First impressions of names and the feelings they evoke

[Addicted]

I have always loved the nuance of language. Words evoke a picture, especially names. I love many names in cantr and some stand out over the years with the feelings and images they evoke, evolving with association and so on. (Puddle Duck, Moku, Spirit of Adventure, Yabby and Dung Meat are some prime examples)

Without this disintegrating to a complaint against names that bug or are taken too closely from real life etc, or comments that may offend the player of said name, I wanted to discuss the effect that names have on us.

Quote from Echoman:
No ranting about how specific characters act or are roleplayed. Keep it general.

Waromoith: I hear war - o - moith. On first meeting I thought of a big man with a grisly beard and a bad temperament. He's not at all like that...

Flonder: Flat, rolling plains as far as the eye can see.

Stiltarn: Calm waters of a lake nearby, Scottish bogs all around.

Toro: Small Spanish looking man, that moves fast. (what was the name of the horse in Cisco Kid?)

Raviel: Tall spindly man, with long features. (Bad guy from the movie Anastasia?)

[Optimus Christ]

Addicted, thank you.

[Sunni Daez]

Haha Flonder always made me think of Fish! (flounder)

[Bmot]

Haha Flonder always made me think of Fish! (flounder)

It always reminds me of Belgium, mainly Flanders, of course. Might very well be what it's based on, anyway...

[Estaar]

Haha Flonder always made me think of Fish! (flounder)

Same here. And somehow of someone lazing around, or a place where not a lot is happening. Don't know if that is true though, never been there, don't even know where it is.

[BosBaBe]

I feel much the same, I always choose the name for my characters with great care, and they are usually related somehow to the nature of the character. I'm happy to give some examples.

-Katiyana : Means snow, which is her likeness.
-Seraphina : "The Fiery ones"
-Annemarie : Bitter Grace

[Tiamo]

Toro is spanish for bull.

Flonder is close to the surname Flodder: the name of a somewhat antisocial family in the hilarious dutch movie 'Flodder', which may have been the inspiration for 'Meet the Fockers'.

[Xander]

I'm at work but have no work, so I've been researching my family tree. It turns out that a second cousin 4 times removed of mine, a Gertrude Lavinia Marshall, married a man called John Edward Karnon in 1899. Looking up the Karnon name on Google, it appears to be a variant of Kernan. His name is spelt Kernon in his birth record on FreeBMD.

[Aurora]

I feel much the same, I always choose the name for my characters with great care, and they are usually related somehow to the nature of the character. I'm happy to give some examples.

-Katiyana : Means snow, which is her likeness.
-Seraphina : "The Fiery ones"
-Annemarie : Bitter Grace

I do this all the time. I like to give my chars' names a meaning, maybe some smbolism, that reflects their personalities in a way. Though I also have used names from nature, or other languages that actually mean something.

[Rugila]

I notice myself imagining how the character looks like based on their name. Then I read their character description Which usually different than I imagined.

[hyrle]

I've kind of done the same thing... except I let a name generator choose many of the names of my characters, and then I shaped their looks and personalities a bit around the name that was chosen for them. I admit that I sometimes spun the name generator multiple times if I didn't like a name it chose, but eventually it would find one that I connected with. I found I'm just not that imaginative with names. (Though I did pick the names of a few of my characters, often after people that I know.)

In any case, I do admit that some names do evoke feelings right away, but I do try my best to avoid prejudice of a character based solely on their name.

[Snickie]

Several of my characters were named after streets.
Two of them were puns.
One was named after a sushi restaurant.
Three were named after pets.
Two after people I know.
Ze Narrator's name was Narrator because ze Narrator was a narrator. (It feels so weird now to not capitalize the word "narrator". XD)
One was after a video game evil tribe thing....
Three were just names I liked.

I assoiate colors with letters. If any letter is particularly prominent in a name (for example the first letter (capitalized), letters that occur more than once), then I usually associate those colors and form an impression of the character through that. Naedell, for example, has an N (greenish) and "dell" which is predominantly red-orange for me, so I find it easy to imagine her with red hair, possibly strict. Madrid had two d's, which are orange, thus I imagined her with bright orange hair. The M and r in this case are brownish, so she was a tan redhead. Wonder couldn't have been anything but blond. I didn't really have an image for Venustas (color association was mostly a greyish green), but she definitely wasn't blonde or ginger. And even though Sydnie was a brunette, I always imagined her blondeish.