#Khat...well he doesn't have a last name

[rjalker]

[ID: The handshake meme, with one arm labeled, "Khat", and the other, "Jolinar", with the clasped hands reading, "Making the worst possible decision for the situation possible". End ID.]

Khat: What could possibly go wrong?

Jolinar: Yeah, I'll just stand here and die.

[whispering-jabberwocky]

Oh baby, my time has come!

I'm actually a huge name nerd and most (not all) of my brainchildren have a very meaningful names. Let's start!

Samir Rihh

He is my dnd character: rogue/wizard air genasi. We play in an fantasy setting inspired by India, Africa and Middle East. He was inspired by the tale of Alibaba and Forty Thieves.

First of all, his surname is, I think, morroccan and it means "wind". I'm not 100% sure since it was a wild google search some time ago, and I can't find this page anymore.

His first name was given to him after his great grandmother - Samira, who loudly and proudly banged a djinn for money. The name actually has two meanings, depending on a country of origin. In India it would mean "a light breeze". In arabic countries it means "companion in evening talk". Both match him pretty well, especially after heartfelt conversation with Lia during night watch.

Now, before he was using his bithname, he used a lot of nicknames. Our dnd party met him under "Nine". It was simple, he only got nine fingers at the time. I really wanted to play with someone with a weird nickname then. After he get his missing finger back, he began colling himself "Spectre", because that is what Tanit, our necromancer and his best friend, was calling him, after their first meeting in the desert. She saved his life, as he was stumbled upon a caravan she was traveling with, almost bleeding to deat due to his famous finger getting chopped off. His other known nicknames include "Dragonfly" and "Blackbird". Granted, all of them sound different to us, since we play in Polish.

Lanaya

She was my first dnd character. A wood elf druid, who is secretly a werewolf.

I must say, I did not do her justice. I had trouble playing her properly as I never really get a good grip of who she is.

She was raised in a pretty hippie elven society, where there was a druid in every family. Everyone knew each other, so nobody bothered with surnames. Therefore she doesn't have one.

As for her name i ripped it of from Dragon Age Origins, but also kind of meaningfully. In the game, Lanaya was a First to the Keeper of the Dalish clan, that the Warden may recruit to stop the Blight. However, the Dalish currently have problem with werewolfs attacking their camp.

Mash

Mash is my sweet baby warforged warlock.

The thing is there are some gender shenaningans about them. As his owner never gave him a proper name and called them simply Machine (Maszyna in Polish), they were officialy refered to using feminine pronouns and conjugation (maszyna is a feminine noun in Polish). However, since Mash in a concious being and wishes to be his own person, he uses masculine pronouns and conjugation, while talking about himself. He also calls himself Mash, instead of Machine.

Honorable mention of my FFXIV babies:

- J'lico Khat: she is goooone, but au ras are prettier, what can I say? She was my main miqo'te girl from Seekers of the Sun. Her name was 100% lore friendly, but also a huge troll, as it was a sorta phonetic way to spell "Jellicle Cat". You know, like from Cats the musical? I started playing in pandemics and it was the last movie I saw in the cinema at the time.

- Suiren Aijiro: us what J'lico has become. Did I mentioned au ras are prettier? Anyway, it was a bit of a spontanious decision, but I needed a nice, old-timey japanese name. To be lore friendly! And there is a character named Suiren in a comic I am making with my sister. So I stoled it. From myself. I feel kinda weird about it tbh. Primarly I came upon it in a manga Hibi Chou Chou (this is not a recomendation, this shoujo is bland). It means "water lily". As for Aijiro i took it from list of traditional japanese coulors. This one is white with a hint of indigo.

-Soren Wolpertinger: my beautiful bunny boy. Ok, so Soren means "strict, severe" and that's not a vibe, but I adore the sound of it. And Wolpertinger is a german cryptid - a creature with rabbit head, squirrel body, deer antlers and wings of a pheasant.

Now, I don't really know who to tag, as Vio already tagged everyone I know, who would be intetested. So feel double tagged! Spill the beans!

OC name meanings tag!

Stealing from @albatris :3

Rules: Search and post the meaning of your OCs’ names (if you made their name up or they go by a nickname, post an explanation of how it came to you)! Bonus if you can find something for their last name too

Emerald "Emmy" Acero:

"So, uh. Don't think I ever got the chance to give you my name. It's Emerald—" "—Like the gemstone?" "-Yeah like the gemstone. You can just call me Emmy though. Everyone else does."

Emmy's first name is pretty self-explanatory. His last name, Acero, is Spanish for Steel. His father, Orion Acero, picked it out when transitioning as a way to distance himself from his dead identity and any ties to Emmy's other father (whom has no idea he even is a father). Therefore, once Emmy was born, it became his last name as well. The only thing Emmy has even been told about his other biological parent was that he is a 'deadbeat musician' and that Orion didn't want Emmy to end up going down the same path.

OOC, Emerald was an import of my D&D rogue, Immeral (Immi), when I was invited to my first VtM game and had trouble coming up with a character thanks to Long Covid brainfog. What started as a modern clone of an existing character ended up evolving into his own being and is hardly recognizable from his D&D origins. The most notably being Emmy is an absolute heart of gold, dumb of ass. And Immi is a Lawful Evil dumpster fire. Which brings us to...

Immeral Ethanasath:

The character that would become one of my most replayed and AU'd to death (quite literally in most of his games) was a last minute randomly generated lawful evil rogue as a loyal subordinate for my buddy CerberusKnight's Conquest Paladin, Ajexs. Everything from his appearance to his subclass was randomly assigned in a scramble to have the character ready for a D&D one-shot. I had so much fun playing him I put him in a longform campaign to determine his origin story. Then COVID absolutely bodied me in mid 2020 and left me with less than stellar focus or creative function. I stopped playing spellcasters altogether because I couldn't keep up with the complexity and found it hard to create even new martial classes that didnt feel like cardboard cutouts. So I played Immi again. And again.

As for how he got his nickname, English is not CerberusKnight's first language and he had a lot of trouble pronouncing Immeral, often adding a 'd' to the end and accidentally calling him 'Immerald'. So we made it canon that Immeral loves nicknames because Common is also not his first language, so he told the paladin Ajexs that he could just call him 'Immi' as long as Ajexs let him call him 'A.J.' in return.

So of course, you can see where once I imported him to a 'human' setting, 'Immeral' naturally became 'Emerald'. I've only just recently gotten into a place of recovery where I can create new characters again, but I've been playing iterations of this disaster since 2019 and he holds a special place in my heart.

And as far as I know, the name means absolutely nothing and in canon, Immi picked it out himself when he hit a century old, aka elf adulthood.

Javier Andres Peña:

Emmy remembers the little message he found once he was awake again. Scrawled on a sticky note and left stuck to his cracked phone screen: Don’t walk home by yourself anymore, okay? —Javier

Javier, the Spanish derivative of Xavier, means 'new house'. Andres is a derivative of Andrew, meaning 'manly' or 'warrior' (hilarious, considering this man is the walking personification of toxic masculinity). Peña originates from 'de la Peña' or 'by the cliffside' or 'by the rocks'

I can't take the credit for this one. Javier started as a backstory character for Emerald (the one responsibly for Emmy's turning, specifically) created by that game's Storyteller. However, the original version of that game flopped horribly and I left it after being treated quite poorly by the storyteller and one of their players. Myself and two other folks from the game liked our character interactions so much we decided to split off and keep running the game, set in a new city. And of course, Emerald ended up reaching out to his renegade ex to escape one court and arrive safely half a country away.

Javier's role ended up being upgraded from a backstory character to a proper NPC by @zeeseal, but while sorting out Javier and Emerald's history, Javier ended up becoming our shared brainchild. Our beautiful disaster son. And of course, Emmy endearingly refers to him as 'Javi'.

I finally got a chance to play Javier as a true PC when I was invited to a game set in 1982 Melbourne Australia, as Javier's backstory included being turned in the 1980s and it seemed fun to explore what he was like before he became jaded with his new lot in unlife as an eternal 20something. I often poke @zeeseal for her input on how our terrible terrible son would react to certain things for the first time and the game has been a blast so far. Especially being American and playing an American character stuck with no home and no money in Australia with other Australian players/PCs and Storyteller.

As for tags, I'm sniping @bludoods, @whispering-jabberwocky @mayaminamoto, @sayonaramidnight, @raceofhearts and @ichithecupcake.

(And anyone else who wants to do it)