What's in a Name?

Queuing up to save a trio of names might be the highlight of this week.

More specifically, I braced login queues and server errors for the opening of World of Warcraft: Forever's name reservation period this week. Ahead of its full launch next week, the game opened up (to people who had paid for access to its now-concluded beta and, for me specifically, access to the new elven race, the Skyborne) so players could pick a ruleset of their choice—PvE, PvP, or RP, in my case—and reserve up to three characters and their names.

This was, for me, a big deal. Even more so as Forever is revolutionizing over two decades of World of Warcraft character creation by letting you have both a first name and a surname (Who needs a new raid tier when you could have a last name instead?). But it also had me thinking about a process that has been near and dear to me throughout both my video gaming and tabletop life: the simple act of choosing a character's name to bring them to life.

I had, before the reservation period opened, spent weeks off and on with potential names flickering through my head. What sounds I wanted it to make, what I wanted it to reflect, especially for the primary character I want to play in Forever, a Skyborne mage. I looked through lists of Skyborne NPCs from the beta to get a gist for their general naming conventions, and how they contrasted with the other Elven races of Azeroth. I thought about past names of past characters, and what kind of cadence or vowel choices I gravitate to, usually. And then there were two whole other characters I could do that for on top of my main one!