Copying Names

Now, we should all know by now that this crazy She-Elf considers names important (See: What's in a name?). This being so, it shouldn't surprise anyone to see a second, brief entry on names.

Ryuu is painfully uncreative in his names.

Ryukenden is completely stolen, in several different ways. Ryuu took the name Ryo from Ronin Warriors, because that character wore armor called WildFire (his OC's X-Man name). He decided, when he saw some Ninja Gaiden fan art, that Ryukenden was the full name of Ryo, and stole the title of a game for a name without a thought.

But I already covered that.

There is another example: Crosshair (a nickname for one of his characters).

Now, Crosshair hasn't been critiqued, yet. If anyone knows any fair amount about the Metroid series, they're free to volunteer.

Anyway, this is a line from the character sheet:

Looks most Like: Rei Ayanami (Evangelon) / Samus (Metroid)

The character's full name? Samantha-Rei Nebulus Dark.

Now, not only does the character have an adjective for a last name (which I usually don't give penalties for, because I understand that name etymology involves descriptive words), but it takes the name of a character he based part of his character's appearance on.

There's something slightly more of a stretch with his not!Midna character, Di.

Di's real name, according to her character sheet, is Midnight. Ignoring the common problem with naming characters after generic nouns, take a note of the fact that Midna's name appears as if it came from Midnight (just like Twili appears to have come from Twilight).

Jack of Lanturns (critiqued by Dr. Whatsisbucket) also has the same name of the person he was taken from - an NPC from Gaia Online, called Jack. The name likely derives from the Jack O'Lantern for a head, which would have been fine if it was an original character and not completely taken from Gaia Online.

Names are important just like words are important: they mean something. A person is the definition of his or her name, for lack of a better analogy.

Their names should be as original as their appearances and their history.

...which, given the fact that Ryuu is not the most creative in those regards, at least not with appearance, does seem to apply to Ryuu, anyway.