Since I've been outed I thought I'd say a word or 600 on my naming convention and the reasons behind it. I've talked to a few people over my time in WOW about the names they choose, some people have a naming convention which they stick to, others just chose whatever takes their fancy at the time, others need to be beaten to death with the inspiration stick; I've seen some people take inspiration from names from their favourite characters in books or myth, others chose names that are vaguely amusing, Ezzagood the shaman is one that stands out in my mind (don't make me explain why) and Akdov, when asked about his name, the reply came back "because it spells Vodka backwards". Genius. Others, struggled for inspiration upon first logging into the game, and clearly looked around the room they were sat in for inspiration; I give you Bookshelf, Lampshade and Window, some didn't even make it past where they were sitting, Keyboard, Mouse, Monitor, Computer and CPU! Dear god people!?!?!! And then there's the worst of the lot, the type of people who log on and think I'm a mage, I'm I gnome, I KNOW! MAGEGNOME!! Idiots. Anyways, last week Leafshine made a post titled "Oh! Noes! Drama Llama Loose in Blogosphere!" which prompted a flurry of tweets between us which can basically be summarised as me accusing him of false advertising and demanding the inclusion of more llama's in his post. At this point you're probably thinking "he's lost the plot, this has nothing to do with naming conventions" but this was actually the inspiration for this post, in a round-about sort of way. Here's why:
I have a bit of an admiration for llamas. Actually it's not just llama's, it's any kind of camelid, be it camels (one hump or two), llamas, alpaca, vicunas or guanacos, probably more than healthy admiration, possibly more of a fixation. This fixation with camelids came, I think, from a drink fuelled conversation after a particularly messy jaunt to the local while I was on a year's placement from uni, I can't remember exactly what the conversation was about (I was quite drunk, that happens…) but the end result was we (me and my then-housemate) decided that we liked alpacas. A lot. This quickly turned into the fixation with all things camelid, I don't know why, the reason is not important, it just did.
So it all first started on some online game or other, probably Counter Strike or Unreal Tournament or some such, where you have to choose a name for yourself. A simple 'Alpaca' seemed a little dull, it doesn't quite breed the amount of fear and awe I was looking for in the opposition reading my name at the bottom of the kills board. A bit of thinking, and with an obvious constraints which these games tend to impose on the length of your name, and Mightyalapca is born! Mighty stayed with me through a whole host of games on PC and xbox, until I came to WOW, my first mage was created and tradition was maintained, he was called Mightyalpaca. Now again my regular reader will notice, if you've been paying attention, that I no longer play a mage as my main; I quickly migrated to a priest. So what do I do? I can't use Mightyalpaca again. It's got to be something camelid related, do I go for a different camelid, or stick with alpacas? Choices choices. I eventually decided on llama as the one, not an easy choice let me tell you. And then it came to the decision of what to put before (or indeed after) the llama whilst staying within WOWs name length limit. After literally minutes of soul searching, I fixed on mystic, it was a good looking name, and given I was rolling a priest, mystic seemed to fit. Since then my naming convention has stuck with this convention (with one or two exceptions). Chose a camelid, choose a suitable adjunct, the sillier the better, job done. I've had Eminentcamel, my warrior, Divinellama my new druid, Dramallama the DK, Greatguanacco the rogue, Holyhumps, the paladin (a slight move away from the naming rulebook I grant you, but a subtle reference to Camelids, I like subtle), Camelkazi my shaman, Cameltoes the hunter and Splendid the warlock. That's right Splendid, my one slip up, this guy was named thus back in my GM days when I couldn't go 5 minutes without being whispered by some muppet demanding a guild invite who thought he was too good to read the application rules on the forum or one of the raiders asking what their DKP score was etc. etc. I used him as an anonymous way of still playing the game as my normal names tended to give the game away, I should really get round to renaming him to something suitably silly sometime.
And there you have it, my naming convention, but that's not quite it… back in the day when we first created the guild, some idiot left me in charge of collecting signatures for the charter, as no one voiced an opinion on the guild name, and there was no one online to ask at the time, the Marauding Camelids were created, and are still going strong six years later! Incidentally I like to think the Ramkahen camel mounts were created solely in recognition of my naming convention, clearly they weren't, but I like to think they were…
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