What's in a Name?

Throughout his innumerable biographies and other sundry discussions of his Original Character who shares a name with him, Ryuu has shown an amazing ignorance in naming his own character. Here are some pertinent excerpts:

From: The Making of: Ryo, Vassi and Raphy

He also got his name by then, a joke from Ronin Warriors. The man with the "Wildfire" armor was named Ryo, so I named my OC Ryo after him since his nick-name was in fact WildFire.

[...]

While browsing through Furan-San's gallery, I saw someone called "Ryukenden Hayabusa" from Ninja Gaiden. I figured "Ryukenden" must be what "Ryo" is short for, so I lengthened his name to that.

The most important thing, here, is to point out that the names Ryo (from Ronin Warrior's character, Ryō Sanada) and Ryu (from Ninja Gaiden's Ryū Hayabusa) are completely unrelated.

Ryo, in Japanese, is 遼. Ryū is, as far as I have been able to tell from my awkward research, ・リュウ.

遼 (Ryo) means Distant. [See here.]
・リュウ (Ryū) means Dragon.

As I have no handy link for Ryū, allow me to show how I came to this conclusion: It is taken from the fact that Hayabusa Ryū is represented as 隼・リュウ, and means "Peregrine Falcon Dragon."

Since 隼 means Peregrine Falcon, I can only deduce the rest means "Dragon." Google Translate also renders the rest as Liu, and I know that translations involving L and R are occasionally iffy (hence, the translation of "Zora" as "Zola," among other mistranslations).

Therefore, I can reasonably assume that ・リュウ is Ryū, and means Dragon.

They are decidedly different names.

As another important note: Ryū Hayabusa's name is not Ryukenden.

From: Ryuu Atrineas' Characters [- Legend of Zelda versions of Ryo -]

[...]this means he does not know that the Goddesses are technically his mothers... but he does know the name they had given him - Ryukenden, which means Dragon - He likes the shorter version, Ryo, which he refers to himself as to this day.

Ryukenden does not mean Dragon.

Ryukenden is part of the Japanese name for Ninja Gaiden.

The full Japanese name for the game is 忍者龍剣伝 - Ninja Ryukenden. It literally means "Legend of the Ninja Dragon Sword."

From my attempts with translators:

忍者 -> Ninja
龍剣伝 -> Gaiden

Broken down more:

忍者 -> Ninja (忍 -> Shinobu 者 -> Person)
龍 -> A Dragon
剣 -> Sword
伝 -> Legend

Shakespeare once wrote, in his famed Romeo and Juliet:

Act II, Scene II; Juliet:

What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.

So, one might argue, why should Ryuu's character's name matter? That's misleading. In creating characters, names do become creatively important and very telling about the creator. It is no crime to pick a name because it is interesting, or because of what one associates with the name.

However! Not learning anything about a name, or taking a name from another character because of a joke or an idle fancy, shows a decided lack of care for the name and a decided lack of originality. Myself, I look through pages upon pages of existing names for inspiration, scour meanings and nationalities, commonness or rarity of use, and those who have had that same name. Some of that might be a little excessive, but some of it is natural.

Despite what Juliet said, names do matter. We evoke names, as though they have power - and they do. When asked who we are, we give our name, not a summation of our history. Likewise, a book is called by its title, not its summary.

It is the label that we give to the definition that makes us. In the world of fiction, this becomes even more important.

But I preach overmuch - it is clear Ryuu has not put great care into naming his character. That is what I set out to prove.