I'm curious about trends and patterns in the players of Shadowrun. What are the street names of your Shadowrun group's PCs? Do you know the reasoning behind the names that were chosen?

I GM for a group of six:

Boondock & Saint - A pair of Irish hit-women cousins. They ripped off the movie name.
Genji & Ryūjin - A Japenese-American ork and a Japanese elf. I guess they wanted something that sounded Japanese-y.
Black Onyx - Black as it's dark and reminiscent of the shadows. Onyx was the name of a character from the DC/Humanoids Comics universe. It's also reminiscent of black lacquer, which Japanese artisans favor for it's dark color and opaque shadows. Since Black Onyx does not have a gang background, her street name has important cultural connections for her.
Frost - This was actually a character I was going to create for myself but I gave it to a friend so she could jump in the game quickly. My concept was Magnum PI meets Elijah Snow from Planetary (hence the "Frost" name) but she's evolved into an ex-NAN politico-turned-runner.

How about you?

Lets see...

Slim He was skinny
Jiro never went by a streetname. Jiro was an alias and it stuck.
Butterfly Joy Rainbow-Love Trout God only knows.
The Colonel an ex merc. Fancied himself an officer. Never made it past Corpral though.

Sydney Rockford 'Rocko' - nickname as streetname. Also uses a small, photorealistic wallaby in a strange blue and purple buttonup shirt as his Persona.
Kurokawa Hikaru 'Kami Kid' - Shinto conjuring-aspect mystic adept. Should be self-explanatory.
Reginald Kruse 'Curse' - partly his name, but mostly his Bad Luck.

My character names from previous iterations of Shadowrun are not worth mentioning. :/

Streetline: A weapons specialist named after his first gun witch he still owns but is so heavy modded its not really a streetline special any more.

Screamer: Dwarf technomacer named after his motobike witch has two huge grill/ducts that when open make a sound like a stooker dive bomber at speed. Hench the name screamer. Is using the wannabe combat biker image as a false ID but as fallen in love with his bike now.

Best. Name. Ever.

Ghost - Elven decker(hacker)/rigger. Was the team's Matrix whiz and wheelman. Didn't waste time with drones because he had to keep himself flexible to hack. His favorite vehicle was a sportbike, because it fit into buildings. Name came from his generally being "The ghost in the machine"

Even more appropriate because she was a cyber sam with metal spikes coming out of her cyberskull like a mowhawk.

Yes, she had the distinctive style flaw.

So far, I have:

Captain Cuisinart (AKA: Kaptain Kamikazi the Ninja Feng Shui Redecorator): The Two Katana-Weilding Bio-Ninja who had a few incidents trying to look cool by jumping off his bike. And, yes, he did one job as a Ninja Redecorator to screw up someone's Feng Shui.

Father Badass: Hitman for the Church with the "Stick Of Death", a Collapseable Pole with many built-in weapons.

Doc: Doctor McCoy. Some folks refuse to call him McCoy for various reasons.

(H!m3R@: Has "1337" as a specialty lingo under his native language of English.

Conner The Peeled Lobster: Critical Glitch for a Perception test. He just watched the Molotov come for his face, thinking, "Ohhhhhhhhhhhh, this is going to hurt."

I am playing a Orc Sammy/Weapon Spec named Monkey. He picked up the nick from an asshole of an elven mage who offhandedly referred to him as "that ignorant monkey" The mage stopped having a nice day shortly thereafter. The bloodstains came out, but the name stuck.

Monkey currently runs with Daka, an Orc street sam. He says it is his given name, but Monkey thinks it is simply his favorite sound, coming from his various firearms. Dakadakadakadaka!

Ratchet is the groups wheelman/drone guy/EW guy. No big stretch there about the name.

Moon-doggy is a Dog shaman they picked up in LA. Yeah, he is a stoner surfer dude...

Mason Rocket is our face and infiltration expert. Monkey thinks he picked two words out of a magazine at random when he came to Seattle.

Some highlights:

• Vanguard – An elven intrusion specialist with a full suite of observation cyberware, active since 2051.
• Fang – A mostly retired coyote shaman, most noted for his powerful ally spirit Icehook. (this one is a friend's character)
• Bullwork – An ork phys-ad, working primarily as a bodyguard for hire, active since the late 2050s.
• Rick – A charismatic ork runner active in the 2050s, who now has a nightclub and mostly works as a fixer specializing in weapons (if it exists, he can get it). He has contacts in the leadership of the Ork Underground, and will move people in and out of Seattle for them. His club is named Gheal'ereth (or'zet for "white house").

Current:

• Trent – A faded otaku who still works as a hacker. Unbeknownst to himself he is a latent technomancer, and his agent from before the crash is now an A.I. (G.M. hooks, don't know yet if it will work out good or bad for me.)

My group's only real bit of strangeness is that every one is some kind of magician - mostly adepts. Otherwise, even their names are kind of plain...

Lurch
A troll thug bodyguard with a thing for nice suits. I'm picturing him as being kind of lanky for a Troll, though the player hasn't stated one way or the other. He has an aversion to simsense and a minor amount of cyberware. He soaks damage like crazy (approx 20 dice to resist damage). Formerly a Latent Magician, he's going through this Awakening and will be allowed to buy Adept powers after the next mission is completed. (I still haven't decided if he's going to be a normal Adept or an Aspected Mystic Adept.) Either way, he's probably end up using throwing knives and fists most of the time - the colt manhunter he carries is there "just to make bouncers feel good about confiscating a weapon from him."

The Fin
Short for Finnegan. To date, he's never shown his real face - he regularly uses Facial Sculpt to alter his appearance, much to the disgust of the other PCs, who find it weird/gross/unnerving. As a "social engineer" mystic adept (Manipulation Aspect), he acts as the team's Face. Not much of a fighter, but he has a thing for machine pistols and stick-n-shock ammo. Otherwise, he's a bit of a mystery.

Rory
Human, ex-wage mage, formerly of DocWagon. She's not much of a fighter, but has a good selection of utility spells and can heal (spells plus first aid). Its unclear if Rory is her real name, a shortened form of it, or something she made up. She's very adjusted, socially, and only started doing Shadowrunner shit after cutbacks put her out of work.

Li
A "typical" gunslinger adept (straight from the BBB). She's small (for an ork), dresses in painfully bright neon colors, and likes to go to dance clubs. She's almost constantly streaming music through her commlink. She has a thing for squaring off against other gunslinger types... and taking their guns... but only, if the guns come in a matched pair. Though she knows how to use all kinds of guns, she has a strong preference for pistols, usually turning up her nose at other weapons.

???
(Embarrassingly, I'm drawing a blank on this character's name, but its something really simple and not typically Shadowrunner... like Mitch or Michael)
He's a drifter who lives by his wits (and an absurd amount of good luck). He just got off the t-bird from parts unknown after spending all his money on passage to Denver (literally - he started with a street lifestyle and about 20 nuyen). He's an adept with massive Edge, B&E/infiltration skills, and solid unarmed combat skills. He likes knocking people down... And then kicking them into unconsciousness (or death).

-paws

PS My current character is a mystic adept gunslinger cowboy (and wannabe detective) named Zane. His Fake ID identifies him as Zane Grey, Private Investigator.

You know what's a great name? Speculum. If that fails: Turducken.

Shrapnel (original name mac) He was a dwarf smuggler who got this name from his loving team mates after he had the fifth thing blow up in his face (a few gun shots, fireballs, but the last one was a fireball to the face that blew up his grenade and ammo vest). He still cant grow most of his beard.

Cybertyger: A wanna be hacker and runner. Thought i couldn't find another name as cheesy as that one.

Rug: A orc technomancer with a disposition of a 8 year old. The team did not know he was a technomancer untill their 10th mission. They just though he was a slow meat shield that was overly friendly and lucky near computers. Rug had a custom 6 shooter named trident. "Rug killed a man with a trident".

Rabbi: Hermetic Qabalah mage dwarf. I have played with enough people named doc and father and priestess that i decided to go a different route. Goloms are also funny when you have them where a jacket and hat to make them "fit in".

Piss: Originally named Blazer, Piss is a light weight rigger that can't hold his alcohol. After passing out and pissing himself during the post run festivities the party gave him a new nickname. Unforunately for Blazer, whatever your fixer refers to you as, tends to turn into your street handle. Doesn't hurt things that his favorite curse is "Well, piss!".

The Wire: You know those players that do something off the wall during character creations that leaves the GM going, wtf. Well the wire is one of those. Yes he took the 1,000,000 nuyen. But he spent 950,000 of it on his contacts. He's got some small cyberware and a kickass pistol skill, but he knows everyone useful in Seattle and drinks with half of them every night. Very charismatic, very much the group face/fixer.

Sparkey: The smallest damn troll you've ever seen. Sparkey is a troll mage with slight...errr...make that large pyro tendencies. If there is a flamable option, that will be the one he takes. He's got the lowest body a troll can have, the highest intelligence a troll can have, and maxed out fire spells.

Glassjaw: The biggest damn troll you've ever seen. Glassjaw is a troll physad with around 20 dice to soak damage. He's walked away from panther cannon rounds laughing, but always goes down in one punch in a fist fight. We watched him get knocked out by a scrawny dwarf three times one night.

Our group had a player who did this with his face. His name was Fletch, Anthony Fletch and his cover was a partner at the legal firm Fletch and Fletch (which in turn was just a cover for him to have said butt load of contacts). His list was so extremely long and varied that when it came right down to it, the character knew a guy...that did anything. His list was included the likes of Dax the corporate adjuster to the Beaver Street Butcher. The player has actually been using the contact list for the past couple years to come up with his next character concept. This was also the model we all started adopting afterwards in SR3 when we made a face (Resources A and at least 500k in contacts). Ahh, those were the days..and this is all from a character that didn't survive the first game (because I the rigger wouldn't let the team kill the small mexican child and thus, he betrayed us). His partner in the firm has since resurfaced time and again as the R. 6 connection Fixer that it the go to guy in Seattle.

Right now, I'm playing Mystull, the former wage mage turned augmentation addicted street witch with a chip on his shoulder and something to prove. His realy name is Hobert Tull and he wanted something that sounded mysterious instead. He's kind of a freak.

That's quite clever. Of course as a GM who keeps meticulous records I'd have to kill him for making me create dozens of NPC sheets for all those contacts.

That must be an interesting group. Very stealth heavy. I like the drifter idea. I might have to try that out with a PC some time.

My current Hacker was Dr. Anezka Sykora, a Czechoslovakian computer theorist, chemtech researcher and all around child prodigy (natural logic of 10), but was burned by her corp. Her father was possessed by a Shedim during Prague's 2064 shedim marches and she watched him eat the faces off her mother and closest female friend, Beta. She now has a phobia of raw meat.

When she was burned by her corp and her sin was deleted, she picked up Beta as an alias, due to the computer context, her multitude of idiosyncracies (a personality still going through 'testing') and as a homage to her only childhood friend.

Its pretty cool. Reminds me a lot of my old SR club (c. 2nd edition).

They're really light on hacking, as in, they really don't have any. Unless someone wants to develop those skills, they're probably going to be making use of a Hacker contact or maybe a decent commlink + agent.

-Chris

The most creative I've ever gotten was Yumi Tendo a hightly mobile Phys Adept that wielded a bow and had a birthmark/tattoo of angel wings on her back. She had some...um problems that forced her to take a new identity (or two).

Yumi - Japanese for bows
Tendo - Japanese for Heavenly Child

Your character name is everything. It's their rep, their credit with the underground suppliers, how they're seen in their world. You get stuck with a bad name like "That bitchboy?" and you're never gonna last.

If you kill enough people who use a nickname you don't like they will stop using it.

I'm building a character with Raptor Cyberlegs that wants to be called Jaguar but is instead called Goat.

After reading and commenting in a certain thread today, I may have to make a character named Bad Horse.

Check out the Vertigo comics series Scalped. Dashiel Bad Horse lives up to his name.

I'm wondering what the breakdown is of self-given street names to earned street names. When you're a fighter pilot, your codename name is given to you by your squadron. But when you're a rapper you choose your own... I think. It would rather suck if one were to break into the shadowrun scene demanding to be called "Diesel" or something appropriately macho bad-ass and be stuck with the handle of "Mr. Teeny".

I think it would be fun to have a char-gen session and towards the end have the group name the other players' characters.

Oh $DIETY, yes. My first SR3 char -- for a game set in the AGS -- was a half-British, half-German weapons specialist. A typical military brat with a chip on her shoulder the size of the Rhine-Ruhr sprawl. Her real name was Dana Herzog, and because "Herzog" means "Duke", she went with "Duchess" for her street name.

Problem was, the troll mechanic/rigger of the group had no clue of English, and in his vernacular German, the street name became "Datt Schisserle", ie "that little shit". Which stuck.

Oh, what fun these two were.

Yknow oddly enough, my naming practices are a lot different from when I started with SR1 all those years ago. Back then it was more like a videogame to me, where you had to have a PWN THEM ALLLLLLL kinda name. Rambo, Red Scorpion, Terminator, Rocky, back in the day when you saw your character like an action hero, with no actual consequences for the fact everyone knew your name.

As I got older, the idea of having 1 handle struck me as odd, just as odd as using one handle for all the different forums or gameboards or whatever we use in real life nowadays. Granted, I use the name Voran for a couple sites, but I like to mix it up too, so that not everyone knows who I am. But the funny thing is, I use sorta a small pool of names for my various gaming sites/forums/whatever, so if you actually knew who I was or my habits, you'd be able to pick me out.

I sorta adapted that into my character names for Shadowrun. I usually cultivate 2 (to 4 or so) alias/street names I'll have my chars go by, more if they're multi-locational. The people who 'need to know' would know possible multiple aliases, otherwise my char might have street rep as Voran in one case, yet the same char may also have street rep as ...I dunno, Sparky, or something in the same area. With the chars or NPCs with the appropriate matrix skills, sure they'd be able to uncover Voran = Sparky, but its useful when dealing with the non-vets and the non-primes.

In order of appearance:
Elf Street sam/infiltrator Gripper. He was my first SR character (2nd edition) and still remembered fondly. Named after the obvious cyber hand he sported in a very low cyber campaign. Japanese, cause we had no idea of the general Japanese attitude to metahumans and only access had to the basic rulebook.

Fomori physad named Leprechaun Green coat, suit, hat and shoes, orange waistcoat, very ginger hair and sideburns. Took the name and image from his naturally very Irish look, and the fact that he was lucky to be around for his friends, and very bad luck for his enemies.

Feng Hu Current semi-reincarnation of Gripper. Changed nationality and job description to Chinese face man/infiltrator/stealth assassin. No obvious cyber, and a downright social chameleon. Playing him in such a way that his team mates have no idea what he’s really like apart from his dedicated professionalism.

Just got a new one:

Vic the Cabbie.

Vic is a Gun-Fu Master with Mob Connections. During a job for his Mobster Connection to collect on a poker debt, they tracked down the guy to his job, an underground Taxi Company run by East Indians. They were going to check out his cab (#42) to get some hairs for Ritual Magic Tracking.

Vic, however, Critically Glitched his Perception Roll, has a wet brainfart, and gets into cab 24. Whose driver instantly puts it into Drive (Auto-locking the front doors as a "Child Protection"/Anti-Carjacking system), and screaches off, jibbering madly in some Middle Eastern Language. ("Is it English or Italian, I know those!" "Not even close." "DAMNIT!").

He then broadcasts, "HELP!" via his commlink, and transmits his Cybereye's view of the situation. Of the cabbie driving 200+ km/h in the wrong side of the street, while looking at Vic, pointing at the fare box, and screaming madly.

Which causes the rest of the group to start laughing again and again. And re-transmitted the feed to Vic's Mob Connection. Who also almost pees himself laughing.

A few stops later, they finally ask the Dispatcher about what's going on. It turns out Cab 24 was the "Trainee Cab", and the driver gets paid extra if he has a student. After some negotiation, they finally get the Cabbie to drop Vic off at a Stuffer Shack. Whereupon he fails his Will Roll, and literally kisses the ground.

A few days later, he finds out that everyone in the Mob Family he's connected with now knows him as "Vic the Cabbie".

Alexej Sergejewitsch "Obsidian" Krylow, former CAS Otaku now Technomancer who just asks himself "WTF happend to me and the Matrix?" after he woke from a three year Coma. Now he seeks clues of Mirage's whereabouts and prays really hard that Deus is fragged once and for all.
His Ethnicity is Russian, because his former Tribe adopted it somehow and he has not yet met another Technomancer nor AI. In Game we aren't through Emergence yet.

Rata - She's a magician/ex-hacker who can 'errata' the rules of physics, and the world in general

Just watch some MMA shows for some truly awful, self-applied nicknames...

Can't be worse than the modern rap industry. Three-hundred variations on the name "Noriega" and "Gotti".

So she's like a Nintendo Game Genie.

Wraith: He is a SR3 character resurrected for an SR4 game. One part B&E specialist, one part art thief, one part art critic. Massive allergy to sunlight - hence the name and the ghostly white pallor.

We've got a Wraith in my group too. He was an ex-military covert ops specialist. Some others we have had:

Syke - our resident hacker/gun specialist

Bleys (sounds like Blaze): a hermetic mage with a panache for fire

Ice - a smuggler/rigger

Recoil - adept gun bunny, though training with monofilament whips currently

Klips - another full-blown rigger

And then a few of their more "colorful" contacts:

Tits McGee - fixer

dot dot Death - hacker

Bullseye - fixer

Ghost - fixer

And some of the baddies I have had them interact with:

Tommy Phun, Mr. Wiggles, Fred the Ork, Bishop and Vlad.

Grover - Street Druid with a big red nose (from his chronic alcoholism).

TechSupport/HotSim - Technomancer/Rigger. Generally he is 'TechSupport' when he is rigging and know as HotSim in the Matrix

Our team:

My character is Kitsune, named before I discovered there was another Kitsune in Corporate Enclaves. A Japanese top floor girl. She got her name because she prays to Kitsune for luck before each run.

Tinman is an older, heavily cybered ex-soldier with slightly dated 'ware.

Brian is a troll hardman. He has no handle.

Enigmo got his name from doing the party performer circuit, but has moved up (or is it down?) into the Shadows.

Arthur "Bob" Hoskins got his name because he's a Brit and his surname is Hoskins.

Alex, a physad, doesn't have a handle.

A fun thing now is that we have quite a stash of decent console/PC game names to rip off.

Most of the titles of the Halo chars make decent names. Brute. Elite. Jackal. Grunt. Sarge. Master Chief. Names within Mass Effect are pretty good, heck Mass Effect makes a decent name too. Recently, due to all the Dawn of War (PC) games I've been playing, I've found that for runner Handles, alot of the unit names work well too:

Penitent Engine. Baneblade. etc etc.

We used to use the usual sort of Shadowrunner street names. At some point we realized where street names come from. A character either chooses it himself or it's given to him. In general, when names are given, they're at least somewhat derogatory. The ones you choose yourself reflect your level of professionality. We usually play fairly high level campaigns, so no Cybertygers in our group.

Anyway, most of the names in our group are pretty dull. Let's see... Average Joe, Kat, Junky, Jackie, Brutus, Lucky Lee, Joshua, John Wei (never earned a street name), Betty (male troll, from eastern Europe), Sabrius (elf, duh), Liza, Skinner, T, Smoky, Blue, Joker, Shakes, Sky, Coral (snake shaman), or Wind in the Stones (street name of Stone, called Windy by friends).

I had a young expatriate French-Syrian hacker punk chica living in Seattle who I never really got to play. Her real name was Anais Astrid Ahlam, but she had a fair few street names she would use, all based on her real name:
-Astro
-Asteroid
-A
-A3
-Triple A
-A Trip
-3

Bolded were my favourites.

Have a pretty good NPC party that the players hate. They're not enemies, but they compete for jobs and generally get in each others faces. Originally they don't know the NPC's names, so they named the other guys themselves, all insultingly... Even after the players found out the NPCs' names, they kept using their derogatory terms... The best part is they PAID fixers, bartenders, other shadowrunners and even streetkids to refer to these guys by their "new" names.

"Le Singe Courant" (The Running Monkey in French): Name for a french Orkish Parkour (Par Cours) adept. Honestly, it's better than anything I could have come up with.

"Shitmist": Not subtle at all. The player's mage assensed this shaman who had what I described as a "toxic aura".

"Yosemite Sam / Yosemite Samurai": Name for a Dwarf Sammie with red hair and a cowboy style. It would have been better if he wore confederate civil war gear, but what the hell.

"John Doe": A hacker with the bland quality, so the name is apropos.

The NPCs know their names by now of course. John Doe doesn't care at all, and Yosemite Sam actually loves his and plans to get a pair of revolvers, and shave his beard so he's got just the huge red mustache. Naturally "Running Monkey" and "shitmist" are none too happy that other people in the shadow community are starting to refer to them by those names, and they're gonna make my runners pay soon enough.

Wanna make your shadowrun team squirm? Have their enemies or their competitors give them new names, and make 'em stick in the shadow community! Friggin hilarious! "Congrats, you get another point of rep, but people are starting to refer to you as "sponge-bob square-pants".

The stallion of Sin!

mmm names,


Flint, Reincarnation of a Cyberpunk hitman I made once upon a time, in SR4ed, he became a B/E gun bunny,

Gizmo, He's a kinda of Rigger/detective char, Dosn't really talk to people unless it invovles pointing a gun..or a half dozen drones armed with guns at people, and He tend to be the default grease monkey on the team hehe, but thats more of a prefrence of each player. Oh and um...He really really likes gizmos...shinys ones too, anything shiny with buttens...and lights...or explodes...ya..gizmos

( oh just becouse non of my chars are ex-secrity/military/girlscout/ect. There just mal..er well adjusted ))

Scope (earned name): Covert ops vat-job sniper. Earned her name when a teammate asked her why her rifle didn't have a scope, and she replied "I am the scope. She was my first SR character ever.

Colonel: A vat-job face, ex-colonel in EVO security

Doktor: A German hacker/armorer/demolitionist/medic

Frenchie (Earned name): An ex-Cross spy... she went by something else at first, but everyone just called her 'Frenchie'

Jane Reaction / Enigma: A bonafide nut-job actress turned face/street-sam. She alternates between two personas.

Sarge (I'm hoping that somebody will give her a new name in-game... Sarge is overdone, but I'm coming up blank with ideas): She was a CASMC Chaplain and artillerywoman with the rank of Gunnery Sergeant... then she went to work for the UN, then she went to Africa... then she turned Ghoul... then she became a Merc

Why not Chaplain instead of Sarge?

Hollow Man - Uncouth infiltrator sniper who uses hollow point rounds on his Barret. Former military sniper packed with cyber and bioware.

Tin-Fist Haws is a character I'm working on, hopefully I'll have him posted within the week:

shortly he earned the name in his younger years when he lost half an arm in a riot and was "lucky" enough to have it replaced by a hospice... Tin fist because the original cyber replacement would tarnish like tin and was about as strong.

as for as getting call-signs assigned you in RL, well there's more than enough self labeling... you can't tell me every air asset the us has is named Steele or Venom, but I've heard them all lol. As for bad nick-names go... they definitely stick...