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[Khylia Morgoth]

Have you ever wondered where game desiners and such come up with character name, how do they research. wel i stumbled upon a name we all of dragon age know well and hear alot, Andraste where did this name come from i wondered well i looked it up and i found what i was looking for,


Andraste
Celtic myth name of a Briton goddess of victory, meaning
invincible

if you happen to come across anything else like this pertaining to Dragon Age please do share and thanks

[David Gaider]

I assure you *I* don't look at name meanings when I name characters. The fact that some name meanings are apropos thematically for the characters is coincidental.

[David Gaider]

Faz432 wrote...

Morrigan

Another Celtic name, read the description, pretty much our Morrigan spot on.

I don't believe you David

That's nice.

The name actually belonged to the character of a friend (who was nothing like Morrigan in Origins, incidentally-- I just liked the name). Where she took the name from, I don't really know.

But if you'd like to see more into it, hey, who am I to stop you? Clearly I have reasons to lie.

[David Gaider]

TheMadCat wrote...
Right, but they're not vague connections and associations, some of them actually directly reflect the character. I'm not calling David a liar, I'm simply saying there were a lot of coincidences. Like I noted above, Duncan being a Gaelic name meaning Brown Fighter, Dark Warrior, or whatever combo you'd like as they're interchangable isn't a vague connection. Duncan in literally a dark , brown skinned fighter.

And when Duncan was named, he wasn't even brown. That came later.

Alistair got his name because "House Doctor" and "Cash in the Attic" were on TLC a lot at the time and I thought Alistair Appleton was kind of adorable.

How these names end up being appropriate? Call it cosmic influence if you like, I don't really know. I'm not sure why anyone would think I would lie about this-- would there be a problem if I did look up meanings to name a character?

[David Gaider]

Kileyan wrote...
I would imagine it is more that he has named his characters after the characters of friends in past games(if he played pen and paper games). He likely didn't research the history of every name he picked out from his past, but those who named those characters likely did pick those names because of cool things, like the meanings you guys are all digging up. Err, hope that made sense.

Sure, but the characters they named had nothing to do with the characters in Origins. I used the name, not the character that originally had them.

So, again, a coincidence.

Faz432 wrote...
I personally think it's cool that you'd go to the effort of researching names from folklore to use for your characters.

Yeah, maybe that's just what I should have said. "Yup! Totally intentional! Awesome, eh?"

I'm not upset about anything, incidentally-- just that when people say "I don't believe you" it's a bit strange. I have no idea why someone would think I'd be deceptive about not doing as much research as people seem to think I did.

Modifié par David Gaider, 06 octobre 2010 - 10:42 .

[Stanley Woo]

Keep it on topic, please.

[Lukas Kristjanson]

Ryllen Laerth Kriel wrote...

You don't symbolically name characters huh? Then what of Arl Foreshadow? Hah! Caught in your own tangly web you juggler of words and witticisms!

Arl Foreshadow is mine, actually. I added him because I wrote Lord Foreshadow in Baldur's Gate, and, well, self-plagiarizing is the sincerest form of masturbation. And I can confirm that Dave doesn't care much about matching characters to references. It may be that (INSERT SEEMINGLY OBVIOUS NAME HERE) seemed appropriate to us because of whatever cultural baggage it inherantly had, but that isn't the intent in the vast majority of cases. We're far more likely to remove a name for connections than we are to include it. We want our characters to stand on their own, and historical matching games aren't of much interest, really. And you would be spectacularly uninspired by some of our naming discussions.

"Bug says we have too many starting with M."
"What about BLAH?"
"Killed a guy with that name in Origins."
"BLAH?"
"Too soft. And we already have that letter too."
"'X' is fantasy. Add an apostrophe if it's an elf."
"Argh, just leave it for a month and people will be used to it."

[David Gaider]

Faz432 wrote...
haha what was the discussion for Andraste?

"need a female name guys"
"might as well start at A...Alison?"
"No no c'mon"
"Abby?"
"Stop messing around guys, we need a good name"
"Andrea?"
"Right thanks for nothing guys I'll do it myself, Andrea, seriously?....wait a minute...Andrea...Andra....Andras...ANDRASTE!!!"

Not too far off. Andraste was originally named "Augusta", though James Ohlen thought that sounded too plain. I went to "Astarte", but that was an existing goddess. I think we went around in circles a few times before I put my foot down and said it would be Andraste-- but, truth be told, I couldn't tell you how we arrived at it. I think it was derived from "Astarte" and originally intended without the "ay" sound at the end.

But, yeah. Names are weird. We argue about them a lot-- in fact, my Rules of Naming come not from the forums but from our own bickering over them. There's only two things we get oddly passionate about: names and rules of grammar.

[David Gaider]

Akka le Vil wrote...
For example, I've a hard time imagining that Cassandra was used "randomly". It's just too well known. Is she another coincidence, or does her name actually HAVE a meaning, at a level or another ?

Mike liked the name. There's a classical reference for it, sure, but Cassandra in DA2 isn't predicting doom and having nobody believe her. So it's just a name.

DarthCaine wrote...
Alistair and Morrigan are clearly references to Arthur and Morgan Le Fay

"Clearly" because they both begin with the same letter? Err... yes. How devious of us.

Modifié par David Gaider, 08 octobre 2010 - 04:47 .

[David Gaider]

Anarya wrote...
Question: Where did Aveline come from? I liked both the name and the story and I'm happy to see you used it for a DA2 character. I was considering naming my Hawke Aveline after the chevalier until I saw that.

I don't remember where that name came from. It's a pretty minor character, after all, so it may be a case of me pulling a name out of thin air. That does happen on occasion.

DarthCaine wrote...
Well ok, maybe not that clear. But it's not just the names.

Arthur
and Alistair are both Kings (or at least have royal blood, since
whether Alistair is king is determinted by the player's choices). Morgan
Le Fay and Morrigan are both dark haired sorceresses and from the
events in The Stolen Throne Morrigan is probably Maric's daughter
making her Alistair's half sister (just like how Morgan Le Fay is
Arthur's half sister). If you do the dark ritual with Alistair, it
strengthens my theory even more (then again, this is also determined by
the player's choice).

But, I'm pretty sure you've heard all of this before, you just want to tease us.

Oh, no, I get it. The writers discussed this because it was interesting how the parralels ended up-- but that's not where it started (which I thought was what you were implying). It's not like I started with the Arthurian legend and tried to mix it up... I actually did that in DAO, if you take a look at the legend of King Calenhad. Maybe it was there subliminally, I don't know.

Modifié par David Gaider, 08 octobre 2010 - 05:49 .