One of the things I do when in my adventures around Norrath is check out peoples' names. I think a toon with a cool name, a name thats well thought out, is likely to be a good toon. But I know name is not what makes a toon.
That being said, I think that in a game like EQ, where there are no duplicate names, making each toon individual, that names should be better thought out. Not bragging or anything (cause im sure some will find it stupid) but when I created my High Elf wizard, I put alot of thought into the name. I wondered what his parents would name him and attempted to stick with what sounded "High-Elvish". I saw a calendar for a gas-station and saw Diesel..naturally I added "ious" and he became "Dieselious". It sounded like a strong name, it sounded "High Elven" and most of all it was original.
My beastlord was a get-name of sorts, i liked part of it, so i erased the rest of the letters and kept Holr. My HighElf cleric's name sounds HighElven, its beautiful, and it sounds "holy"..(Amastahzia).
Now, I'm not flaming those people who seem to not put any effort or thought into names..if it works for them, then thats ok. It bugs me though. I remember when "Lord of the Rings" came out in the theatres, I swear I saw a thousand different woodelf rangers running around with different variations of "Legolas", the foremost in my memory was "Legolasjim". Just the otherday, I saw a variant of Aragorn ( but it was a barb warrior which bothered me even more). I have seen a female cleric variant named Arwen (I wont say much as this person is in the guild my wizard is in and am hoping they dont read the alla forums, lol)
Now, I will be the first to admit that not all my toons' names are well thought out or original. I have a human ranger (who looks as close to aragorn as possible and has roleplay traits similar to him) but is named "Lowwn Wranger". I have a Dwarf cleric named "Hamaneggs Mcmuffin" ( I was hungry at his creation and is all I could think of). I have a barbarian warrior named "Ooltimate Thundermaker" (I'm sure many of you WWF wrestling fans of old will see the namesake there). I even have, as I have stated previously, a bard name "Ozztavious Ozbourne" whose namesake is probably fairly obvious.
**ok i think i need to stop ranting omg**
But before I do, let me just ask this. Where is the originality of the names? Is this only an issue with me or is anyone else bothered by names like "legolasjim" or the 47 variants of "shrek" or whatever running around?
/rant off
/hope