One of the comments (from the lovely Feyawen!) on my guild thread made me think about this. It was a delightfully in-depth question, and one that invites us to openly geek out about all the thoughts we usually keep hidden away. Since I’ve already answered the question, I’m just going to quote what I said on the initial thread.
Snowfall Coalition
Snowfall refers to winter, which is often a ‘recovery’ period for the environment in terms of agriculture due to the insulation the snowpack provides for the soil. Coalition comes from many people coming together, from tentative alliances to iron-clad pacts, in order to get a similar goal seen done.
I wanted the guild name to be something that had deeper meanings beyond just sounding pretty, while also being simple enough to be memorable.
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Akarrosh’s name roughly translates out to “Blessed Heart.” If that counts.
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Oh hek! This is clever Ely! Thank you for the thread about it, and for the reply! Etymology and meanings behind names always intrigues me.
My own is pure headcanon.
Feyawen
Fey - a creature with supernatural abilities, the word “fey” or “fae” comes from the ancients and the emerald dragonflight. (One with supernatural abilities; or one of magical origin.)
Awen - means to be noble or of nobility.
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Altielle just sounded nice. I’m a huge fan of names ending in “elle”. It’s just very elegant to me, and it kinda hits the French vibe Nightborne culture nods towards.
To her, the name is the one thing she’s taken with her from her parents. It’s special in that sense, despite her hatred for them.
Once someone mentioned ALTielle was a good Nightborne name for a bank alt. I… didn’t have the heart to tell them she’s my main and “alt” had nothing to do with it…
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“Cryptstalker” was the first name she got called out to by a Forsaken recruitment party, so that stuck with her.
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From what I recall the Jadepaw Dynasty was originally a kind of pseudo-imperial kind of deal; or at least something close. The clan themes and such kinda took a back seat when the original leader left.
Yonara was only retroactively given meaning as being the name of the sword the main character I portray, Zhaoyang Cloudpaw, wields. The sword is a family heirloom; originally a prize from a duel won by the progenitor of her lineage.
I mainly used my toon name in this way for meta reasons. Of the many peeves I have about my fellow rpers it rather annoyed me when folks would ic refer to my character by the name above her head rather than the one in her profile. By naming Zhao’s sword Yo-nara (alternatively Yo Na Ra) I could reason that anyone calling her by that name could be referring to the sword. In retrospect it’s kind of a half baked solution for something that even at the time was barely a problem, but there ya go.
Addendum: The name Yonara itself is a product of the random name generator. Around the time of her creation I had trouble finding alternatives to what I originally planned to name her and so defaulted to rng.
I continued having problems with finding names for Pandaren characters for a while. This was the case with my Pandaren Warrior, Zhaoblossom a.k.a Ju Moonblossom. When creating her I had no idea what to name her, ic or ooc. I kept going back to my Monk’s name, as I was rather fond of Zhaoyang, but I didn’t want have two Pandaren with the same name. Still I couldn’t think of anything new, and this was a time before I often searched for names, so I thought back to the name of Zhao’s lineage progenitor; Ju. I decided to put them together as her first and second names. Moonblossom was easier as I somewhat arbitrarily wanted a celestial theme, as well as a Pandaren surname that didn’t include the words Paw or Claw. I then smashed the first and last names together so I’d have something to finish character creation with.
Though ic her first name is Zhaoyang she typically presents herself and prefers to be called Ju. Ooc it’s just the not wanting to have two Zhaos thing again. Ic I reasoned it as her idolizing Ju Cloudpaw and taking pride in the fact they shared the name.
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The Southfury Watch was named for a battle that took place on the Southfury River between those loyal to Garrosh and Revolutionaries within the Hammer of Kalimdor which was our previous name. The battle between former brothers and sisters-in-arms wiped out most of the Hammer and so it is in memorium that we call ourselves Southfury.
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Not gonna lie. I thought it stood for the fact that we watch over and protect all the lands the Southfury River touches.
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Also coming back of the days with Kiyomi ran Jadepaw, Steelpaw was another clan/family when other players were forming clan groups and titles that I created. A few of us migrated to Horde side for a bit mid MoP and the Steelpaw Shaodin doubled down on the whole clan culture motif. Been that way since.
Lianshi was taken from my favorite character in Dynasty Warriors since a few of us who formed Steelpaw were naming our characters from the DW franchise or just famous Chinese figures/generals/deities, etc. Lianshi being empress of Wu during the three kingdoms era.
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I used an old character name from Wildstar and then edited it a touch to be goblin-ish. My creativity knows no bounds 
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“Shau” and “Reyne” and their variants are extremely popular in both player-made and NPC Night Elf names alike (i.e. Shauralina or Reynelle), but never before had I seen them put together! Lo and behold… :^)
As for her last name, Razorleaf, uhhhhhhhh lemme just clear up that it was inherited from the person that RPed her sister… they came first & I’ve never played Pokemon a day in my life lads.
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The idea behind this Rogue is that she is a Shamanic Assassin who derives powers over ice via an elemental companion. The name, if my light research is correct, is a combination of Ice and Lady. This is also the name of Zhihao’s particular elemental companion.
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Dubor was an extremely obscure NPC name from a Gamecube era RPG that may or may not have to do with a certain supah fightin’ robot’s sequel series from a throwaway section of the story that I just felt sounded kinda right for my guy back in 2008 when I first made him.
Then I went back and learned I spelled his name wrong to begin with. Oh well, say it how it’s spelled, folks.
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Character name: I tend to use different native american words for tauren/hm tauren names. Ocmulgee is a Hitchiti word meaning “where the water bubbles up”. Growing up, I would spend my summers on the Ocmulgee river, so named because it’s full of shoals and rapids. My character is from the Rivermane tribe, so the name seemed appropriate.
Guild: Shu’halo Nation is very loosely based on various native american organizations which act as umbrella organizations for natives from various tribes and regions (like the Iroquois Nations, Native American Federation, Western Indian Confederacy, etc). The guild is not tribe based so a name more fitting of an umbrella that welcomed all tribes and tauren sub-races felt fitting.
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I’ve always been a big fan of the Forgotten Realms IP. Most specifically the books concerning the Underdark and it’s inhabitants such as the Drow, Duergar, Svirfneblin, etc.
There was an ancient dwarven city lost to time which was named Gauntlgrym. I always liked the name so I borrowed bits of it, added a new dwarven sounding suffix to the end and Gauntylvar was the result.
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I knew the name looked sorta familiar…
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A “Forecaster” also know as a weatherman or formally a meterologist, is someone who does any degree of analysis and reporting on current/local climate conditions, to/for the benefit of the public.
I forecast forecasters because I’m one step ahead of the cloud game.
(It was my bday and I was on one when I made the account/character and I’m sticking by the decision.)
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Axiann was inspired by the name of the starship in Wall-E.
His last name, Sungazer, was given to him. He’s an orphan/abandonned and has no idea who his parents are. But growing up raised by the masters at Falthrien, he had a lot of rage/destructive impulses. He was taught meditation, and often does so in the morning, waking up before dawn and gazing at the sunrise.
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I just kept hitting the random name generator until something good popped up and I got Versca. I’ve tried to come up with a reason behind Versca’s name and I even had a spooky on brand Forsaken last name for her but I dropped it shortly afterwards.
Otherwise, Versca is a name she chose for herself shortly after being resurrected. She wanted to separate herself as much as she can from her old life and that included dropping her living name.
How she came up with it, I’m not terribly sure but considering Versca was illiterate in those early days, I’d like to think she saw some text somewhere, maybe scribbled on a tombstone or graffiti on a wall in Lordaeron and some how got Versca outta it.
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i am the mastermind of making random words, and well, sint was no different. it just so happens, a year after i made her, i learned her name was just “Saint” and rolled with the idea that that was totally planned. dagon, however, was derived from the philistine deity and lovecraftian entity of the same name. why dagon? idk. sounded neat, and i like a bit of good ol’ fashioned cosmic horror.
but now she’s “Warrior”, and that’s mostly from DBS when Jiren went “Warrior. Sleep.” to vegeta. it was cool.
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