This is the third, and last, installment in a series featured weekly on Tuesdays.

Character customization in WoW is pretty limited to face, skin and hair color, hair styles, and sometimes accessories such as jewelry or facial markings. Some races and genders only have a handful of options, while others have three times as many. Even so, you will at some point run into a character that looks just like yours. The only way we truly can be unique snowflakes in WoW is with our character’s name.

In this week’s installment, I’ll talk about naming your character using a meaning or keyword.

Meaning or Keyword

Before we get started, let’s clarify the difference between meaning and keyword.

Meaning - Adjective. A descriptive word or two about your character’s personality, i.e. secretive or shy.
Keyword - Noun. Usually an object or thing, i.e. moon or night.

Granted, some words may be both a noun and an adjective (like night). Such technicalities don’t matter much as you’ll be using the same method to find your unique snowflake name.

Case Study

I have too many baby hunters. I created each of them because I wanted to try a bunch of the pet families. It’s quite hard, if not impossible, to do with one hunter. Plus, I like to theme my hunters and pets. I have spent a lot of time coming up with names for my hunter/pet sets, so I’ll use one as an example here.

Say hello to Aethelinda!

This baby hunter is responsible for satisfying my desire to try the serpent families. The plan for her is to level with a wind serpent and, if ever she reaches 60+, to tame a ZG serpent. I wanted to come up with good serpenty names for her and her pets, so I started hitting up my favorite research sites.

I head over to 20000-names.com, click the Find button (because I can’t type in the search box), and perform a seach on serpent. I click the link for the first result, Pet Reptile Names, and start reading through the names and their meanings. There are a lot of options, but I really like the female entries with the definition of “noble serpent.” This hunter is a Blood Elf, so I thought noble fit well. I settled on Aethelinda because I like the Anglo-Saxon/Old English word derivations. Most of the “noble serpent” names are unique snowflakes according to the WoW Armory.

Instead of choosing one of the names listed on the Pet Reptile Names page for her pets, I wanted to see if I could find a name for a winged serpent with lightning breath. Google time!

lightning + “winged serpent”

The results include a Wikipedia entry and a link to a page about Quezacotl (yeah, misspelled). Well, I didn’t want my wind serpent named after the well known Aztec God, and the Wikipedia entry is about D&D creatures. Let’s try something different.

lightning + “feathered serpent”

I click one of the results, and right at the top is Avanyu, described to be a horned/feathered serpent associated with rain and thunder. Time to Google Avanyu.

Ah, a Wiki entry, with a description I quite like.

When Aethelinda turned level 12, she immediately set off for The Barrens in search of Avanyu.

Classes and Races

The same method can be used to come up with a class or race specific name for your character. You can find good keywords in Blizz’s own pages about the classes and races. Or check out WoWWiki for their descriptions of the classes and races. An example would be “noble” for the Blood Elf race, or “leafy” for the Druid class.

Other Resources

In addition to 20000-names.com, you can also use the following sites to perform keyword searches. But be aware some will return results where the keyword is merely mentioned. Using “serpent” as an example, you can get a result with the phrase “bitten by a serpent.” Be prepared to spend some time on this type of unique snowflake name search. If you are anything like me, you may get sidetracked out of curiosity about a mythological figure and end up learning about a pantheon you never heard of.

Dictionary and Thesaurus - Oh yes indeed! Let’s see what the dictionary has to tell us about serpent. The second entry, a wily, treacherous, or malicious person, is perfect for a character with a serpenty nature and also provides us with a few more keywords to use in our search. Scroll down a bit and you’ll see serpent translated in a variety of other languages. Scroll down even further and you’ll see we hit a jackpot of information on the word. Not all words will have such incredible dictionary entries, but it’s an excellent resource for learning more about a word. The thesaurus is a handy dandy tool for further research on your keyword or its meanings.

Godchecker - I love this site, but it’s not my one stop shop for names. I usually find something that interests me here and do further research at other sites or by using Google. You can restrict your search to a specific pantheon, by Gods of (war, love, etc.), and even by gender.

Behind the Name - Right on the home page is their search feature, giving you the option to search name meanings or descriptions and also restricting the results by gender. They also have an advanced search and name “themes” page where you can choose to see a list of names based on preselected keywords, such as military (battle, slaughter, etc.).

Nordic Names - Here, you can search for a specific name or for names with a specific meaning or keyword. Out of curiosity, I searched for serpent and it returned some useable results. Very cool! I like how they provide other forms and variants of the name.

Character Naming Resources - This is a long list of sites with a variety of focuses. I have yet to explore many of them!

Google - This is somewhat an obvious choice. I primarily use it when I want to find out more about a name that interests me or, as in the case study above, I’m being real persnickety and want a name that conveys a very specific meaning.

That’s All Folks!

Sadly, it is time for me to bring this series to a close. I could go on and on about creating unique snowflake names. There are so many resources that can be used to help you find the most perfect name for your character. I would love to hear about other resources people use because I know for a fact that my methods are merely the tip of the iceberg!

Related Posts

Mama Druid’s names
Naming your character: Personal Inspiration
Naming your character: The Generator
Naming your character: an Addendum
Naming your character: Azeroth Languages