Dumpshock Forums > What's in a Name

Lazarus

Oct 23 2003, 01:59 AM

We all have played SR games where it has been tough to come up with a street name or where we made one up off the cuff, but then there are those really good ones. You know the ones I mean. The ones were its just cool to say and you should get points every session for saying it.

Normally we try to think of names that fit our character's personality. I chose Lazarus because of an event in that character's background (actually he chose it himself). It was after heavy cybersurgery late in his career, and after losing essence he felt as if he had some how changed. Of course this is more of a take on being resurrected but in a bad way. As in you get a second chance, but the cost is more than you thought it was going to be.

So what other names out there that you think are cool, and do you have a background story behind it? Just curious.

(And no I don't think Lazarus is a super cool name, to me it is, but hey that's why we rp right?

)

Tanka

Oct 23 2003, 02:01 AM

In a once-played Troll (I have way too many of those), we rolled, yes rolled, his name. We got the following, in order of appearance: K, A, E, K. What did we decide? Kake. Why? I'm still not sure. But it sounded funny for a Troll with 14 Str.

Elfie

Oct 23 2003, 02:01 AM

The one I'm using now for the Mafia Affair... Lex. Real name, Mark. I was sitting at my computer going 'name, name, name, need a name, name....' looking around at my desk, and saw my printer, a LexMark Z43. My character's a decker, so I probably should have gone with the Z43

but I thought using the Lex and Mark combo was cute, so I ran with it.

RangerJoe

Oct 23 2003, 02:02 AM

Gritz N. Bitz -- my ork decker from down Georgia way. Grtiz for short. So named because they are a few of his favorite things. Mmm mmm data.

Elfie

Oct 23 2003, 02:03 AM

My real naming problem stems from no matter what I name my characters, the players always call me Elfie, it's been like that for years, so most of my players are just named Elfie...

Tanka

Oct 23 2003, 02:03 AM

QUOTE (RangerJoe)

Gritz N. Bitz -- my ork decker from down Georgia way. Grtiz for short. So named because they are a few of his favorite things. Mmm mmm data.

Ha! Good one.

I have yet to really name many other characters because I didn't really like any of them... I have a few good ones coming in that should be very fun to play, but we'll see if they get named any time soon. =\

Street Wyze

Oct 23 2003, 02:06 AM

I am currently playing a character known as Cowboy. It's nothing special, it's just because he grew up in an area of Aztland that used to be Texas and he wears a Stetson everywhere. Getting dressed-up for him means a button down shirt with his jeans, dress boots with gold spurs, a shoestring tie, and a sport jacket. He also enjoys line dancing wherever he can find it.

Kagetenshi

Oct 23 2003, 02:08 AM

A few streetnames I go with:

Major (due to backstory)
Alice Walker (guess how many people thought it was her real name)
Jane (backstory)
Ariel (a rigger, a pun on aerial and because she used to be part of a gang whose names were all the names of Angels, so most of their names ended with -el, or "of God")
Juri (a reference to Serial Experiments Lain, the character was an Otaku)
And finally Kagetenshi, which translates as "shadow angel".

~J

Munchkinslayer

Oct 23 2003, 02:19 AM

Arashi-Kage (storm shadow), ninja adept. Name ripped off from GI Joe cartoon I saw a while ago

Homocide, 7.5' troll combat mage with a case of "little man's disease"

Quentallis Thornsong, elf samurai born Quinton Thorenson, changed name to be more "elfie"

Elfie

Oct 23 2003, 02:24 AM

QUOTE (Munchkinslayer)

changed name to be more "elfie"

Shirahime was one I've used in the past, now that I think about it.

mfb

Oct 23 2003, 02:26 AM

i've got a statsless pirate newscaster who calls himself the Man in Black. he signs off at the end of a feed with "'Til things are brighter, I'm the Man in Black."

there's my decker, RIR/0: RIR Is Recursive. the division by 0 is... well, it's division by zero. decker coolness.

demonseed elite had Runs With Scissors; not sure if that was a character or not, but it was funny.

Shadow

Oct 23 2003, 02:35 AM

My Current Charactes names...

Shadow (of course)
Eclipse (my fav)
Ivan
Crow
Raven
Trace

I was really tempted to name, Trace, Tracer Bullit.

Calvin and Hobbs rocks!

sidekick

Oct 23 2003, 02:53 AM

Street names...

Buckshot had to be my favorite. So named because of his shotgun arm.

There was also Trog the Soul Eater (originally Tongo... but someone called him Trog and he thought it sounded coolers... ah the joys of a character too stupid to know he was being insulted)

Others had been The Brick, Doll, Murphy, and The Ape.

Had a group Street Named "Santa's Little Helpers" since it's high propensity of Elves and Dwarves (my character Buckshot used it once as a joke, and it just stuck)

Then there was always the joke character Rigger Mortis, the ghoul rigger.

Dim Sum

Oct 23 2003, 03:02 AM

I used to play a character called Johnny Demonic until that name came out in a Shadowrun sourcebook (can't remember which one, anymore).

One of my best friends used to play a character call Mirage and I think he stopped using that, too, because the name appeared in another Shadowrun book (either a sourcebook or novel).

Somehow doesn't feel ... original any longer once it appears in print.

Munchkinslayer

Oct 23 2003, 03:22 AM

QUOTE (sidekick)

Rigger Mortis, the ghoul rigger.

That Rocks!

Lazarus

Oct 23 2003, 03:28 AM

I had a friend in my old SR group that had a dwarven Street Sam named Knee-Basher... Eventually someone would ask him why that was his name... Let's just say that he had a fondness for extending metal batons and knees. He was also an Escrima martial artist... And he called everyone "Ya' bastard" even the ladies (Still don't why to this day, must have been that CHA of 1)

Seville

Oct 23 2003, 03:40 AM

I always hated street names. No way am I going to sit down in a bar and refer to everybody as Nemesis, Moonshine, Grabass and BigN'Fuzzy, or whatever crazy names I've heard.

All my characters are recorded on their character sheet by their birth name, and I take a relatively neutral sounding name, like Becket or Thompson, and use that as a street name and carry a rep. And then, whenever I meet a new group of people, I give them a new first name to call me (Tom, James, Eddie... something that's not going to catch people's ears if they need to get my attention). Granted, most people are keyed to the sound of their own name, but I figure if I play someone paranoid to do all the stupid runner tricks, he's paranoid enough to take some time to consciously learn to respond to another name for a bit.

Now, nothing against people who do uses streetnames, and in many places they are realistic (fixers, deckers, and gangers would probably have nicknames), its just that I sat down one time too many with three guys named Thrasher. (Shudders at the memories).

EVLTIM

Oct 23 2003, 04:03 AM

Let's see there was my Troll Fencer (the Sword) from Quebec named Pepe Le Pew .
My Combat monster Sam named squish .

And my Pirate named Bubbles .
I think those where the best .

sidekick

Oct 23 2003, 04:06 AM

QUOTE (Seville)

I always hated street names. No way am I going to sit down in a bar and refer to everybody as Nemesis, Moonshine, Grabass and BigN'Fuzzy, or whatever crazy names I've heard.

All my characters are recorded on their character sheet by their birth name, and I take a relatively neutral sounding name, like Becket or Thompson, and use that as a street name and carry a rep. And then, whenever I meet a new group of people, I give them a new first name to call me (Tom, James, Eddie... something that's not going to catch people's ears if they need to get my attention). Granted, most people are keyed to the sound of their own name, but I figure if I play someone paranoid to do all the stupid runner tricks, he's paranoid enough to take some time to consciously learn to respond to another name for a bit.

Now, nothing against people who do uses streetnames, and in many places they are realistic (fixers, deckers, and gangers would probably have nicknames), its just that I sat down one time too many with three guys named Thrasher. (Shudders at the memories).

well, technically, if you want to run streetnames right, your character wouldn't chose them. Basically, as your rep grows (or shrinks) you start to pick up fancier titles.

Take Eddie, the Wired III street sammie, always quick on the draw, always capping people before they can act. People start to say "man, that Eddie is Fast". Pretty soon, people start to talk about "Fast Eddie".

Now mind you, it can work the other way too. Let's say Eddie's Wired III was a bad street level job, so he is practically vibrating. People start talking "man, look at Eddie shaking". Pretty soon Eddie's picked himself up the street name of "Shakes"

I've always been really tempted to try a campaign where the character's didn't pick them, but they got assigned to them based off their actions.

Kanada Ten

Oct 23 2003, 04:42 AM

Does anyone know [dolor=red]how[/color] to pronounce or phonetically spell "Little Tiger" in Japanese?

Tim Dancing Hands, Illusionist.
Pulse, Former Mage Paramedic.

Herald of Verjigorm

Oct 23 2003, 04:55 AM

QUOTE (Kanada Ten)

Does anyone know who to pronounce or phonetically spell "Little Tiger" in Japanese?

Yes, but that isn't the answer to the question you wanted.

The answer you wanted is:
toranoko - tiger cub
tora - tiger

ritoru - little

kodora - small tiger/drinker (???)

pick one

Seville

Oct 23 2003, 04:58 AM

QUOTE (sidekick @ Oct 22 2003, 11:06 PM)

well, technically, if you want to run streetnames right, your character wouldn't chose them. Basically, as your rep grows (or shrinks) you start to pick up fancier titles.

Take Eddie, the Wired III street sammie, always quick on the draw, always capping people before they can act. People start to say "man, that Eddie is Fast". Pretty soon, people start to talk about "Fast Eddie".

Now mind you, it can work the other way too. Let's say Eddie's Wired III was a bad street level job, so he is practically vibrating. People start talking "man, look at Eddie shaking". Pretty soon Eddie's picked himself up the street name of "Shakes"

I've always been really tempted to try a campaign where the character's didn't pick them, but they got assigned to them based off their actions.

Now that's a cool idea. I'm in the Air Force, and that's how callsigns work. I remember when I was API (I trained with the Navy for the first half of pilot training, API is the first part of Naval Flight Training) I had an instructor who told us this about callsigns (and I think would make a pretty good rule of thumb for street names)

"You may think your going to be called Iceman because when your up there your as cool as ice and that's how you fly, but really, if you have a name that in way sounds like a body part, cartoon character, or sexual act, that's what your going to be called."

An interesting sidenote: many pilot communities don't really get into callsigns. In airlift they're not that big a deal, and some communities think they are the dumbest thing since New Coke. Fighter pilots will almost always have a callsign, and usually two stories about how they got 'em (one they tell people, and the one that actually happened). But my all-time favorite callsign was a guy in the Navy, who was on the boat for about a year, and figured out that if you sleep 12 hours a day, your only there for 6 months. Common thinking, but most people can only sleep til their hungry and eat til their tired for about a week before it gets to be too much (or too little, I guess) and give up. Not this guy. He averaged something like 13 hours a day for a year, and they called him "mantress," half man, half mattress.

Dim Sum

Oct 23 2003, 05:06 AM

<snip>

QUOTE

But my all-time favorite callsign was a guy in the Navy, who was on the boat for about a year, and figured out that if you sleep 12 hours a day, your only there for 6 months. Common thinking, but most people can only sleep til their hungry and eat til their tired for about a week before it gets to be too much (or too little, I guess) and give up. Not this guy. He averaged something like 13 hours a day for a year, and they called him "mantress," half man, half mantress.

Wahahahaha, that takes the cake. I heard about a FOF in the Air Force who LOVED ground strikes. People used to tell him, "Good job blowin' up that tank [during such-and-such an exercise]!" so they took the piss out of him calling him Blowjob but since he couldn't have that "officially", he just got called Bee Jay and that was that. Dunno how true that is, though, as I heard it second-hand. I had thought you're allowed to be nicknamed anything, even something in bad taste, short of foul language or racially offensive.

[edited for grammar]

Tanka

Oct 23 2003, 05:08 AM

QUOTE (Dim Sum)

[hack]I had thought you're allowed to be nicknamed anything, even something in bad taste, short of foul language or racially offensive.[/hack]

Nah, nothing sexual, it'll get the pilots excited and they'll forget their task at hand.

Dim Sum

Oct 23 2003, 05:16 AM

QUOTE (tanka)

Nah, nothing sexual, it'll get the pilots excited and they'll forget their task at hand.

Hehehe, I see. Bad enough that they're playing with their sticks between their legs (unless it's one of those with the stick on side) and 20,000 pounds of thrust.

TimeKeeper

Oct 23 2003, 05:16 AM

I was on an Aircraft Carrier you know...

Let's see there was LT. Wood (CS: Sportin')
Cmd Hubbard (CS: Mutha)

Those two stick out (for near obvious reasons) but I can't remember the rest.
Though I did read a Sports Illustrated article where the writer got to go up in a Forteen. Afterwards he got his callsign. "Twobags". Because he filled up two airsick bags during his little flight.

Dim Sum

Oct 23 2003, 05:26 AM

I still crack up thinking of any guy unfortunate enough to be a recruit in the Navy with a surname of Staines or a buck grunt in the Army with a surname of Parts.

I had a schoolmate called Jonathan Bates who came from a RICH family. He used to treat the chauffeur like shit but that guy got his own back. He had address my schoolmate as Master So-and-So, so (ahem) each time he arrived at school to pick him up, he would announce his arrival by loudly calling out, "Master Bates! Master Bates!"

EVLTIM

Oct 23 2003, 05:53 AM

I knew a Coasty named Swallow , By the time I met her she made Petty Officer , But I'll be damned if I could have gone thru with the rank of Seaman .

ting-bu-dong

Oct 23 2003, 08:32 AM

Hi,
my group has an Arabian mercenary with the name of Abu Methane. His signature equipment are an AK-97, grenades and plastic explosives of all kinds. He also has great knowledges in chemistry.

tbd

DigitalMage

Oct 23 2003, 09:21 AM

Some I have used:
Noose - from the time he was hanged by a rival gang and only saved by awakening his magical power and Ghede his loa mounting him. He still has the rope burn marks around his neck.
Rook
Granite - Real name Jordan Stone
Halo - Doc Wagon Rigger sort of guardian angel in a helo

Spirit - Adept with last name Walker
Jack Alltrade - A good all rounder
Cortez - Interrogation specialist
Tonic - Ral name Nisho Jin (Jin & Tonic)
Scrounge
Kwewu - Hopi Wolf Totemic adept
Mistry - Elven thief and seductress. Short for Chemistry
Cipher
Craft
Cruise
Rabid
Talon
Storm - Sea Shaman

But yes I totally agree that the streets will name you rather than you choosing a name yourself.

Finbar

Oct 23 2003, 09:57 AM

The people in my game chose their own names.

Grey (short for greyson, his first name)
Hype: the char is a shadowrunner newbie and was Hyped to be a part of this...
Chase: cause she moves the slowest in the group and is chasing after them
Solomon: The man with more skills than anyone has a right to have, he isnt the best at anything, but can do/backup just about everything. It's a wise choice to bring him along.

Of course some people I know who got their Nickname in the Armed Services.
PAM, standing for Potential Axe Murderer

Dim Sum

Oct 23 2003, 10:23 AM

QUOTE (DigitalMage)

Noose - from the time he was hanged by a rival gang and only saved by awakening his magical power and Ghede his loa mounting him. He still has the rope burn marks around his neck.

It's Marshal Jed Cooper from Hang 'Em High!!!

Albeit without the magic.

Connor

Oct 23 2003, 10:51 AM

One of my groups longest running NPCs, a fixer who works out of an army surplus store of all things, goes by the name Bob. I'd say in some ways he's rather cliche'd, but then again that's always been his charm.

Bölverk

Oct 23 2003, 11:48 AM

I played a paranoid covert ops specialist who went by the street name of Fred because he thought it would be inconspicuous. Too bad he was ethnic Japanese...

mfb

Oct 23 2003, 12:07 PM

heh. one of my first chars was an ex-yak named Reaping Tiger. back in japan, he was Leaping Tiger, but his english pronunciation wasn't so strong. best line from that char, as a grenade dropped at his feet: "Hory clap!"

Lilt

Oct 23 2003, 12:40 PM

LOL. Some absolute beauts here.

I'm tempted to encourage the 'other people choose your callsign' thing in my next game. Of course people can introduce a character as something else if they want to but that's just be spoiling it. Perhaps start it off as a merc campaign where they all know eachother's real names anyway... (Gets around some problems)

Pistons

Oct 23 2003, 01:04 PM

QUOTE (mfb)

heh. one of my first chars was an ex-yak named Reaping Tiger. back in japan, he was Leaping Tiger, but his english pronunciation wasn't so strong. best line from that char, as a grenade dropped at his feet: "Hory clap!"

That's pretty funny.

Siege

Oct 23 2003, 01:10 PM

QUOTE (Pistons)

QUOTE (mfb @ Oct 23 2003, 07:07 AM)

heh. one of my first chars was an ex-yak named Reaping Tiger. back in japan, he was Leaping Tiger, but his english pronunciation wasn't so strong. best line from that char, as a grenade dropped at his feet: "Hory clap!"

That's pretty funny.

That sounds like something you'd exclaim on a Sunday morning..."hory clap!"

-Siege

Grimtooth

Oct 23 2003, 01:40 PM

Let's see...

Strontium Dog - 1st decker i ever made
Fulcrum - 3 armed samurai using that KAGE third arm mount
Leatherback - Gator Shaman
Top Hat - Australian Beach bum Shark Shaman
Icarus - Backstory name
Grimtooth - Amerind Wolf Shaman
Gutter - Squatter life style Adept. Former bughunter
Short Round - Dwarf mage with a bad temper
Raven - Dwarf policlub enforcer
Lovecraft - 1st Combat mage i ever made. Chicago survivor
Hank - Pro wrestling, Physical Adept. State name - The Experiment.
Cyanide Angel - Female samuarai / southern Belle

That's all the good ones i can think of at the moment.

Drain Brain

Oct 23 2003, 01:49 PM

Myself and two friends were told to make characters for a game - not SR - in a military style. We were all equal rank (I can't remember what, now) but the three surnames were Hobbes (me), Brockman and Grant.

These characters ended up as ex-military over the course of the campaign, and ended up as a unit called G.B.H. Not intentional at all, but highly amusing...

Other good one is Oliver Philip Patterson - a PhysAd I'm playing over in the "Welcome to the Shadows" section. His "name" is Flip, and he's an English ex-ganger. Thing is, I got the London SB the other day, and I've discovered from teh Brit Speak glossary that to Flip someone is to mug them. Oops... time to change my name. Flip was meant to be a little sister's corruption of Philip!

Shockwave_IIc

Oct 23 2003, 03:24 PM

One the best one i've seen was a irish bodyguard that went by the name of J.Case.

JongWK

Oct 23 2003, 04:31 PM

La Bruja Serpiente (15 years old female decker from Aztlan, hilarious).
Kyle Fox
Shotwise
Icebreaker
Quicksilver (named after a T-shirt

)
Águila Negra ("Black Eagle", PCC Eagle shaman doctor)
Green Menace (Irish fomori mage)
Iggy (troll street samurai, Homer Simpson-style

)

I'm thinking of playing a mage (some day, since I'm cursed to GM and never play

... it will probably be an NPC) called Necrodamus.

Slash_Thompson

Oct 23 2003, 05:23 PM

there's a japanese character in my game, name: Tsuruko,

well, the decker doesn't exactly speak japanese very well(at all), so he heard 'Tsuruko' and extracted 'pseudo-code'... and it's just sort of stuck.

makes it even more amusing that Tsuruko doesn't understand enough english to realize that it's a deliberate mispronunciation...and none of the bilingual characters has bothered to point it out to her yet.

[edit] edited for clarity and punctuation[/edit]

Hot Wheels

Oct 23 2003, 06:34 PM

I had a character named "Short stop." She was a Souix, fairly small, and loved baseball. So the name had a double meaning, small size and baseball.

She ended up retiring as a charachter after a nasty run in the Kingdome, marrying a proball player.

Hot Wheels

Oct 23 2003, 06:57 PM

QUOTE (EVLTIM @ Oct 23 2003, 01:53 AM)

I knew a Coasty named Swallow , By the time I met her she made Petty Officer , But I'll be damned if I could have gone thru with the rank of Seaman .

Oh God! I'm just giggling at the thought of the name. Only the most professional of NCO's could have gotten through that one with a straight face.

Elfie

Oct 23 2003, 07:02 PM

QUOTE (Lilt)

LOL. Some absolute beauts here.

I'm tempted to encourage the 'other people choose your callsign' thing in my next game.

The only problem with that is, if we let the players name each other, there's always one person who ends up with the name 'sweet-tits'.

Kurukami

Oct 23 2003, 07:45 PM

I've got a character in development, who I'm still waiting to play, named Ember. Creole, Ork, and a magician-adept shaman of Firebringer. Naturally, he specializes in fire-magicks and the like.

Another character, who's actually shown up on this forum for demonstrations, is a decker/rigger who calls herself Cheng. Mostly, that's because she's part-Chinese by ethnicity, and her icon is a lady pirate. That came because the most infamous lady pirate in Chinese history was Cheng i Sao, who brought the Chinese navy to its knees in the early 19th century. (And I was on a pirate kick after seeing Pirates of the Caribbean.

)

And one character I'm working on now is a dwarven retrieval specialist/bodyguard/street sam, who's got contacts with a ton of people. He's fairly cybered -- bone lacing, hand-razors, smartlink and the like. I'm still trying to puzzle out a name for him that doesn't sound hokey.