Names

Arbre

Where did your name come from?  Some people have real unique ones, have me curious.  Do tell!

Ashmer

I thought it up on the bus to school in my junior year of high school. I was literally just zoned out and thinking about random stuff, and suddenly had the thought "Ashmer... yeah, Ashmer would be a cool name."

Moirean

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moiré_pattern

http://www.theoi.com/Daimon/Moirai.html

The most beautiful confluence of these two concepts and words that I've seen is in Zelazny's Donnerjack, a cyberpunk version of the Orpheus myth, where a visual interference pattern heralds the inevitable, fatalistic breaking and death of intelligent programs. 

Setne

I stole the name from a book by Rick Riordan, back when Wetness was going to be a Sciomancer.

Omei

Well, see, you have various terminology from the Rajamalan and Kalsu languages, and of course over the course of years, wars and population booms tend to corrupt language...

Daskalos

Daskalos is the greek word for Teacher. Have at it.

Emelle

I made mine up because I'm a pleb.

Ezalor

http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Keeper_of_the_Light

http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Ezreal

I am so original.

Macavity

Macavity comes from the Musical Cats, in which there is a character named Macavity....when I first started the character 12 years ago I actually played him much like a villain type person, who would do anything and everything to make himself advance further but not be known it was him to begin with.  and he was Rajamala until he became Azudim.  

Periluna

Periluna... I don't remember, honestly.

Rhine - ask @Elwyn or @Xavin that one

Aarbrok

Aarbrok came about because I did a google search on Werewolf names, because I wanted to make an Atabahi.  It had nothing to do with Pokemon.

...I actually did not even think about that until later.

Bakhtuh

I think I got the name Bakhtuh off google, while doing a random search for names. It is the Farsi word for "thunder". Had a nice onomatopoeic feel to it. 

Eleanor

Man I just picked some random name, for reals.

My alts tend to be finding a word in another language and then mucking with some of the letters so it isn't that word anymore. Also one of my alts (AND I'M NOT TELLING WHICH) is named specifically so his name shortened sounds like one of my favourite animu characters' names.

Kaeus

Very first mud I played as a kid, some random person there felt that (some pokemon, cant recall which) was a bad name (I am not creative still) and gave me the name Kaeus. Been that ever since.

Solaria

I think Freya and Bragon actually helped me come up with it when I was trying to start over after Zortania. I don't remember the exacts, but I know we went through some lists and just ended up with Solaria.

Sessizlik

When making a char, I give the different races a rl nationality. Grecht got to be turkish and Sessizlik means Peace (among other things)  which I thought was suitable for my semi-pacifist.

Ciarelle

I hit the C on the keyboard, mixed up a couple of names I'd used on other MUDs to make Ciarelle, checked Google to check how common it was/wasn't, and here we are.

Piper

I was looking for something short and cute because originally Piper was going to be a bashing/mudsex alt. /honest

She didn't end up that way.

Jensen

Pieced together letters until it formed a name I liked. My alts however... Jassu is a blitzball player from final fantasy 10 and kitana is from mortal combat

Angwe

http://xaeyruudh.wordpress.com/2012/04/16/tashalan-names/

and

http://xaeyruudh.wordpress.com/2012/04/16/chultan-names/

Teani

My first char was named after a flower. it's this startling blue color that just lights up the side of the road in late summer. 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Cikoria.jpg

Irea was just a mash-up of letters that sounded alright. And Teani is a complete rip-off from one of my favorite fantasy series ever (even though the character never was intended, nor ended up like the character in the books)

Elwyn

Periluna said:

Periluna... I don't remember, honestly.

Rhine - ask @Elwyn or @Xavin that one

I found Rhine in a book series, @xavin picked it though.

Slyphe

First Slyphe thought they'd be really sly and hatch this devious plan to make the character start off as a woman (the way I pronounce it, Slyphe rhymes with wife - even more evidence) and then later on change the Goddess to a God just to confuse the crap out of everybody and give pesky mortals something stupid to shout about when they've run out of insults.

Aaaaaand here we are today!

Moirean

I always assumed it came from sylph, just jumbled up a bit, cuz early Aetolia wasn't really that creative, let's be honest.

Aryanne

I was reading the GOT series when I started playing, and Arya was/is my favourite character. Since it was way to lame to ACTUALLY use her name, I stuck some letters on the end of it.

Conveniently, no one seems to pronounce Aryanne anything like Arya, so I'm relatively sure it wouldn't have been toooo obvious if I didn't point it out.

I have a couple alts, and for those I just google "fantasy name generator" and click "random"...

Daingean

I often do what @Ciarelle and @Aryanne do. Both at once, I mean. I'll take some letters I'm fond of - I love me some hard consonants - and keep hitting refresh on a name generator until something I sort of like appears, then mess with the letters a bit.

You can tell very obviously when I've made up a name or when it's been suggested to me - almost everything I make up starts with a hard consonant and tends to either be a palindrome or sound pretty neat if you say it -really seriously-. The name I used for ages as a 'catch all' online name and my general 'explore the mud, suicide after' character was Zoticus and it still remains my favorite moniker.

Daingean was given to me by @Aithinne, since I came to Aetolia to play her son. 

I am also terrible at surnames, and thus tend to find a word I like in another language that meshes well with my character name and go with it. Also, I am totally guilty of the 'steal a  character name you like from another source and hope no one notices' - my character in Midkemia was named Vidar after the main character of the Lord of Silence novel, and I made his last name Varjo, because it not only sounded cool to say his name out loud, but it meant 'Shadow' in finnish, and he was a rogue and I am secretly twelve and it appealed.

Serrice

http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Serrice_Council

http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Normandy:_Serrice_Ice_Brandy

Ferrik

I just sat there staring at my keyboard for quite a long while, trying to find something that sounded 'right'. Suddenly Ferrik rolled out, because it sounded 'nice' to me.

Somehow I didn't make connections to a certain animal that some unicorns do (BECAUSE CROCODILES ARE FANTASTIC OKAY NOTHING ELSE MATTERS) and much much later when I googled it did I find out it's also a character in some game. (though in my defense that came out later after the character was conceptualized)

Long story short. I'm weird and particular about names. Ferrik is one of the few I am still okay with.

Rivas

Rivas is named after Rohan Rivas, the producer/manager of programming for GameTrailers.com. The guy was a buddy of mine in high school, and he has one of the coolest names of anyone I've ever met in real life.

Trask was initially created as a villain, and was named after Bolivar Trask, a villain from the X-Men comic series that was obscure enough to not be known by anyone but the geekiest of geeks (that is, until Bryan Singer decided to use him in his new movie and cast Peter freakin' Dinklage in the role...now I'll just look like a poser).

Conroy is my grecht, and he's named after the greatest actor to ever play Batman (geddit?). If you try and argue with me on this, I will punch you in the face.

Veovis

I stole it from Myst. It was my admin name when I was working on a project with Cyan that never launched.

I loves me some Myst. Also, I didn't think I'd play Aetolia for very long, but here I am almost 14 years later.

Meyvitch

I wanted something that sounded like Irish or Russian. What I got is something that sounds like vodka to me