Most unusual character name that was already taken?

[Danikat.8537]

@Ben K.6238 said:

@"Eloc Freidon.5692" said:The name limitation is confusing since account names exist which would allow anyone to get what they want. Any MMO out there should consider name exclusivity is bad when there could be millions of characters and increasingly fewer legible things to name your character left.

Accounting only for the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, no spaces or anything else, you can get 208 billion combinations with just 8 letters. GW2 allows a number of accented characters and much longer names, so there's no real cause for concern there.

Oh, that reminds me of a really strange one! That point came up in another topic about name availability and I said you have to consider some of those combinations would never be used...then as I was typing it I thought I'd better check because you never know what people will do.

It turned out that not only was Abcdefghijklmnopqrs taken but so was Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. I had to cut it down to something like Aaaaaaaaaaaa to find a version which wasn't taken. (Also that's a pain to delete, had to type it out really slowly to make sure I didn't miss the point where the delete button lit up.)

Admittedly I don't know if they were taken by (badly programmed) bots or something similar, or maybe someone making the same check on the same day I was. But I found it amusing that my "Obviously no one would ever use..." examples were both wrong.

[Menadena.7482]

I run into it all the time! All of my names are two Finnish words that somehow relate to the profession and/or race. Some combos are more punny than others. Anyway, unless there are a lot of Finnish speaking people on NA (or are names world bound rather than server bound?) I would not expect to have conflicts as often as I do ... we are talking multiple possible names per character before I find something that will work.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

I've even had complex, full names be taken, and that's an extremely low probability but does happen.

This happens with GW2 and not other games because of megaserver, remember that your name is being shared across all servers, rather than just being specific to your current server. As a result, there are millions of names taken rather than just a handful of thousands. They also restrict names to English characters and limit the length, so the entire pool of possible names is relatively small.

[whoeverxwins.1279]

Sylvari names are difficult to come by. Seems even more complex Gaelic names are taken. Went for Dubshaíne, but had to tack on 'Of Noon' to get the name. My combos of Gaelic words into names worked though.> @Hannelore.8153 said:

I've even had complex, full names be taken, and that's an extremely low probability but does happen.

This happens with GW2 and not other games because of megaserver, remember that your name is being shared across all servers, rather than just being specific to your current server. As a result, there are millions of names taken rather than just a handful of thousands. They also restrict names to English characters and limit the length, so the entire pool of possible names is relatively small.

You can have accented characters in names, but must do a copy/ paste to get it.

[polarbear.2497]

@SoulGuardian.6203 said:I too base most of my characters on other of my favourite videogames.

So no real surprise that some were already taken.So imagine trying to make a final fantasy full crew in gw2... impossible name wise.

As far as a uncommon name is concerned, I did find once or twice that names I thought to be extremely rare were already taken.One of them was Lilith Darkthorn, for my necromancer, if I'm not mistaken.What are the chances of that?I was really annoyed for like 2 minutes, but because imagination for naming is something that I'm good at, I quickly came up with another just as unique.

I am not at all surprised that Lilith Darkthorn was taken. Lilith is extremely popular, as are words like dark and thorn and combinations thereof. That being said, it's a very nice name.

[Hesione.9412]

@"TheLadyOfTheRings.9148" said:I love this topic of names :)

I was surprised that Peirene - a name I had in mind for a female sylvari - was already in use, since I came up with it "by myself" (inspired by the name Irene). But apparently someone else had the same idea before me :P

That was me, female Sylvari necro, my first character in this game (and still one of my more active characters).

I was sad that someone took Bayes Theorem.

[Gop.8713]

@"phokus.8934" said:So I had one account character named, Backyard Booty Burglar, and I dressed him up as a pirate but I was forced into a name change. I guess ANet felt "booty" was in reference to butts rather than wares. Oh whale.

This does seem like kind of an odd one to object to. I wonder if they would have allowed 'Backyard Booty' or 'Booty Burglar' to stand . . .

[Antycypator.9874]

I wanted to name my warrior "Rose Pierre Dolevas" which sounds like profanity in my language (it can be translated to "I will fckn destroy you"), but this name was taken. I had to change it to... "Rous Pierre Dolevas", but then some french people started to text me.

Other situation: I wanted to use a name from my story (I write fantasy stories). That name was already taken... I couldn't belive that.Some day I saw my surname in game.

[Wrong Device.3014]

I have metasequoia in my garden and I wanted to name my Sylvari "Metasequoia". It's taken. :(So now she's "Oenothéra", because "Oenothera" is taken too.

[SoulGuardian.6203]

Funny thing.I had a spellbreaker called Shinobi, after the game shinobi. Which is a japanese name. Pronounced She-no-bee.People were starting to /laugh and saying silly rude comments; and I realized why.If you split up Shinobi it sounds like"she no bi"

I shouldn't really care, but because in this particular occasion, it was bugging the hell out of me, so shinobi had to go.

Now he's in a place where some of my previous characters with unsatisfactory names went.

[Demolition Blonde.1925]

After 4 years of playing I made a new ranger and could not believe that the name Atomic Blonde was not taken!

[kratan.4619]

Insert many latin names for plants for my Sylvari characters.

[SoulGuardian.6203]

@kratan.4619 said:Insert many latin names for plants for my Sylvari characters.

There are really cool plant names that you can use for sylvari race.Including trees, flowers, erbs, and fruits.

[Danikat.8537]

@kratan.4619 said:Insert many latin names for plants for my Sylvari characters.

I've had that problem too. After I found out the common name for many all-white mushrooms in the genus Amanita is 'destroying angel' I had to make an all white sylvari necromancer with the mushroom cap 'hair' and wings. I wasn't entirely surprised that Amanita was taken but every species name and almost all the variants I could think of were too, and I didn't think mushroom sylvari were that popular.

(Although it's not just sylvari with latin plant names - my norn engineer is called Ilex Hedera, because I had the name in GW1, really liked it and wanted to keep using it. I know it's not lore friendly for a norn, but she was the only character I had planned who suited it.)

[Multicellular.3746]

I have long used Nahuatl (think Aztec) names in various games because I am not super creative and I was a somewhat unusual language I had randomly studied for a short time. Was very surprised how many were taken when I first started. Then found a zone with the Hylek in it! First game I saw using Nahuatl.

[Kong.3280]

For years i had my mesmer parked within the Not So Secret jumping puzzle helping players with portals, tips on difficult portions they were stuck on, and detailed instructions to help them complete the Dive Master challenge that beckons players to attempt the blind dive to the bottom. One day I thought to myself, "I think I want to play this character." So I created a new character to forever take up that task, and also become a storage mule for the odds and ends I don't want in my bank (which include skins, until Anet gives us the ability to convert single use apply now skins to transmutation charges).

I named that character: Go Go Gadget Portal

I was baffled no one had taken the name, and happy I was able to claim it for my own.

Edit: I'm aware the subject of discussion is the unusual name that was already taken, but I thought i'd post this anyway. :)

[LadyKitty.6120]

@Menadena.7482 said:I run into it all the time! All of my names are two Finnish words that somehow relate to the profession and/or race. Some combos are more punny than others. Anyway, unless there are a lot of Finnish speaking people on NA (or are names world bound rather than server bound?) I would not expect to have conflicts as often as I do ... we are talking multiple possible names per character before I find something that will work.

The character names are actually unique in the whole game to prevent problems if people migrated between regions and thus EU-players prolly have lots of finnish names taken.And while keyfarming, Kitty's also noticed that quite surprising finnish names have been taken already.

[CarbonylGoat.5147]

Phosphofructokinase, as far as I remember. Or some super long enzyme name.

[Merrick.8604]

I tried to make a thief named Donald Trump but that one's been taken for years. :expressionless:

[Danikat.8537]

@LadyKitty.6120 said:

@Menadena.7482 said:I run into it all the time! All of my names are two Finnish words that somehow relate to the profession and/or race. Some combos are more punny than others. Anyway, unless there are a lot of Finnish speaking people on NA (or are names world bound rather than server bound?) I would not expect to have conflicts as often as I do ... we are talking multiple possible names per character before I find something that will work.

The character names are actually unique in the whole game to prevent problems if people migrated between regions and thus EU-players prolly have lots of finnish names taken.And while keyfarming, Kitty's also noticed that quite surprising finnish names have been taken already.

There's also people like me who are English speakers but will often use other languages for names both because it's less likely to be taken than an English equivalent and because it often looks and sounds nicer.

I don't tend to use Finnish, my go-to languages are Welsh, Gaelic (both Scots and Irish) and Latin. But I'm sure some people will use Finnish names too.

[Auri.1365]

For my Sylvari I also prefer Gaelic words as names as well. This seems to be quite popular and I needed a few tries to name my Sylvari Mirage with a Gaelic name that translates to something like "mirror" or "mirror image". I tried it with the Scottish and Irish version and needed to change the accents to get a name (Scáthan) that was not taken.

[SoulGuardian.6203]

All my characters have a blended two words into one.It's kinda like their title.Always related to their profession and style.

[Danikat.8537]

It happened again! I thought I was being original enough to get away with it, calling my new ele 'Someone Elsa', but someone (else!) beat me to it! (Maybe I should have done it before the new movie came out?)

After minutes of deliberation I settled for 'Who Elsa' instead.

[leila.7962]

It wasn't on GW2, it was on GW1, but I made a character named Violet Unicorn for PvP, but ended up not liking the skin I chose. So I deleted it and made another character right away (there were not a lot of skin options on GW1), and surprisingly someone took my name ;( it was a matter of 1 minute to delete and create a new one.

[Danikat.8537]

I hope it's ok to bump this up, I found a new one today: Tevildo.

Ok it's from Tolkien, maybe it's not surprising it's taken. But Tevildo, Prince of Cats is a fairly minor character who only appears in an early version of the Lay of Leithian before being written out to make room for Sauron. And yet, not only was Tevildo taken, but also his more obscure true name; Tiberth. His full name, Tiberth Bridhon Miaugion is too long, but I managed to get Tiberth Miaugion.

Also while it might have annoyed me it might please Christopher Tolkien, who wrote in the footnotes to Beren and Luthien that he "clearly deserves to be remembered" in spite of being written out of the story.