And while you're at it, your characters and places. 'cause I suck at naming and need help with it.

Soulless...I could lie and say how it means that everything you see active in me is totally zombie like and I don't actually have any soul in the motion. I could say that despite all the emotions and bursts of energy I display, I have no true heart or spirit in it. But really, Soulless just sounded cool.

So, share!

I think that how you come up with the name is immaterial. If it causes a person to think and create a narrative about the person it describes, as you just did, that is enough. Look at music band names. Well, not bands these days, they make no sense whatsoever and I'm very put off by them. You can't just take a random word and throw a number into it. (Idiots)

If you want a little inspiration for a character name take a look at this site. It has many names from several different cultures.

The more familiar you are with the sounds of different languages and the names they use, the easier it gets to create an original name that may have no meaning, but can cause a reaction. I recommend learning another language when ever you have the opportunity.

I made my name combining Hindi and French syllables until they made the right sound in my head.

***EDIT

I guess I'll elaborate. I liked the idea of using the french form of "who", qui (pronounced "Key"). I always liked that word and I thought it was a good representation of an intangible internet persona. I wanted it to have a little something extra, so I added the ending as a permutation of the word "Mandala".
Pronounced: Ki-Dahl-La; with the accent on the second syllable.

Eh.. Just a random name that I like.. I am rather good with random names -_-;

I normally mix different names and sounds from anything I can think of till it suits the personality that I like.

My first RP character I used on this site was an alchemist who lived in a village. So....I am the Village Alchemist. Ta-da!

As for how I come up with my characters' names, it's very simple. I just decide what their ethnic/cultural background is, and give them a name that sounds like it came out of that language. The only exeption I have made for this on RPGgateway is with Luscious the wendigo. He was raised by a satanic coven, and thus his first name is a perversion of "Lucifer."

And I think Luscious is a pretty good way to go. When you name a fictional entity--be it a person, an organization, a place, or whatever--don't think in terms of "what would be a good name for it." Think about what the other fictional entities who named it would come up with.

Oh, so many interesting stories! Ok so it's my turn ^-^.

Well first of I'm Clyodna anywhere I go on teh interwebz. I don't bother with thinking up a new username for every place i sign up and so far I have not had any problems with it being registered before hand .

As for how i came up with it, well it all started with Clio, the muse of history way back when I was still a child because I absolutely loved history ( still do). Then about five years ago I fell in love with the mythology of the UK and there was this character Cliodhna in it somehow related to water that I really liked. So i decided to shoot two birds with one stone and took up the name Cliodna for my internet persona and since the version with a "y" is less likely to be already registered it turned to Clyodna.

As for the place and character names I usually use names from naming sites or mythology that have something to do with what I'm naming in some way. Like my character will have a similar personality or fate with the mythical personage it was named after or the meaning of the name hints to some feature of the land I name. I usually stay away from made up names because I like the names I pick to already have some history behind them not just be blank. At most I will make anagrams of names already in existence, that way you get to keep the history and have a new name in a way. But that's just me!

There you have it. Hope this helped and hugs!

One word examplifies mine;

Random!
That's right!
Randomnessity!
Words of da top of mah head.

my username (meaning blue fish in Japanese) is from the lyrics of one of the songs of a Japanese band I love. The line goes "in my head a blue fish died" (sung in horrible Engrish) but I just liked it . . . and I like fish ^_^;;

as for character names. I've used song titles, and translations, but usually I have a sound in my head of what I want the name to be and I just play with the sounds I know from the different languages I know until one just fits. Did that make any sense? ^_^

Every username I've ever used is a character name, which are honestly just made up. A few, like Darkfall and Nightwind, are based on words that reflect the personalities of my characters, while others (Hax Al'rien) are purely generated from the dark and dysfunctional depths of my mind.

The only exception to this rule would be my very first username, seen only by those who frequented the now-ancient GWC chatroom. Chrono Master. at the time, I was infatuated with Chrono Cross (Still am, but that's beside the point). I took that and added "Master" because I thought it made me sound like a badass, and viola.

As far as places, most are, again, randomly thought up. Wing City was based on the site's old name, and Southern Sea was based on the fact that the place was located in the middle of a planet's southmost sea, but elsewise, just randomly thought up.

My user names usually revolve around some mythological dark hero or creatures of some sort. Currently Skallagrim is the user name I use most because thats the name most familiar to a lot of my friends. Skallagrim means Bald Grim, its a Norse mythos name and he was a bear-serker, or berserker. Cughtagh is Welsh and means cave spirit.

I draw heavily from my Welsh/Scot heritage and Norse mythos for many of my names and characters in my stories.

Not to mention Skallagrim goes great with the avatars I usually choose which are skeletal in nature lol.

/bow

Skally

My user name was coined by my interest in Japan, Yami means Dark and Dokuro means Skull, Dark Skull, he's my alter ego of sorts the exact opposite of me, ruthless, uncaring and bloodthirsty

All my characters are based around the colour black so I either have them wear black, name them Yami or give them a dark personality

As for locations I try to base all my locations around an element like Hydroxia for Water or Helios for Air

Hmm...well the name 'Shadowmancer" is a book, and a good one at that... I've used this lovely name for about a year and a half on other sites. My friends know me under this name and I have recieved pretty interesting nicknames from them, plus it sounds cool. ^^

As far as characters go, I've always liked the name Kira, though I'm horable with lastnames and tend to avoid them. I usually stick with Kira in RPs and adjust the personalitly slightyly, depending on what type of RP I'm in.

Okay. I'm almost embarrased now. So many of you have awesome reasons for picking your name, and I don't. >_>

My current username, Angel_Melfina, I'm sure is pretty obvious. I had been watching Outlaw Star at the time, and loved Melfina. I am a whore for mysterious people, guys or girls. In any RPG, movie, anime, TV show...I'm immediately drawn to the mysterious people. Well, Melfina was sort of soft spoken and you didn't know much about her, so I loved her. At the time, I was a rather hyper person always friendly with people, but deep down, I just wanted to be quiet and keep to myself, much like Melfina. The Angel part just sounded cool, and separated me from any other Melfinas. I've had this name for years, and have just ported it over as I graduated to better sites.

I had other usernames on previous sites, but they were not interesting at all. They were just like...Princess_Sasami or something. No imagination!

As for my RPG characters, I pretty much just come up with them on the spot. I've got a little list in my head of names that I like, and just kind of pick from the list to suit the RPG that I'm in. I'm in an RPG that sort of takes place in midieval times and chose a more old-style name, but for the one that takes place in modern times, I just kind of picked a random modern name that I liked. o_o

I was in a pirate RPG on AnimeMetro. My character was this outlandish butch lady-pirate named Dovey, which is short for Dovelina and also the acronym for the rest of her name:

Dovelina Ophelia Vitriana Emmeline Yvesson IV

But all that is just a bunch of names I've always wanted to use for my characters, so I just mashed it into one. Tah-dah!

That lady-pirate character of roleplay-past was not developed any further than a single post that described her dreds, muscular tan physique, floppy hat, and steel-toed boots. The name now exists only in my signature.

my name comes from a game on the PS2. its a snowboarding game, with an in-game 'radio' that lets you listen to music. the DJ for that "radio station" was, you guessed it. DJ Atomika.

so basically i liked the feel of the name and took it.

My name... it's really a whole lot more simple than it seems.

To start off, a couple months ago, I started watching Extreme Ghostbusters again. Not to mention that a friend nearly died. That, combined with the fact that I was both playing Starcraft again and haggling with my friend for Geist... a game I never really did get, but wanted pretty bad. Put them all together, and you see that I really seemed to have Ghosts on my mind.
Then came x1000. Not many people agree, but I fancy myself a moderate writer. One of the stories I was writing... althought to this day I'm still not sure if it was supposed to be a novel or a game storyline... was called "1000 Worlds - The war between Light and Dark". So yeah.
Throw in an X, the second best letter of the Alphabet, (next to Z, of course) and you see exactly where I got my name.

Well years ago, I wanted to make an Elf character, for an rpg I was participating in. I wanted an elvish name for him, so I looked up different words in the elvish dictionary till I found that I could use the rules of the language to create a slightly new word. It's been so long that I've forgotten what the name actually means but I still like it and I use the name often.

I think I'll search for the rpg I used the name in. maybe there I'll be able to remember its meaning.

Not a lot to tell really ..Stitches is my favourite song by a band called Orgy.

Schreiber is just "writer" in German. That's who I am.

I've wanted to use the name Vitaliy for a while, and Rhyzkov just sounded cool.