Theme Initials

Superman will then watch a Lindsay Lohan movie, write a love letter to Lex Luthor while listening to LL Cool J, become a limited liability, read Lords and Ladies, and visit Lewis Lovhaug.

"There certainly do seem to be a lot of people with the initials 'J.S.'"

— Justice Strauss, A Series of Unfortunate Events

In which several characters from the same work share a set of initials. Disproportionately likely to be the author's own initials; otherwise, usually signals a further commonality of some kind. The characters themselves may or may not notice.

A subtrope of Theme Naming and supertrope to Alliterative Family. Sister Trope to Letter Motif. See also Alphabetical Theme Naming and Alliterative Name.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• ARIA provides a partial example: virtually every character has a name starting with A, but their last names vary.
• In Kamichama Karin, seven of the main characters have the initials K.K., mainly as a result of the rampant Alphabetical Theme Naming in the show.
• Sort-of: Gas Mask Girl's Mask Power characters have an XYX theme: there's Gas Mask Girl (of course), Helmet Driver's High, and as-yet the unnamed DMD (Death Mask Dame/Doll/Darling?).
• A volume of the The Kindaichi Case Files had victims being targeted because the only concrete information the killer had to his true target were the initials S.K.
• Samurai Flamenco has MMM, an idol group that later becomes the Magical Girl superhero trio the Flamenco Girls. The three heroines have the civilian names Maya Mari (Flamenco Diamond), Mizuki Misawa (Flamenco Ruby), and Moe Morita (Flamenco Sapphire).

Comic Books

• Hellblazer's John Constantine has many relatives and ancestors who share the initials J.C.
• Superman:
  • Clark Kent's comics have a bunch of characters with the initials L.L., most of whom are love interests. Lois Lane, Lana Lang, Linda Lee, Lyla Lerrol, Lesla-Lar... A list may be found here. Even his mother is named Lara Lor-Van. This was apparently entirely unintended at first, until someone pointed out the theme in Lois Lane, Lana Lang, and Lex Luthor, and they just ran with it.
  • Odd little Reality Subtext: TV Superman George Reeves' girlfriend and fiancee was Leonore Lemmon.
  • Back when he was Superboy, the big guy once met Mighty Boy, who had multiple friends and enemies with the initials C.K.; obviously, these are Superboy's own initials. It doesn't go both ways, however, as Mighty Boy's real name is Thomas Keith.
  • Superman Captain Ersatz Supreme has the love interest Diana Dane and the archenemy Darius Dax, though it ends there; his other love interest is Judy Jordan.
  • Another ersatz Superman, The Sentry, knew a lot of people with the initials E.E. in his fake Silver Age backstory.
• Kevin Conner, the Star Brand in The Avengers (Jonathan Hickman) and Starbrand & Nightmask shares his initials with the original Star Brand from The New Universe, Kenneth Connell.

Fan Works

• The Nutdealer Expanded Universe: The main characters' real names match their anagram-based titles — Nathan Delta, the Nutdealer, and Tommy Epsilon, the TunaElder.
• In the Pony POV Series, the Draconequi all have one name beginning with D. Desire (Pandora), Destruction, Disorder (Anarchy), Dispute (Strife), and (of course) Discord. Rancor, the youngest, is an Odd Name Out at first, but that's because she has to earn a D name, Disruption. Odyne (Dark World!Fluttercruel's full draconequus name) is also an odd name out, but it can be assumed its for the same reasons as Rancor originally lacked one and she's a second generation Draconequus. She originally had a middle name Delilah which fit, but it was The Artifact and changed to Tulasi.

Films — Live-Action

• Max Bialystock in The Producers shares initials with writer/director Mel Brooks. It's also worth noting that two other male characters have last names ending in 'B': Leo Bloom and Roger De Bris. Possibly three if you count Lorenzo St. Du Bois(L.S.D.).
• In Pixels, Lady Lisa and Ludlow Lamadoff get together at the end of the film.
• In Lethal Weapon the opposite buddy cops, Martin Riggs and Roger Murtaugh, have opposite initials - M.R. and R.M.
• The male corners of the Love Triangle in The Fly (1986) are named Seth Brundle and Stathis Borans. On top of that, and absolutely coincidentally, their respective actors — Jeff Goldblum and John Getz — also have the same initials!

Literature

• In The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson, characters who are reincarnations of each other have the same initial (most have Only One Name).
• The protagonists of Bad Girls by Cynthia Voigt are Mickey Elsinger and Margalo Epps. They discuss the fact that both their initials are "ME".
• Phillip Jose Farmer's books are heavy with protagonists who have the initials "P.J.F."
• A number of Stephen King books have villains with the initials R.F.; they may all be Randall Flagg from The Stand (who, in the expanded version, explicitly takes on another alias with these initials in the epilogue).
• Organizations rather than people: in A Series of Unfortunate Events, the Baudelaire orphans encounter a number of organizations with the initials V.F.D. Also, several people have the initials J.S., such as Jerome Squalor, Justice Strauss, and Jacques Snicket.
• Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm is about a society of clones, who are created in batches of six or ten. The clones all have Only One Name, and clones from each batch all have the same initial (e.g., one major character is Molly; her clone-sisters include Miriam and Martha).
• A half real-life, half literature example: in John D. Fitzgerald's books about a fictionalized version of his family, all the male relatives have the middle name "Dennis". When Tom, Sr tries to track down his estranged brother, an important clue is a Utah newspaper edited by Will D. Fitzgerald.
• Robert A. Heinlein's Time Enough for Love has Lazarus Long and his clone sister-daughters Lorelei Lee and Lapis Lazuli.
• East of Eden is a Cain and Abel story where the brothers are named Caleb and Aaron, with their father and uncle respectively named Adam and Charles. Also, Adam's wife is named Cathy.
• A major clue in Peter Straub's novel Ghost Story.
• In Flowers in the Attic by V. C. Andrews, the Dollanganger children are named: Christopher, Cathy, Cory and Carrie. Their parents are Chris Sr. and Corrine.
• Harry Potter: The future children of Ron and Hermione are named Rose and Hugo.
  • Molly Weasley lost her brothers Fabian and Gideon during the first war against Voldemort, about 3 years after she bore the twins Fred and George.
  • Argus Filch shares the A.F. initials with another Squib in the series. Harry's neighbor Arabella Figg.
• In The Hunting of the Snark, almost every one of the unnamed characters has an occupation beginning with B.
• In the Sherlock Holmes stories one of the Scotland Yard detectives who consults with Holmes is Inspector Stanley Hopkins.

Live-Action TV

• On Angel, Wolfram and Hart employs lawyers Lindsey MacDonald, Lilah Morgan, Lee Mercer, and Linwood Murrow. Given a certain other L.M., this also counts as Does This Remind You of Anything?.
• Captain John Sheridan and Commander Jeffrey Sinclair of Babylon 5, written by Joe Straczynski.
• On Charmed, the Halliwell family tradition is to give every girl a name starting with a P: grandmother Penny, mother Patty, sisters Prue, Piper, Phoebe, and Paige. Even though Paige is a long-lost sister, her mother still asked her foster parents to give her a name beginning with a P. The pattern is eventually broken by Wyatt and Chris, who are also the only boys born into the family for quite a while. Additionally, when the girls fake their own deaths, they all take names beginning with a J.
• After considerable pestering by Hawkeye, B.J. Hunnicutt of M*A*S*H eventually revealed why his military file lists only his initials, not his first or middle name: his parents, Bea and Jay, literally named him "B.J.".
• In the Monk Tie-In Novel Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop, there are characters named Paul Braddock and Bill Peschel.

Music

• The R.E.M. song "It's the End of the World As We Know It" has this line:
  "Leonard Bernstein! Leonid Brezhnev, Lenny Bruce, and Lester Bangs..."

Allegedly it comes from a dream Michael Stipe had: he was at a party where everyone else had the initials L.B.

Roleplay

• In Panopticon Quest, the New World Order Convention of the Technocratic Union likes to gift its agents with names that initialize to J.B. once they've proven themselves and reuse certain last names as status indicators within the NWO. People within the Union quickly learn not to assume that NWO agents are related when they have the same last name.

Video Games

• Resident Evil: Ada Wong and Albert Wesker.
• Several games for the Nintendo DS have "DS" as their initials, such as Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, Advance Wars: Dual Strike, and Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor.
• Metal Gear: Ghost Babel: "Ghost Babel" shares the same initials as the Game Boy.
• Don't Starve: All of the playable characters name start with a W. Except for Maxwell, his starts with an upside down W
  • Turns out that Maxwell is a stage name; his real name is William Carter.
• According to Fantasy World Dizzy, the Yolkfolk are named Dizzy, Daisy, Denzil, Dylan and Dozy.
• The first three protagonists of the Donkey Kong Country franchise (Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong, and Dixie Kong) all have the initials "DK", which also prominently appear on various items and collectibles. The Japanese version extends it one Kong further with "Dinky Kong" (in English, though, he's Kiddy Kong.)
• Done as an April Fools' joke by Blizzard Entertainment. After the rousing successes of StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, Heroes of the Storm and Hearth (of the) Stone, they decided to change the name of another game to fit the H.O.T.S. theme: Herald of the Stars.

Webcomics

• Schlock Mercenary: When the mercenaries name their superfortress Post-Dated Check Loan, the onboard AI starts going by "Petey" for short. After he becomes an unfettered intelligence and starts building a fleetmind to act as a police force for the entire galaxy, he insists on giving every ship the initials "P.D.," such as the Predictably Damaged (mark I-V) and Priority Delivery. When he creates a sovereign nation, he names it the Plenipotent Dominion, which translates roughly to "overpowered empire." His official title is Emperor Pius Dei, or "dutiful god."
• In Everyday Heroes, the three brothers in the Mighty family are Marion, Michael, and Morrison (a Shout-Out to John Wayne).
• In Homestuck, all the characters' Pesterchum handles (save John's (ectoBiologist), although it fit (ghostyTrickster) before he encountered the trolls) contain the letters G C T A, the letters that make up DNA. Additionally, the Exiles all have several names, but are referred to by the same initials each time for convenience' sake (for example, the Warweary Villein later becomes the Wayward Vagabond and later the Wasteland Vindicator. Also, the comic makes heavy use of a chess metaphor, so when a royal-looking exile shows up with the initials W.Q. there's very little doubt what her original name was.)

Web Video

• Steve D'Monster: Jennifer Squirrel, Julie Squirrel, and Justine Squirrel.

Western Animation

• In Pepper Ann, it's stated in one episode that the title character's mother's family was supposed to have names all starting with Ls (her mother is Lydia and her grandmother Lillian), but a mistake when filing the birth certificate rendered Pepper Ann's aunt as "Janie" instead of the intended "Lanie," and it stuck.
• The Powerpuff Girls names all begin with B, even those of one shot "guest" powerpuffs (Bullet, Bunny) and the 2016 reboot's fourth team member Bliss. Lampshaded in The Movie: Professor Utonium names them Blossom because she opened right up to him, Bubbles because of her bubbly personality, and Buttercup because it also starts with a B.
• On Daria, Quinn's three most constant admirers are named Joey, Jeffy and Jamie; one episode's title even refers to them as the "J's." Less obvious are Daria's three main Love Interests over the course of the series: Trent, Ted and Tom.
• The Simpson family has a thing for middle names starting with J. Originally we just has the letter, but various episodes and supplementary material have established that Bart's middle name is Jojo, Homer's is Jay, Marge's is Jacqueline, and Abe's is Jedediah. Mona's middle name also starts with J, but we don't know what it is. The odd ones out are Lisa, whose middle name is Marie, and possibly Maggie, whose middle name is unknown.
• In The Loud House, most members of the family have the initials L.L., with the exception of Mrs. Loud, whose first name is Rita. Some also have L as their middle initial, with one exception being Lisa, whose middle name is Marie.

Real Life

• The Royal Navy have been doing this for decades - most of their vessel classes all have the same first letter in the names of their member vessels. For example, all the Vanguard-class SSBNs begin with "V"- Vanguard, Victorious, Vigilant and Vengeance.
  • It goes back over a century in fact, for instance in the first half of the 20th century British destroyers went through the alphabet about twice with classes (one class usually consisting of eight vessel plus a slightly larger leader) each named after a letter of the alphabet (no "X" or "Y" class, though), although there also e. g. "Tribal" class superdestroyers , and "Town" class (the 50 ex-USN destroyers given to the Royal Navy under the Lend-Lease agreement) and "Hunt" class escort destroyers. Other types of vessels according to this trope were submarines ("S", "T" and "U" classes during World War 2) and cruisers ("C", "D" and "E" classes during World War 1). There was also a group of five heavy battleships built during World War 1 that was informally known as the "R" class (HMS Royal Sovereign, Royal Oak, Ramillies, Revenge, and Resolution).
• NATO designation of Soviet materiel. Fighter plane codenames all start with an F (Flanker, Foxbat, Fulcrum, Fishbed...), helicopters with an H (Hind, Hip, Havoc, Halo...) while strategic bombers all start with a B (Blinder, Bear, Backfire...). Air-to-air missiles all start with an A (Archer, Apex, Acrid...), air-to-ground all start with a K (Kingfish, Kelt, Kickback...), and SAMs all start with a G (Gainful, Gecko, Gaskin). Oddly enough, submarine codenames break the theme - most are called after letters in the radio alphabet (Tango, Charlie, Foxtrot, etc.).

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