Names to Trust Immediately

"In wrestling, as in life, things are not always what they appear to be. Take for example, this latest Grudge Match. One would logically expect a lass bearing the moniker of Hailey Hatred to be a vile, rule-breaking heel while her opponent, one Mary Elizabeth Monroe would be a force for all that is sweetness and light."

— Lady Sports, PGWA

The opposite of Names to Run Away from Really Fast, this is for clearly heroic sounding names. Likely examples include religious references, light, and positive adjectives. Truth in Television as virtues are popular baby names.

See also: Meaningful Name, Steven Ulysses Perhero, Ironic Name, Fluffy the Terrible, Non-Indicative Name.

By contrast, such tropes as Honest John's Dealership, Ironic Name, Peace & Love Incorporated, and Fluffy the Terrible show that this concept can be invoked by less than trustworthy characters.

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Examples:

Adjectives

• Inverted on Lost. One of the bad guys is named Tom Friendly.
• Inverted in On the Waterfront with the corrupt union boss Johnny Friendly.
• Tales of Symphonia has Regal Bryant, both of whose names mean 'noble'. He's a double subversion since he's an enemy the first couple times you meet him, but it wasn't really by his own choice, and he soon joins the party and becomes one of the nicest people around.
• Peter Perfect from Wacky Races is gentlemanly and frequently stops to help other racers, while Dick Dastardly cheats even when he's already winning.
• Tod Friendly in Time's Arrow. Played straight as he is a great guy in his old age, then subverted as he is revealed to have been a concentration camp doctor. Also, his real last name is Unverdorben: "unspoilt" in German. (While we're at it, "Tod" — pronounced with a long o — just happens to be the German word for "death". Make of that what you will.)
• Edgar Friendly in Demolition Man. Zig-Zagged: on the one hand, he is a resistance leader who represents chaos to a carefully ordered society. On the other, he doesn't go out of his way to kill anyone and mostly just wants to procure food and supplies so that his people don't have to choose between living in a repressive nanny state and starvation.
• Real Life example: Fred Friendly, President of CBS News during the 60s(during which time he and Edward R. Murrow produced a series of reports that are credited for helping bring down Joe McCarthy), later one of the founders of what would become Public Television. Generally regarded as a symbol of journalistic integrity.
• Cure Tender of HappinessCharge Pretty Cure! is an absolute softy on the inside, especially for her little sister Iona Hikawa whom she Took The Bullet for while fighting The Pretty Cure Hunter, Phantom during the Backstory. No deaths occurred, but said little sister suffered much Angst afterwards.
• Averted on Dexter. Dexter's name is Latin for "right", basically an antonym for "sinister", but he's a psychopathic Serial Killer who's very good at passing himself off as a regular friendly guy.
• The Devil is a Part-Timer! has Emilia Justina, whose last name translates to "just" or "fair". Quite fitting for a legendary hero.
• Agnes Fairchild from Jasper in Deadland. She's Jasper's Living Emotional Crutch, and the only person in his life who treats him fairly.
• Inverted with Mr Gently Benevolent, the Big Bad of Bleak Expectations. Played straight with his ex, the Friend to All Living Things Miss Sweetly Delightful until her Face–Heel Turn.
• Jack Manly, the hero of Sweet Ermengarde, fulfills all the requirements of a melodrama hero, apart from being competent at it.
• Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White: The hero and heroine are Walter Hartright (i.e. heart-right) and Laura Fairlie (fairly).
• Subverted/exploited in the How to Train Your Dragon books. Big Bad Alvin the Treacherous introduces himself as "Alvin the Poor-but-Honest-Farmer".

Animals

• In A Brother's Price, one of Jerin's sisters seems to be named "Bunny". Which is nice for a sweet-tempered toddler, but one hopes it is just a nickname, considering how it would look if a grown woman had that name. Judging from the other members of the Whistler clan, she might grow up to become a Vorpal Bunny, albeit a lawful, good-aligned one.
• Benjamin The Elephant (Benjamin Blümchen) - one of the most successful audio play serials in Germany – has a character named Theodor Tierlieb. Theodor derived from a Greek name meaning gift of god and tierlieb means animal-loving. He is the director of the zoo where Benjamin lives and a really nice old man.
• Subverted with Sophia Lamb from BioShock 2. She likes to present herself as a benevolent savior of the poor and downtrodden, but is anything but. Can be played straight with her rebellious daughter Eleanor Lamb, who can become either an actual paragon of compassion or an even worse monster. Lamb is a common euphemism for Jesus Christ, while Sophia means Wisdom and Eleanor means Light.
• Transformers has several fellows named Hound, all of whom are gregarious, kind, and protective of humans—all stereotypical 'good dog' traits. Sure, some might have more guns (or body counts) than others, but they're still good guys and generally get along great with humans.

Animals (Shepherd, Shepard, Shephard, &c.)

• Any character named 'Shepherd'. Plenty of them in the military, for some reason. A likely reason is as a nod to the Good Shepherd and Messianic Archetypes.
  • Military Shepherds:
    • Silent Hill: Homecoming: Alex Shepherd is a nice guy just cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs and only thinks he's in the military. His father's an aversion, though.
    • Command & Conquer: General Sheppard, the commanding officer and impressive strategist of the Global Defense Initiative, impressive for how he manages to outgambit Kane of all people.
    • Mass Effect: Commander Shepard (played straight with Paragon Shepard, who tries to solve disputes with diplomacy and uses violence as a last resort; averted with Renegade Shepard, who prefers to solve disputes with violence and uses diplomacy as a last resort. Both are more or less Magnetic Heroes to go along with the name regardless.)
    • Modern Warfare: General Shepherd. He betrays you.
    • In part of his back-story in the pages of X-Men, Professor Xavier served as a soldier during The Korean War. In one story, it was revealed that he was known among his fellow soldiers as "The Good Shepherd" because he went to great lengths to bring the men under his command safely home.
    • Kings: Honorable, upright soldier and the public's golden boy, David Shepherd. Bonus points for being the King David.
  • Non-military Shepherds:
    • Lost: Jack Shepherd - he always tried to be a good shepherd, with varied success and pure intention.
    • Tony Shepherd, Heath Ledger's character in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, runs a charity for third-world children. He secretly sells those children's organs to rich industrialists.
    • Shepherd Book is very much a good man and a good person, along with being a devout preacher who follows the 'turn the other cheek' school of thought.
    • NASCAR driver Morgan Shepherd once apprehended a shoplifter in Las Vegas at the age of 69. He got a pair of handcuffs from a police officer and sat on top of him. He also is a born-again Christian since 1975 to boot and is a genuine nice guy, who towards the end of his NASCAR career was promoting Racing with Jesus or Victory in Jesus as his primary sponsor on his own car.

Emotion

• The Joy was the The Boss's old special forces name in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. She is a hero of the United States and Naked Snake's mentor of 10 years. Subverted because she defects to the enemy's side shortly after the game begins. Double subverted because she's a double agent and has to sacrifice herself when things don't go as planned for the U.S.

Family Title

• "Mother Alice" of Avernum 5. Alice is a good name, "Mother" is a good association. However this is actually more Names to Run Away from Really Fast: her name is M.Alice, or Malice, which is never a good thing.
• Big Brother in 1984 uses this for manipulative purposes. It's not known if this character actually exists, as The Party make extensive use of his reputation.
• Abagail Freemantle, the Big Good of The Stand, is generally known as Mother Abagail. She lives up to the title both literally and in having a character that is what you'd ideally wish for in a mother^note And grandmother, and great-grandmother, and great-great-grandmother by the time the story takes place—though sadly, all her descendants are presumed to have perished in The Plague.
• Inverted by the legendary Mother Leeds, who was so sick of having had a dozen children that she cursed her thirteenth and (perhaps inadvertently) caused it to transform into The Jersey Devil.

Good

• Digimon Tamers: Gallantmon's name is derived from the "gallant", which means "brave" or "heroic". Fittingly, Gallantmon is a Knight in Shining Armor as opposed to a monstrous dragon like Guilmon's other mega form.
• A more modern example is Archie Goodwin from the Nero Wolfe novels - the archetypal good guy who always wins.
• Optimus Prime of Transformers. And not just good... "Optimus" means "best". (Prime means "first") A suitable name for the heroic leader who embodies both strength and virtue.
  • His pre-Prime name, Orion Pax, could be read as "Hunter for Peace." Optimus was built this way.
  • His Maximal counterpart, Optimus Primal, also qualifies, sharing many of the defining qualities of his Autobot predecessor while being slightly more down-to-earth.
• One of the morally best murder victims in the Ace Attorney series is named Bruce Goodman.
• From Negima! Magister Negi Magi: Takane D. Goodman who is indeed one of the good guys, and self-proclaimed Apostle of Justice if a bit overzealous.
• Somewhat zigzagged with the Whateley Universe's Goodkind family. If you're a mutant, they're one of the most prominent in-universe examples of the Baseline keeping you down; if you're not, they're just a dynasty of honest, hard-working, and even ethical businessmen and -women whose historical track record is actually one of supporting emancipation and equality movements. (Precisely what motivates their specifically anti-mutant stance has yet to be revealed; there seems to be a personal reason at work that not even all family members are clued in to.)
• Bravely Default gives us Daniel Goodman, leader of the Shieldbearer army. He's as good a guy as the name implies.
• Zig-Zagged by Saul Goodman from Breaking Bad. On the one hand, he goes beyond Amoral Attorney and into straight-up criminal territory. On the other hand, he is unfailingly loyal to his clients, never doublecrossing them even when presented with prime opportunities and more than once putting himself in personal danger on their behalf. In the show's Black-and-Grey Morality, that's about as "good" as it gets. It's also worth noting that "Saul Goodman" is an alias that he has used for decades as a con artist. The name is meant to inspire trust (and in the case of his law practice, trick people into thinking he's Jewish).
• Tekken: Jin's name means "benevolence" in Japanese and he was introduced as a genuine hero in contrast to his father Kazuya. He undergoes a Face–Heel Turn in Tekken 6 but appears to be back on the side of good in Tekken 7.

Heart

• Final Fantasy VIII's female protagonist is named Rinoa Heartilly, and indeed she is a friendly and trustworthy character. As long as she isn't possessed by the main antagonist, that is.
• Zigzagged with Mr. Heartland in Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL; most people trust him completely, but they definitely should not, given what he is.
• Averted with the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland. "Off with His Head!"
• Lionheart in Warrior Cats is a straight example. He's a pure hero, right down to the end. Fireheart as well.
• Ser Arys Oakheart in A Song of Ice and Fire. A good guy, if easily manipulated and not too bright.
• Officer John Hartigan is the finest cop in Sin City and possibly a reincarnation of Galahad
• Graveheart from Shadow Raiders is a guy who's all heart but with a rather grave demeanor.

Heaven/Religion/Mythology related

• The Shepherd Derrial Book from Firefly could be seen as this because of his profession and spot on the hero team.
• Zigzagged in Angel and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Angel, Faith, and Harmony, have been both villains and heroes. In Angel's case, it was an ironic name because he was 'the demon with the angelic face'; then he did a Heel–Face Turn and the name ceased to be ironic (except of course for his still being a vampire.)
• There are two examples in Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Angel Clare and Mercy Chant are both less forgiving than their names might suggest but Angel improves eventually.
• Athena and her Roman counterpart Minerva are two more examples of "tough" feminine names. Both are generally on the side of good.
  • Minerva McGonagall of Harry Potter.
  • The vault hunter/mercenary Athena in Borderlands is one of the few vault hunters during the events of The Pre-Sequel who isn't villainous and frequently questions the increasingly violent decisions made by Handsome Jack.
• Subverted with Ezekiel from the Spider-Man comics; he was named after a benign prophet from the Old Testament, and indeed, Spidey trusted him for a while. This turned out to be a mistake.
• Angel Martin of The Rockford Files is notably less than angelic. Instead, he is a slimy, greedy, dishonest Dirty Coward.
• Subverted in Person of Interest. An artificial intelligence called "Samaritan" is featured starting halfway through the third season. An artificial intelligence that is most definitely both a crapshoot and an unrestricted surveillance system.
• Pokémon Sun and Moon has the Aether Foundation. Double Subverted. Lusamine, the leader of the organization, is an abusive mother who abandoned her children because she was obsessed with the Ultra Beasts... or rather, was, in the original game. With a couple of exceptions (such as Faba) most people within the organization have good intentions. In Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon they're not the antagonists any longer, even if Lusamine's methods are questionable at best, and Faba is still evil.
• Averted in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly; Angel Eyes is "The Bad" in the title, a ruthless hitman who will do anything for money and has no loyalty to anyone but himself.^note It makes much more sense when you learn that in the original Italian he is referred to as "sentenza" meaning a judgement or verdict, as in a court verdict or judgement in the eyes of the Lord. He is, in other words, the guy who kills you and sends you to God where you receive your judgement. It doesn't translate very well to English, especially if you're trying to even roughly match the mouth movements.
• Amédée ^note ("Beloved of God") Lange ^note (from "L'Ange," "The Angel") in Jean Renoir's 1936 Le Crime De Monsieur Lange is guilty of murder, but by the end of the movie the victim is shown as having thoroughly deserved it.
• Young Justice: Artemis Crock shares her name with the Greek goddess who was a protector of women and children. This is reflected in how Artemis Crock has been shown to be protective of young children, especially those who are victims of abuse.
• Hot Fuzz: Nicolas Angel is the main hero of the movie and a police officer dedicated to protecting the innocent.
• Wonder Woman:
  • Diana is named after the Roman counterpart of the goddess Artemis, who was a protector of women and childbirth. It is fitting that Diana, being a feminist hero, shares her name.
  • Wonder Woman (1987):
    • In this continuity, Diana is named after Diane Trevor, who died in battle alongside the Amazons against monster's from Doom's Doorway. This makes Diana's name a trustworthy-sounding one on two levels.
    • Artemis of the Bana-Mighdall, Diana's rival and later ally, also shares her name with protector deity of women and children. Artemis was initially a lot rougher around the edges than Diana, but Took a Level in Kindness. She even became a mentor to Cassie Sandsmark, the second Wonder Girl.
    • As Greek mythology is a major focus in Wonder Woman, Cassandra Sandsmark's name is a reference to the famous clairvoyant. The name Cassandra is also derived from a Greek word that means "helper of men".
• The Matrix: Religious-themed names are common among the good guys.
  • Morpheus is named after the Greek god of dreams. He is the one who awakens Neo to the reality that he is trapped in a Lotus-Eater Machine.
  • Trinity's name is a reference to the Holy Trinity (the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit) in Christian Theology. She is the one who sets Neo on the path to finding out what the Matrix is and revives him with The Power of Love when he is killed by Smith in the climax of the first film. The connection is strengthened when she gains the same powers as Neo in The Matrix Resurrections, making her a "co-One".
  • Seraph is a benevolent program who aids the rebels. He is named after a heavenly being of Judeo-Christian scripture and there is some dialogue about him having "lost his wings".

Jobs

• The Doctor from Doctor Who. Generally plays this straight, but many in-universe hear this name and get an immediate Oh, Crap! reaction. This includes villains and non-villains.
  The Doctor: Trust me, I'm the Doctor.
  • Lampshaded in "A Good Man Goes to War"; toward the end, River Song revealed that many planets (including possibly Earth) have taken the word 'Doctor' into their language as a word for 'healer' or 'learned person', because of The Doctor's influence. But many other planets use the word 'Doctor' to mean 'warrior', for much the same reason.
• Dominion Tank Police: Chaplain is generally regarded well by his colleagues (he's a cop, but got his sobriquet due to his religious beliefs, though is seen as naive by the same token).

Verbs

• Dudley Do-Right is a notable parody, as a character who is always getting things wrong.
• Transformers: Generation 1 has the Protectobots, a team comprised of first responder vehicles, including a police car, police motorcycle, a search-and-rescue helicopter, an ambulance, and a fire truck. True to their name, they are dedicated to protecting humans from Decepticon villainy. Their combined form is named Defensor, and true to his name, he will defend humans to his last drop of fuel if need be.

Heroes (as in, named after other famous heroes)

• Snow Crash has Hero Protagonist, "Hiro Protagonist", It's his hacker handle.
• In the Whateley Universe, Elizabeth Carson's first superhero name was Miss Champion, when she was one of two teen sidekicks to Champion. Her second superhero name was Lady Champion. On the other hand, it also gets subverted: Captain Courage is mainly known for a huge number of paternity suits and failures to pay child support.
• Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: Heero Yuy might be a Double Subversion — at first, he's a stoic and ruthless hitman, but he later develops into a stoic Hitman with a Heart who fights in the name of a future of pacifism.
• Inverted in Real Life by Guy Fawkes, who was said to have been named after Sir Guy Fairfax (a judge and local historical figure) but went on to become one of Britain's most infamous terrorists.
• Roland was a Frankish military leader under Charlemagne who became one of the principal figures in the literary cycle known as the Matter of France. His name is used several times in fiction for heroic characters, including:
  • The fairy tale Childe Rowland, the most popular version being by Joseph Jacobs in his English Folk and Fairy Tales, published in 1892.
  • English poet Robert Browning's epic poem, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came; the title of which comes from a line in William Shakespeare's play King Lear.
  • The protagonist of Stephen King's The Dark Tower.
  • King Roland II from Sofia the First.
  • The soldier Roland from Borderlands, first one of the vault hunters who opened the vault on Pandora who would later become the founder and leader of the Crimson Raiders, a rag-tag band of reasonable people defending the planet against the bandits and Handsome Jack's Hyperion.
  • Several of the Eight Generals of the Scouring of the sixth and seventh Fire Emblem games were named for characters from The Song of Roland, including Roland himself. After the events of the Scouring, each would go on to found the contemporary nations of the land of Elibe, with the Champion Roland himself establishing the League of Lycia.

Light

• In A Brother's Price, Jerin's favourite sister is called "Summer". She's very sweet, and Jerin considers her the prettiest of his sisters. (Or at least he claims to do so when the question is who gets to go to the big city and find a husband for all of the sisters — he argues that Summer is the prettiest and they want the husband to consent to the match, don't they?) Maybe he just says this because he likes her and going to the city is fun.
• Death Note's Light Yagami. Although Light Is Not Good applies in an almost literal sense, this is ambiguous. His personal name is Light (written with the character for 'moon'), but Yagami means 'God of Night'. Certainly a name to run away from.
  • It's also a possible allusion to Christian belief about the angel Lucifer, whose name means "bearer of light" and whose pride made him try and take the place of God. Describes Light rather well, really. It also doesn't help that his given name is written with four strokes.
  • Note that this also makes "Yagami" a subversion of the reverse: it is Light's family name, and therefore, the name of his family, namely his father, the Chief of Police, who is noble, incorruptible, A Father to His Men, and all that. Possibly his sister, too, though she was mostly young.
• Averted in Saints Row 2, where the badass Voodoo Priest Lieutenant of the Sons of Samedi is "Mr. Sunshine".
  • Arguably a fringe case between this and Fluffy the Terrible, but regardless, being a scary, murderous lunatic with an inhumanly high pain tolerance isn't very conducive to being an effective drug-dealer, given Mr. Sunshine's never shown doing regular business, and almost always shown scaring or murdering someone. Admittedly, so's the Boss...
• The main character's daughter Glory Goldie Sunnycastle in The Emperor Of Portugallia. First played straight as the young Glory Goldie is a Friend to All Living Things, then subverted as she leaves for the city and becomes a prostitute.
• Dr. Thomas Light from the Mega Man (Classic) series, and creator of its eponymous hero. Of course, this is only in the North American versions. In the original Japanese games, his name is Dr. Right...which is still a much nicer name than, say, "Dr. Wrong". Of course, the L/R thing makes it hard to know what they truly mean his name to be. Either way, he's a nice guy.
  • Dr. Light is also a DC character. A villain to be exact.
• Hikari Yagami of Digimon Adventure. Oh so very much a Meaningful Name, almost to ridiculous extremes. Even her dub name counts.
  • In a likely Shout-Out, there is Hikari Kujou from Futari wa Pretty Cure Max Heart by the same studio. That's not all; her Magical Girl alias is Shiny Luminous. Surprise! She's actually the Queen of Light's life.
• Subverted in Young Justice by "The Light."
• One of the first NPCs you meet in Fallout: New Vegas is named Sunny Smiles. She gives you your first weapon, shows you where to find clean water (important if playing hardcore mode), and does a brief tutorial on the game's crafting system. All in all, a pretty nice lady. She's also one of the only characters in the game assigned the "Very Good" karma.
• Lúcio Correia dos Santos from Overwatch was specifically named with this mind, being one of the most unambiguously good characters in the whole game. His first name is a Portuguese variant of Lucius, which is in turn derived from the Latin word for light.

Virtues

• New Warriors: Marvel Boy renamed himself Justice to reflect his maturity, respect for the concept of justice and mastery of his powers.
• In the X-Wing Series, the two Alderaanian war frigates that survived when Alderaan adopted pacifism and were still hanging around the system after the planet was destroyed, were named Another Chance and Valiant. Another Chance was found sometime before the books, and Valiant came up out of the Graveyard to dramatically save the Rogues because one of them had taken Another Chance's IFF tag.
• Robin Hobb plays with this interestingly in her FitzChivalry series (the Farseer trilogy): all of the princes are given names like this as part of magic which is supposed to install a corresponding personality in them. It doesn't work perfectly though — the hero is the illegitimate son of Chivalry, demonstrating an ironic application of his name, and Regal is The Evil Prince. Chivalry was otherwise highly regarded, however, and Verity plays this trope absolutely straight.
• Inverted with Trueman from Yu-Gi-Oh! GX. He claims he is named that because he Cannot Tell a Lie (actually, he named himself) but given what he is, what he does to people, and how he does it, he is not someone to trust. (And he does use deceit and dishonesty a lot in non-verbal ways, like illusions.)
• Codex Alera's Fidelias, whose case is complicated. He knows the political climate of his country is nearing civil war and feels that the king isn't doing enough to prevent this. So he betrays the king out of loyalty to the kingdom.
• Older Than Steam: Something similar to Codex Alera happened with Jean-Baptiste Poquelin alias Molière's play Tartuffe (1664) and the disloyal bailiff Monsieur Loyal.
• Parodied in Anything Goes, where Reno's four angels are named Purity, Chastity, Charity, and Virtue. They are all sleeping with the crew of the ship.
• Temperance Brennan in Bones. Downplayed in that she is not an easy person to get along with.
• Amitie Florian, the Idiot Hero of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable: The Gears of Destiny. Amitie is French for Friendship and/or Kindness.
• A player character in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn had his name changed to Amiti (Amity, friendship) in English-language releases. It's clearly meant in this case to be a Punny Name, especially since his late mother's name was Veriti (Verity, truth), but it's also completely appropriate to his sweet personality.
• Amitie from the Puyo Puyo series. As the name implies, she's a very friendly and upbeat girl.
• Hope in Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds. Ethan Rayne's ancestor. And the Big Good.
• Karen Sympathy, the heroic FBI agent who aids the titular characters in The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle.
• In Yes! Pretty Cure 5, the protagonist's name is Nozomi Yumehara which literally translates to Hope Dreamfield. She then becomes the great power of Hope: Cure Dream.
• Yayoi Kise from Smile Pretty Cure! has a Meaningful Name, but it doesn't belong here. However, her Magical Girl form does because her name then becomes Cure Peace.
• The titular character of the Honor Harrington series. One character insists that her parents must have been clairvoyant.
• Before she became the queen of Hell, Lady Death was a kind and sweet young girl named Hope, who was burned at the stake by vengeful villagers who despised her cruel father. Initially, Lady Death was a villain who sought to wipe out humanity, but as time went on, her old compassion began to return and she became more comfortable with some of her loved ones calling her Hope.
• The Justice League and Justice Society of America are the premiere Super Teams of The DCU. Just about any hero who has served in either team is considered to match or surpass the standards of what it means to be a true hero.
• My Wife and Kids: Tony Jeffers is sensitive, honest, a devout Christian and the only teenage boy Michael trusts to date his daughter Claire. Tony's first name is actually "Honest" and he only goes by his middle name.
• Discworld: One pair of well-meaning parents in Lancre, the Carters, decided to name their daughters after virtues - Hope, Charity, Chastity and Temperance - and then decided the logical process would be to name their sons after vices - Anger and Bestiality among others. They all ended up subverting this completely: Hope became a depressive, Temperance turned to drink, Charity was an absolute miser who expected a penny back with every pound she lent, and Chastity found a very productive career with Ankh-Morpork's Guild of Seamstresses. Meanwhile, Anger Carter is the friendliest and kindest man you could hope to meet, and his brother is well-known for his care with animals.

Parodies

• Wizards of Waverly Place: Dr. Evilini is actually... well, evil.
  Justin: "There's no way she's evil. If she was evil don't you think she'd change her name to, I dunno, 'Dr. Nice-ini'?"
• Futurama: "Hugh Mann? Now that's a name I can trust."
• AdventureQuest: Mechquest also used Hugh Munn as the name of one of the students in Advanced Mecha Theory.
• Discworld:
  • Adora Belle Dearheart is a good person but is also a snarky, badass, chain-smoking Broken Bird. (And what else could she be with a name like that?) She was nicknamed Killer by her brother.
  • The Carter family of Lancre, whose parents didn't quite get how this was supposed to work. All of the girls ended up named after virtues: Hope, Prudence, Chastity, and Charity. The boys, on the other hand, were all named after vices: Anger, Jealousy, Covetousness, and Bestiality. Ironically, all the kids ended up as inversions of their name, so Chastity for example ended up as a "seamstress" in Ankh-Morpork, while Bestiality Carter was always very kind to animals. Covetousness Carter is described as "generous to a fault."
• Parodying this trope and Charles Dickens' use of it, the villain of Bleak Expectations is named Mr Gently Benevolent. The cast also includes love interests Ripley Fecund and Sweetly Delightful.
• Several of the character in the Gilbert and Sullivan opera Ruddigore count as parodies—the heroine is Rose Maybud, and the male characters are Robin Oakapple and his servant Adam Goodheart, and Richard Dauntless—the male characters lead to a bit of zigzagging, as Robin is actually the stereotypically evilly named Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd from a family of Dastardly Whiplash types (though still a mostly-good person) and some versions of the script have Adam changing his name to Gideon Crawle to match his master's forced Face–Heel Turn. Richard Dauntless, meanwhile, turns out to be a self-entitled, ahem, dick. Also subtly present in the Posthumous Character Stephen Trusty, the highly-respected father of Dame Hannah.
  • Also present in a few other Gilbert and Sullivan shows with characters like Yum Yum, the sexy heroine of The Mikado.
• The Lovejoy family from The Simpsons is a clear parody/pastiche of this. Reverend Lovejoy is a nice guy mostly, but he's also prone to the same jerkass behavior as the rest of the town and Depending on the Writer is either prone to fanaticism or has grown cynical and world-weary and is just going through the motions (though a few episodes show him sympathetically). His wife is the leader of the town's out-of-touch Moral Guardians who often cry "Think of the Children!!" Their daughter is manipulative and even downright cruel.
• The Rated G Super Star Mary Elizabeth Monroe made her PGWA debut as a vicious corner cutting child hater. Wrestling being what it is though, she eventually had a face turn and played this trope straight.
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: As you learn during the very first Dark Brotherhood quest, Grelod the Kind, the old lady who runs the orphanage in Riften, is anything but kind. How bad is she? Well, her establishing moment is telling orphaned children that they will never be adopted and have no hope of ever finding happy lives. This little clue is there to help remove all guilt and doubt from the player as the quest objective is to kill her. If you do so, the children gather round her corpse and cheer. Elisif the Fair, the widowed wife of the late High King Torryg, plays this straight (mostly).
• Doctor Sigmund Friend from The Twilight Zone episode "Number 12 Looks Just Like You". Though his intentions can arguably be considered benevolent, his methods leave something to be desired.
• In the melodrama parody Sweet Ermengarde, the Nominal Hero is named Jack Manly.

Compound names (exhibit two or more of the above)

• Played painfully straight in the ACE (Accelerated Christian Education) curriculum comics, where the perfect main characters are named Ace Virtueson and Christi Lovejoy. The theme naming extends through the whole cast of character, for example, Pastor Alltruth. Alternate Character Interpretation was popular - Christi Lovejoy is certainly a multi-purpose name.
• Luna Lovegood of Harry Potter, who is indeed trustworthy, though rather unusual in her view of the world.
• Subverted with Jonathan Liebling, later Johnny Favorite. Liebling translates to "darling" or "beloved". Everyone who knew Johnny Favorite describes him as the devil.
• Trevor Goodchild, the self-appointed ruler with a varying morality, from Æon Flux.
• Xiè Bì'ān ("those who are repentant will have peace"), the White half of the Hēibái Wúcháng ("Black-White Impermanence") duo of Chinese Shinigami, who is also the nicer, more peaceful one of the two. In contrast, the Black half has the name to run away from really fast of Fàn Wújiù ("those who sin are unsalvageable"), and is also the more ruthless and aggressive one.
• Bayonetta features enemy angels, with a variety of nice-sounding names like "Beloved," "Joy," "Applaud," "Inspired," and so on and so forth; the major bosses of the game are even named after cardinal virtues.
  • Though this gets subverted, once Bayonetta beats their marble exoskeleton off, they're fleshy, drippy, and just as eldritch as the demons they fight against.
• Many of the characters in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic have a Meaningful Name that doubles as this.
  • Shining Armor is the best big brother you could hope for (at least when he isn't being mind-controlled), a great husband, Captain of the Royal Guard, and a powerful Barrier Warrior who never backs down from an enemy if it means protecting the ones he loves.
  • Sweetie Belle is every bit as nice as her name implies.
• Ace Attorney:
  • Who wouldn't trust a guy named Apollo Justice or Phoenix Wright? Both are Crusading Lawyers and dedicated to finding the truth.
  • Posthumous examples include Bruce Goodman (from Rise from the Ashes), Celeste Inpax (from Justice for All), Buddy Faith (from Investigations), and Constance Courte (from Dual Destinies). These are notable given the series' penchant for Asshole Victim and Meaningful Name, and indicates that they were likely good people.
  • Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 does play with this a little with the dialogue between Phoenix Wright and Jean Grey:
  Jean: We're both called Phoenix, but I'm a destroyer of worlds and you're a lawyer. I wonder which one of us is more hated?
• Before he became leader of the Autobots, Optimus Prime wasn't Optimus Prime. Instead, his name was Orion Pax; Orion the Hunter being a hero from Greek mythology, and "Pax" meaning "peace"... Which means his name could be (very) loosely translated as "hunter of peace", an apt description.
• Rainbow Katelyn Carly Shay Sunshine from a "teh bestest fan ficshun ever".
• Fin Sheppard of Sharknado is a great name for a hero that fights sharks and tornadoes.
• The Long Earth has Joshua Valienté. "Valienté" is Spanish for "valiant" which is literally a synonym for heroic. "Joshua", meanwhile, is technically the same name as Jesus.
• Rusty and Co. has Dame Madeline Goodlaw. As the name suggests, she's Lawful Good. She's also a paladin and the nicest person you'll ever meet, so long as you're not evil. If you are evil, she'll smite your ass.
• Devil May Cry 2: Lucia is named after Lucia of Syracuse, or Saint Lucy as she was also known. While Saint Lucy did appear as a character in the Divine Comedy to aid Dante, she was also a real life person who was a Christian martyr during the Diocletianic Persecution. This is reflected in Lucia's character when during the game's climax, she insists on sacrificing herself to close the portal to the Demon World viewing herself as expendable but is stopped as Dante doesn't view her that way. Since Saint Lucy also happens to be the Patron Saint of The Blind, Lucia references this by by having one of her eyes covered at all times. The name Lucia is also derived from lux, the Latin word for light. This is appropriate given the white, angelic form of Lucia's Devil Trigger.
• Several Transformers series feature a kindly medic named First Aid, landing both the trustworthy adjective (first aid, as in, they will be the first one to help you if you're injured) and the trustworthy job (first aid being the purview of medicine and the healing arts).

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