Tue Dec 25 20:21:49 2012

At 3 o'clock PM, Day of the Moon, 35th of the Month of the Battle
on the Theran calendar Brujah perished, never to return.

Race:	human
Class:	warrior
Level:	40
Alignment:	Neutral
Ethos:	Neutral
Cabal:	None, None
Age:	23
Hours:	48

nt

n/t

Nt

I think I recall being online for that prayer, and I ignored it, even though I'm quite familiar with the reasons for objections.

I'll come right out and say that in my old age, I've become pretty lenient about names. It's ironic because back in my youth, I was one of the biggest advocates for some of the stricter RP rulings, including the name policy.

Maybe it's because I know real-life parents who name their actual children things people would immediately try to nix on the MUD, or have read actual real-life published novels where the author chose character names that we'd nix on the MUD. I've concluded we're name snobs. It's good enough (and even a admired) for an author to choose a name with a language or folklore connection, but a player does it and we call it lame.

I love a rich RP environment more than most, but I think that's taking ourselves a *bit* too seriously.

And my observation is that almost ANY name rubs *someone* the wrong way, because they have a preconception. This is demonstrated right here in this thread, when another player assumed your reason for objecting to the name was language-based when it was WoD-based. I've seen prayers about names because it's the name of a town I've never heard of, of a character from a book I've never read, or of some piece of folklore I'm unfamiliar with. When we start changing the name of every character that falls into one of these categories, we start ending up with the keyboard vomit names, which I think are worse. Which name is worse, Brujah or Xtrxjtl?

Of course, I only speak for myself, not for the rest of the immstaff. I won't stand for Galadriel, Frodo, or Mechwarrior, but for the most part if it's not something universally bad like that, I'm willing to let it slide.

General rule of thumb; if your name prayer has to include a URL link I have to check out for me to understand why you have a problem with the name, unless the link shows me how the name means something obscene in Russian or something, you're probably being too picky.

Again, with other imms, your mileage may very, but just some insight as to why some prayers about names get ignored.

it's just a name

gr

I kind of like the old rule of "Is this something the character's parents would have reasonably named him or her?"

The original name helpfile actually listed "Oak" as an example of an acceptable use of a word-name if it applied to a ranger or some other character who grew up in the forest and may have reasonably been named (or nicknamed) after a tree by his parents.

That said, if someone rolled "Oak the Ranger" now and I heard a pray about it, I'd begrudgingly bring the guy up and perform a name change, because that's a clear and obvious violation of our policy, and so be it. But these names that only technically violate the policy in a manner a tiny sliver of the playerbase is going to even understand? Not so much.

Constance was allowed, I'm sure, under the precedent that we have allowed that traditional human names are permissible for traditional human/humanesque characters. (William, Borris, Victoria, etc). Constance, Prudence, Felicity, Lily, etc, are all traditional human names, even if they are in the dictionary.

Again, your mileage may vary - I'm sure there are imms out there that would nix those names. There's a subjective factor at play for sure.

...and by extension the Inner Sphere.

Curse you. The true heirs of Kerensky will rise triumphant, regardless of your meddlesome ways. FOR THE HONOR OF THE JADE FALCONS!

Wouldn't Mongoose be more topical? Smoke Jaguar, perhaps?

nt