#High Chancellor of the Blorp Emirates

[howtohero]

#049 Changing Your Codename

While your codename is undoubtedly an intrinsic part of your image, changing it is actually not all that hard to do. If you’re not trying to completely reinvent yourself by faking your death, moving, getting a new costume and starting over as a brand new person, changing your name is as simple as just letting people know that you’re the same hero, just with a new name. Call a press conference, disseminate a press release, post it on twitter, take out an ad in a newspaper that’s just a silhouette with the words “Who is the new mysterious Hydrosassin??” and then on the next page there’s a nigh identical ad except the silhouette is replaced by a full color picture of you with the words “Oh it’s just this guy!” Basically, changing your codename is easy peasy lemon squeezey. But why would a superhero ever want to change their highly recognizable codename? Well, there a dozens of reasons! And we’ve compiled a bunch of them just special for you!

Reasons You Might Want (or need) to Change Your Codename:

It’s been a while since anybody’s written a news article about you.

Another superhero started using your codename and everybody likes them better so they get to keep it!

Your new costume has different colors so you need to change the color in your codename to properly reflect this change.

The evolution of language has resulted in your codename now having unfortunate implications (This is why that detective who bursts into flames doesn’t go by “Flaming Dick” anymore).

You’ve received a cease and desist from a major corporation.

You discovered that you’re actually allergic to the animal you’ve named yourself after.

Somebody else owns the website domain name associated with your codename and it’s not a website you want people thinking you’re affiliated with.

You were recently cured of your colorblindness and realized that your costume was a different color than you thought it was.

It sounds inappropriate when said in certain accents.

The version of you that appears in sitcoms and cartoons is an absolute buffoon and you want to distance yourself from that.

You are addicted to holding press conferences.

You realized your codename implied that you had powers that you don’t actually have.

Your codename was way too long, especially for people to call out when they were in immediate danger so people would invariably call some other hero.

It tested poorly with focus groups for reasons they “couldn’t quite put their finger on.”

You lost the trademark.

It didn’t fit on your vanity license plate (and you can’t just take the vowels and spaces out of “Mister Boater”).

It was hard for songwriters to find rhymes for when they wrote songs about your bravery and heroism.

Your name was used as the title of a movie that wasn’t about you at all (not even a little bit!) but people still kept asking you about it.

You weren’t doing anything else today so why not.

It was too easy for songwriters and comedians to find rhymes for your name and they kept making mean rhyming songs and jokes.

A new AI helper was developed and it has the same name as you and now every time somebody calls your name dozens of devices come to life and say “How can I help you today?” and it is annoying.

You accidentally got your codename tattooed on your arm during a drunken night out and now, in order to prevent people from realizing who you are, you need to either change your codename or get the tattoo removed and removing tattoos is painful and expensive!

A terrorist organization started calling themselves by your name.

You lost a bet.

Some other guy bested you in combat and stole your name!

The actor who you were hoping would play you in the movie adaption of your life would only sign on if they got to choose a new, cooler, codename for you.

The toy company that you’ve licensed your image to for action figure purposes is forcing you to incorporate accessories and special features from your toys into your name. (That’s how Kung Fu Grip Star Breacher with Spring-Loaded-Missile-Launching Action! got his name, exclamation mark and all.)

You suffered severe head trauma and actually forgot what your old codename was and then when someone reminded you what it was, you thought it sounded stupid (and weren’t wrong!)

The animal you named yourself after went extinct.

You survived a traumatic incident and changed your name to show that the event had changed you.

You accidentally infiltrated an alien government and you had to change your codename to reflect your new rank as High Chancellor of the Blorp Emirates. 

Science discovered a new species that you thought was super cool so you renamed yourself after it.

You lost one of your numerous extra appendages and you didn’t want to sound like a liar by still calling yourself Twelve-Armed Lady.

That username was already taken on Twitter and you weren’t about to call yourself Supah Warriah-2.

You suffered another freak lab accident and your mutant form changed dramatically so you decided to come up with a new name for it.

Your old one was too long to neatly write on “hello my name is” tags at superhero single mixers which are almost definitely a thing.

The first three letters of your codename were a bad word so every time you’d get a high score in a video game you’d be setting a bad example for the kids. 

John Travolta mispronounced your name at an award show and you were too embarrassed to correct him so that’s your name now.

The ghosts of your ancestors came to you in a dream and told you that you were bringing great shame upon your family by going around with a doofy name like “Super Sprinkler,” or “Professor Paleontologist.”

Your name was too easy to spell and therefore easily googled and therefore everybody kept seeing that embarrassing video of you trying to arrest a fire hydrant you were 98% sure was an evil shapeshifter in disguise. (And it was an evil shapeshifter, it just didn’t reveal itself until after the cameras stopped filming!)

Every time somebody spoke your name out loud dogs vomited and you didn’t really know why that was but figured you were better off just changing your name.

You named yourself after the magical word that either powers you up or depowers you depending on what state you’re in so every time you introduced yourself to someone while in superhero mode you were instantly transformed back into a ten-year-old boy.

You’d just woken up from a coma and didn’t realize the name “Oprah” was already taken.

The person who was using the codename you really wanted died so now it’s just up for grabs!!!

You discovered a long lost super powered sibling and you were so overcome with a desire to be close with them that you guys went out and got new matching codenames.

Someone pointed out that your name spelled backwards read “All hail Satan Satan is great and he’s my best friend whom I love with all my heart” something which, somehow, you had never noticed before.

You got a fortune cookie that read “Hey! You should totally change your name! Erm, I mean. A great change will help you go far. Yeah, you get it. Lucky numbers: 8, 1004, -2, π.”

The “Director of Brand Reinvigoration Nation” that you hired off of Craigslist suggested a lot of stuff and “change your name and nothing else” was the easiest. (Other things included “star in a music video about soap,” and “create a third identity that is a villain.”)

A sick child used their wish to get you to change your name to something of their choosing.

You graduated from sidekick-hood and took on a new superhero moniker of your own.

You’re being blackmailed by a podium company into having numerous press conferences using their product as a form of free advertising.

You recently acquired a boat and needed to amend your name to add “captain.”

You recently completed your PhD and needed to amend your name to add “doctor.”

You came up with the name Brain Star before you started coming up with costume ideas and you understood that you couldn’t go around wearing a big “BS” on your chest.

The seasons change every four months! I change my name once in a ten year career and all of a sudden I have to explain myself???

Somebody bought you a gift card to a newspaper’s advertising department (a terrible gift by the way) and you don’t really know what else to do with it.

Your old name in sign language was a lewd gesture.

The name you originally wanted to use was deemed “way too cool for you” by your mentor but you just saved the world from alien werewolves from Jupiter’s moon so you felt that you’ve earned it now.

You didn’t like the way your picture turned out on your superhero team’s ID card and you figured if they were printing a new card for you anyway you may as well also change your name.

Someone triple dared you to change it.

An trans-dimensional imp placed a curse on you that made you speak entirely in song and at first you thought it was annoying but now you’re totally into it and so you’re really leaning into it and adding “:The Musical!” to the end of your name.

Thanks to the word of the day toilet paper your friend bought you (also a terrible gift) you’ve learned a bunch of cool new words that you want to incorporate into your codename.

You decided to take up a fallen hero’s legacy by taking on their name.

You’re a reformed supervillain who wanted to take on a new more heroic sounding name. (Killslaughter the Death Bringer is really more of a villain name.)

Somebody took you aside and gently explained to you why your codename was actually offensive to a group of people.

You met a version of yourself from an alternate reality and they had a way cooler name so you just adopted that. 

You found a drawing you’d made as a child of yourself as a superhero complete with a codename you’d come up with and even though “Sir Gumball Man VII” is a stupid name you felt you owed it to your younger self to follow through on your dreams. 

You misunderstood the public’s call for more transparency in superhero operations and changed your name to “Transparent Man/Woman/Person.”

People keep asking you if you were bitten by a radioactive version of the animal you’re named after. And you weren’t. The name comes from something else. You also can’t “do anything that [insert animal] can.” That Petey Parkour guy really ruined animal-themed names for everybody.

You wanted to change it to reflect the tips we featured in our post about codenames.

You thought of a really funny pun.