and created Nashamire. That's pretty much how that happened.

Nashette(Level 85 Holy Draenei Paladin)
Nashamire was my main for the whole time I played as a Horde so he was my first level 70 toon and my main in BC. But after all my friends kind of stopped playing WoW I decided to move to a different server to play with my friend Elocine and started Nashette. Well since Nashamire was my main and the toon I spent the most time on I decided to name my paladin in tribute to him. So the female version of Nashamire became Nash-ette. I'm sure this needs no explaining but you know how people add “ette” to things to make them feminine? That's basically what I did with her name.

Nashes (Level 46 Frost Worgen Mage)
I figured I'd move to this toon next even though she's my newest toon because her name also starts with my infamous “Nash” moniker. When I created my mage I figure I'd be playing her a lot and besides my death knight Jip, there was no other toons that I named anything other than Nash that I continued to play on a consistent basis. So I figured to avoid confusion in guild chat I would keep the Nash part on the name so people knew who the lowbie was piping in on everything. So I decided I'd figure out a way for Nash to fit in the name while still keeping with a mage theme. Well, even though I think of ice now, when I thought of mages I thought of fireballs. Out of fire comes ash. So I decided N-ashes would be a fitting name for a mage. And since I'm not going to list him in this list I also have a priest I named “Nashlight” because the plan was to make him a holy priest.

Jip (Level 80 Human Death Knight)
Well when I first heard about WOTK bringing a new hero class I was pretty intrigued. I thought that a new class would add a lot of new possibilities which was pretty exciting. The confusing part to me was the fact that these new Death Knights started at level 55. I thought it was going to cause a lot of problems with balance since more than likely every person with a main leveled to 80 would give a DK a try since there was only 25 levels to get through to have two capped toons. I thought it was a bit of a way to skip out on the meat and potatoes of the game which is all the leveling you do in all the areas of the game that the developers had spent some much time creating. I basically thought it was a Jip so that's where the name came from. He was my free ride to a third level 80. In essence, he was my Jip.

Argamatese/Leinadia (Level 54 Beast Mastery Draenei Hunter)
There are two names on this toon because this toon has incurred both a realm transfer AND a faction change. So she WAS a he before. I started playing wow on a trial account and the first toon I ever created was an Orc Hunter named Argamatese. Sounds like a strange name doesn't it? That's what all my friends said too after I started playing. It's a very simple name. I must have had pirates on the brain when I created him cause the name is just the phrase “Argh... maties” squished together and changed a bit to look like a name. Well after being on the shelf over on the Horde side for a long time after I moved over to the Alliance, I decided to move my oldest character over to my current server where he might get played more often. So after doing that I decided that what I wanted to do was make him a her and created Leinadia. I took inspiration for this toons name from Elocine my friend Nicole's toon. Elocine is basically her name backwards with an e on it. So I decided to turn my name backwards (Daniel) and add a few letters to make it look like it could be a girl name.

Manaspring/Hoth (Level 59 Elemental Goblin Shaman)
This toon was the first toon I ever created on the azuremyst server. I named him Manaspring after the shaman totem. That's nothing out of the ordinary but I did it in tribute to my friend Hess who always threw down that totem when I was new to wow because I was constantly going OOM on my boomkin since I was still trying to figure things out. So I named my Shaman after my lifesaving totem. After this last deployment I was really wanting to play a goblin so I decided I'd get back onto the Horde side a bit by faction transferring him over. And to my surprise I decided to type in the name of the famous Star Wars ice planet (Hoth) and the name wasn't taken. Sitting here thinking about it, Hoth might actually make more sense if it was the name of my Frost mage, but whatever. Haha.

So it would be cool to hear from my friends how they came up with their names and their meanings to them. It's always fun to reminisce. Maybe some comments are in order.