Theme Naming - Television Tropes & Idioms

Obelix: "O chief Vitalstatistix, the Normans are landing! And they've got ever such funny names! They all end in 'af'!"
Asterix: "That's right! Their chief is called Timandahaf!"
Vitalstatistix: "Ha, ha, ha! Did you hear that, Getafix, Cacofonix, Operatix, Acoustix, Polyfonix, Harmonix?"

— Asterix & the Normans

"Gwen and Ken Tennyson? What are your parents' names, Sven and Jen? I'm talking to you, Ben!"

— Kevin Levin, Ben 10: Alien Force

Characters in an anime or manga often show a consistent theme in their names which isn't always obvious to English speakers and may sometimes be convoluted puns in Japanese. Often it results in Prophetic Names.

Japanese names have obvious or straightforward meanings, unlike in English, but the meanings can change depending on which kanji are used to write them. Each kanji is a word in itself as well as a sound, sometimes resulting in a name that sounds like one thing, but can be read as something completely different. Furthermore, there are multiple kanji for various sounds, allowing many valid "non-standard" spellings of words. Complicating matters beyond that, Japanese also has two phonetic alphabets — one of which is reserved solely for foreign words — that can be used to spell names in a way that obscures their specific meaning and opens them up to multiple interpretations.

As a result, practically speaking, every Japanese has two names — a visual one which is mainly in kanji, and an aural one. All official Japanese communication would actually tell people, or ask people to tell them, how the person's name ought to be pronounced. This disjuncture between kanji and pronunciation gave creators a large amount of leeway to put in whatever meaning that's desired in their names; the prime example being Light Yagami.

The Yuppie Couple, Those Two Guys and Creepy Twins sometimes have thematic names that link them. Theme naming is also common for characters with unusual names (in the case of anime, western style ones) as a mnemonic in order to keep track of a huge cast; Dragonball's Akira Toriyama once admitted this is very helpful.

This also applies in English-language media.

Variations:

Subtropes include:

Other examples

All over the place

Case Closed is full of these, whether related to the plot or not, with too many instances to count in this wiki. For example:
- The second movie The Fourteenth Target centers around a series of attacks on a group of people, with the order based on the numerical element in the kanji or pronunciation of the target's name based on playing cards (starting at Joker and working down).
Due South adored themed names. There was usually some sort of pun or reference involved (e.g. in one episode, a hockey player's manager shared a name with a well-known Canadian hockey commentator), but they were not often Meaningful Names — once you got the reference or pun, there was generally no further significance to the name.
beatmania IIDX has done this at least since DistorteD (version 13), with the composers of the Extra and One More Extra Stages (the equivalents of Perfect Run Final Boss and Bonus Boss) sharing themed pseudonyms. Distorted had The Four Gods plus one (Seiryuu/Suzaku/Genbu/Byakko/Kinjishi), Gold had all but one artist add a "-G" to their name (Risk Junk-G, L.E.D.-G...), and DJ Troopers had animal names for the songs in its second set of boss songs, complete with Humongous Mecha in the video (Kraken/Eagle/Lion/Scorpion/Humanoid).
In the Touhou Project series, each member of House Yakumo is named after a color (Chen=orange, Ran=indigo, Yukari=violet), and each character's relative power level corresponds to their color's position on the spectrum of visible light. Violet is also at the boundary of visible and invisible light, a fitting parallel for Yukari's boundary powers.
In GI Joe, the villainous Dreadnok trio of Torch, Ripper, and Buzzer. Their real names, Thomas Winken, Henry Nod, and Richard Blinken-Smythe, follow two themes; Their first names are Tom, Dick, and Harry, and their last names are Winken, Blinken, and Nod.
- Monkey Wrench, a later addition to the crew, was named Bill Winkie: "Wee Willie Winkie," in keeping with the nursery rhyme theme of the original three.
- Also, Zartan and family. There's Zartan, Zarana, Zandar, and Zanya. There's also Zanzibar, another Dreadnok, but he isn't actually related to Zartan.
In Gargoyles, the Manhattan clan (except for Goliath) are all named after locations in New York; Their clones in the Clone Clan are named after similar places in Los Angeles.
Sailor Moon loves these. The main charcter, Usagi Tsukino, is a pun on "Rabbit of the Moon" (the Japanese equivalent of the Man in the Moon). Rei Hino is "Spirit of Fire", Minako Aino can be read as a pun on "Everyone's Child of Love", Ami Mizuno is "Friend of Water", Makoto Kino is "Truth of Trees". The outer Senshi have Haruka Tenou ("Distant Air King") and Michiru Kaiou ("Rising Sea King"). Then there's Chiba Mamoru ("Protection of Earth" — he's Tuxedo Mask, the guy that's constantly saving Sailor Moon).
- And let's not forget Jadeite, Nephrite, Zoisite and Kunzite.
- Also, "Aino Minako" can be translated as "Love's Beautiful Child". This fits with the planet theme of the Sailor Senshi, as Venus is the Roman goddess of love and beauty. Incidentally, Uranus is the Titan god of the sky, and Neptune is the Olympian god of the sea, while the thunderbolt-wielding Jupiter/Zeus is also commonly associated with the oak tree (Jupiter Oak Evolution, anyone?)... and Saturn/Cronus is said to have emasculated his father with a sickle (The "Glaive" in Sailor Saturn's "Silence Glaive Surprise" uses the kanji for "scythe").

Classical Elements

The heroines of Magic Knight Rayearth have names that reflect the magical elements they command. (Hikaru="fire", Umi="ocean", Fuu="wind".) The Latin American dub decided to maintain the game, and translated the heroines' names: Hikaru became "Lucy" (a pun in "luz", meaning "light"), Umi was reamed Marina (a name derives of "mar", sea), and Fuu became Anais (supposedly alluding to her "air" element after a famous perfume, but also seems to point more to her gracefulness).
Similarly, many characters in Flame Of Recca have names that reference the elemental powers they possess (Recca="wild fire", Fuuko="wind child", and so on).
The Shiba siblings in Bleach follow a pattern: Kaien means "sea swallow," Ganju means "rock eagle," and Kuukaku means "sky crane."
Kingdom Hearts has a "Sky, Land, Sea" motif for three main characters
- Sora, Riku, and Kairi are in Japanese; Ven(tus), Terra, and Aqua go for a more latin theme.

Water/The Sea

Neon Genesis Evangelion is filled with people named after Japanese warships from WWII and pieces of nautical equipment.
Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch uses puns on the girls' origins ("Noel" from the Arctic, "Coco" from the South Pacific) sometimes, and just about every name in the series has a reference to the sea somewhere.
The Venezuelan Soap Opera Llovizna named most of its characters either with water-related names, or things related to the Guayana and Gran Sabana region (for example, the namesake protagonist has a name who means "light rain"; the rivals on the protagonist love are named Orinoco and Caroni after the two main rivers of the region; one of them has the surname "Ferrer", who alludes to the iron and steel industry traditionally established there). Many of those characters have the surname "Fuego" ("fire"), which combined with the water-trend on first names gave birth to silly combinations as "Nieves Fuego", "Snow Fire". Another character has the sillier name "Soledad Barranco" ("Solitude Precipice"), which continues the theme naming (since the table mountains and their lonely deep precipices are common in the region) and also doubles as a Prophetic Name and a Meaningful Name.

Food

Many of the main Dragonball characters are named after food: Vegeta ("vegetable"), Gohan ("rice"), Kuririn (the "kuri" means chestnut), Puar & Oolong (types of tea), etc.
- Saiyans seem to always be named after edible plants. In addition to Vegeta, Goku's birth name is Kakarot (carrot) and his brother is named Radditz (radish). Vegeta's original partner was named Nappa, which is apperantly a pun of the Japanese word for Chinese cabbage and a minour saiyan who appeared in one of the films was named Bardock (burdock).
The Warhammer40000 fan webcomic Gone to Ground's Imperial Guardsmen's names are chock full of this trope — Sergeant Cooke, Private Eggleston (who's nicknamed 'Eggs' by his friend anyway), Corporal Hamm...
In Naruto The Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist (except Raiga) derive their names from fruit, as does Suigetsu, who used to want to be a member but is now seeking to collect all of their swords: Zabuza Momochi (peaches), Kisame Hoshigaki (dried persimmons), Suigetsu Hozuki (Chinese lantern fruit), and Chojuro (Asian pear).

Clothes

One major character's entire family in Dragonball is named for undergarments (Bloomer, Trunks, Bra, Dr. Briefs), a joke which for various reasons is only partially carried over to the English translation.
All of the Borogravian officers in Monstrous Regiment have clothing related names (Blouse, Froc, Strappi, etc.) This is a fairly obscure reference to Lords Cardigan and Raglan, the two feuding brothers-in-law (and sweater designers?) responsible for the disasterous Charge of the Light Brigade.
- For bonus points, said Charge was during the Battle of Balaclava.
- And perhaps also to the Duke of Wellington. (For non-Brits, this is because "Wellington" is a common term for waterproof boots in the UK.)

Temperature

Freeza and his family in Dragonball are all named after English terms for cold, or cooling kitchen appliances (King Cold, Cooler etc.).
The cyborg gargoyle in Gargoyles was called Coldstone, with two robotic gargoyles Coldsteel and Coldfire.
The main character's dad in Mega Man Starforce has Kelvin as his first name, a unit for measuring temperature.

Body Parts

The Band of Seven in InuYasha have names ending with "kotsu" (骨), meaning "bone", which might signify that they are undead. The other kanji in each of their names also signifies something about each of them.
The four main characters of Wolf's Rain are all named for aspects of the wolf; Kiba (Fang), Tsume (Claw), Hige (Whisker), and Toboe (Howl). The pun in the title of the second episode, "Toboe, Who Doesn't Howl", is thus lost in the English translation.
Knuckles' mother in the Sonic The Hedgehog comic seems to have an affinity of naming her children after body parts (Knuckles and his half-brother Kneecapeon "Kneecaps" Mace).
On The Fairly OddParents, the Rogues Gallery of superhero The Crimson Chin are The Body of Evil, whose members are (naturally) all named for body parts: Bronze Kneecap, Golden Gut, Iron Lung, and Titanium Toenail, among others.
Autobot Headmasters in Transformers Headmasters have head- or brain-related names: Chromedome, Hardhead, Highbrow, Brainstorm, and Cerebros.

Weapons

Almost everyone in Scrapped Princess is named after a type or brand of firearm or ammunition.
In The Matrix trilogy, the crew aboard the "Mjolnir" all have names that have to do with guns: Roland, Maggie, AK, Colt, and Mauser.
The protagonists of Loserz are named Benjamin Winchester, Jodie Beretta and Eric Remington.
The Insecticons in Transformers have bomb-related named: Bombshell, Shrapnel, and Kickback.

Puns

Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei has this with the entire cast; all important cast members have pun names that explain their most important character traits once written out horizontally in Kanji, except a teacher and the first student, who are named after a philosopher and a writer. The titular character is a prime example of this: Nozomu Itoshiki appears fairly normal when written vertically, but the characters become the word "Zetsubou," which means despair, once written horizontally. As expected, he is always depressed about something, and attempts suicide enough that he has a kit he carries with him to facilitate in these endeavors.
The names of characters in Asterix are all puns; one of the reasons why the English-language version became popular was the art the translators showed in creating English puns out of French puns.
In Leisure Suit Larry 7, all of the girls have names that reference female Hollywood stars, such as Drew Baringmore and Jamie Lee Coitus.
Almost every character in Kim Possible has an utterly puntastic name. The titular character ("impossible"), her sidekick Ron Stoppable ("unstoppable", though he often proves simply "stoppable"), and so on. Across the aisle is Shego (probably a take on "watch her go"), and her theme-named superhero siblings Hego (big tough He-Man type), Mego (self-centered), and Wego (multiplication powers... also probably twins, but with that power it's tough to judge). See also Lord Montey Fisk (AKA Monkey Fist... they really are), Senor Senior, Sr. and his son Senor Senior, Jr., DNAmy, and so on.
Almost every character in the Ace Attorney games have punny names, and those who are familiar with both versions can appreciate the challenges in localizing the names so they make sense. For a quick timesink, try checking out the character section in Court Records.

Science and Technology

The four generals in Gurren Lagann are all named for the four chemicals in DNA, while Beastmen in general, as well as Lordgenome, all have a genetic-based name (Viral, for instance).
- The other halves of their names come from the four classical elementals. Thymine + Sylph = Thymilph, Adenine + Undine = Adiane, Guanine + Gnome = Guame, and Cytosine + Salamander = Cytomander. One might question the logic of having Thymilph represented by the Wind elemental and Cytomander by Fire, but Cytilph and Thymander don't have quite the same ring...
  - In European folklore the Salamander has a strong connection to fire, to the point that asbestos was sometimes called salamander wool.
The Battle Network series uses a computer theme for its main characters (Net/Site or Lan/Hub, Mail, and so on), but contains a nod to the musical theme of the earlier games in the third game — the master of the Ura Internet and penultimate Very Definitely Final Boss, Serenade. The manga hung a lampshade on this, where in an omake the author decides to make Blues a girlfriend named Rhythm. Rhythm and Blues!
Gunnerkrigg Court: Antimony is named for the element, and both parts of her mum's maiden name, Surma Stibnite, are compounds containing that element.
Sailor Nothing uses the noble gasses plus an Odd Name Out technique for the Dark Generals (Argon, Neon, Xenon, Radon, and Cobalt).

Emotions

The names of the Black Siblings in Gurren Lagann all start with ki: Kittan, Kiyoh, Kinon, and Kiyal. If you flip them, you get emotions or states of mind: tanki means quick temper, youki means cheerfulness, nonki means various things including carefree and optimistic and yaruki means willingness.
Terry Pratchett — naturally — spoofs theme naming with the Carter family in Discworld. The daughters are named Hope, Chastity, Prudence, and Charity, whereas the sons received the names Anger, Jealousy, Bestiality, and Covetousness. This being Discworld, they all have personalities which are the exact opposite of their names. For example, Hope is a depressive and Chastity is making a career in Ankh-Morpork's seedier districts, while Anger is a calm and reasonable fellow and Bestiality is known for his kindness towards animals.
In Robin Hobb's Farseer trilogy, royal children and sometimes lesser nobles are named for virtues: Chivalry, Dutiful, Patience, etc.
The majority of the bosses in Metal Gear Solid 3 are named after the emotions they "carry into battle," such as The Pain, who is covered in hornets.
- In Metal Gear Solid 4, The Beauty and the Beast unit takes this trope one step further, combining the animal names of FOXHOUND and the emotions of the Cobra Unit (for example, combining Vulcan Raven and The Fury to make Raging Raven.)
The Seven Dwarfs, at least in Disney Animated Canon.
In Mega Man Starforce, the main character's mom's first name is Hope.

Sun/Light/Fire

In Naruto, most Hyuugas (so far except for Neji) have names having to do with the sun, light, or fire.
Three of the four Organoids in the Zoids: Chaotic Century anime have names related to light effects: Shadow, Ambient and Specula.
The first installment of the Disgaea named quite a few of its primary characters after volcanos, including Etna, Vulcanus (From Vulcano, Italy), Maderas (La Madera), Krichevskoy (Kliuchevskoi), and Lamington. Laharl is named after a type of pyroclastic mudslide that occurs after eruptions.

Games

The GoBots had a gestalt character called Puzzler, and the robots who combined to form him all had puzzle-related names: Crossword, Jig Saw, Pocket, Rube, Tic Tac and Zig Zag. Just in case a few of those escape you, Zig Zag was a puzzle manufacturer in the early part of the 20th century, and Rube Goldberg is famous for his complicated devices.
Ronk, Papes, and Snips from The Legendary Starfy fit into this category.

Cosmetics

The few members of the Joketsuzoku (or "Amazons") in Ranma 1/2 who are named are named after cosmetics, spices, or Indian food: for example, the central trio Cologne, Shampoo, and Mousse.

Weather

The Tendos in Ranma 1/2 are named after clouds, which also represent their personalities. "Tendo" (or "Tendou", depending on the romanization) can mean "Way to Heaven" or "Path of Heaven." "Akane" means "crimson," "Nabiki" means "to sway" (which her victims tend to do,) and "Kasumi" means "mist," referring to her wispy nature. "Soun" means "fast cloud."
In Big Trouble In Little China, the Three Storms, Lo Pan's elite servants, are named Thunder, Rain, and Lightning. These names vaguely conform with their abilities. Well, it's pretty obvious with Lightning.

Plants

The Asakura family in Shaman King also has something of a theme going, with all of its members having kanji representing parts of plants in their names. The most common is "leaf", found in Hao ("leaf emperor"), Yoh ("leaf") and Yohmei ("wise leaf"), but there's also Keiko ("stem child"), Mikihisa ("tree trunk"), and Kino ("of wood").
In Pokémon—Japanese version—every single NPC that matters. In English, it's pretty much limited to the professors (Oak, Elm, Birch and Rowan), "Ash," "Gary (Oak)," and the Sinnoh Frontier Brains. Johto's towns and cities also have a plant motif in both English and Japanese.

Powers

For the magic-themed Mahou Sentai Magiranger, the core five are members of the "Ozu" (as in The Wizard Of Oz) family.
- The first sibling is Makato, which means "sower" (he is a gardener by trade) and "logs" (his element as a magician is earth).
- The second sibling is Houka, which means "fragrance" and mirrors her girly demeanour.
- The third sibling is Urara, which means "bright" and "beauty". It is also a pun on Uranai (fortune telling), which is her special talent as a magician.
- The fourth sibling is Tsubasa, which means "wings". His motif is that of a garuda.
- The fifth sibling is Kai, which means "leader" (he is the leader of the team). The Japanese symbol for "fire" (his element) is read as "ka".
- Finally, take the first syllable of each sibling's name and arrange them from oldest to youngest, and you get "mahoutsukai", which is Japanese for "magician".
Winx Club: Except for Bloom (whose search for her power source is a major thread in S1) and Layla (the newcomer in S2), the Winx girls have names that recall their power source (that is, the theme of their attacks): Stella (sun and moon, although most of her attacks are solar), Musa (music), Tecna (technology), and Flora (plants).

Companies

The Sinclairs in Dinosaurs are named after the long-defunct Sinclair oil company, which famously used a brontosaurus as its logo and on all its merchandise. Other characters in the show are also named after oil companies, including Earl's friend Roy Hess, boss B.P. (British Petroleum) Richfield (from Atlantic Richfield, better known as ARCO and now owned by BP) and others.

Nature

The third and fourth generation of Pokémon games had widespread nature-themed portmanteaus for town names.

Opposites

In Final Fantasy X, the main couple is named oppositely: Tidus is a romanization of "Tidaa", which is Okinawan for "sun"; Yuna, on the other hand, is Okinawan for "night".
In Avatar The Last Airbender, The Hero Aang and his initial Arch Enemy / The Rival Zuko had names on polar opposite ends of the alphabet. This pattern was repeated with Zuko and his more evil sister, Azula. Also, Azula and Aang have this same pattern in the second letters of their names.
Minor character couple in The Wotch: Scott Winters and Julie Summers.
- This is doubly thematic: first the seasonal elements, but secondly, if you switch the last names you get the names of Cyclops from the X-Men and Julie from The Maxx. Whether this means anything, though...

Others

Saint Seiya's characters foreshadow their destiny. "Seiya" means "Star Arrow" (in reference to his signature "Pegasus Meteor Fist" attack.) "Shiryu" means "Violet Dragon" (and he becomes the Bronze Dragon Saint.) "Hyoga" means "Glacier" (his attacks revolve around freezing the opponent, and he trained in the North Pole.) "Ikki" and "Shun," brothers, mean "Gleam" and "Twinkle" respectively, reflecting not just their relationship but also the shine of the Phoenix's flame and of the Nebula Chain.
Miko and Matsuri's names in Kamichu mean "shrine maiden" and "festival" respectively
In the earlier issues of Marvel Adventures: Avengers, there was something of a naming theme going on in some of the issues. "Finding Zemo", "A Not-So-Beautiful Mind", "Attack of the Fifty Foot Girl"(complete with an obvious Homage on the cover to the poster), "The Avenging Seven", "From Russia With HATE", and probably a few more.
Dwarfish names in Discworld were loosely based on a mixture of Tolkien and Norse mythology, then turned up to eleven (Glod Glodsson, Snori Snoriscousin, Grabpot Thundergust, etc.) This has been toned down in recent books, possibly due to dwarfs becoming a more serious immigration metaphor.
- Some dwarfs are also named after emotions, as a Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs reference (Cheery Littlebottom). And the ones who invented the printing press in The Truth are all named after fonts.
Lost has a bunch of names derived from Jacob like Jack, James and of course Jacob himself. Also Benjamin was the son of the Biblical Jacob.
In House Of The Dead, the various boss monsters are named after Tarot cards of the Major Arcana. Some of these names fit the description of the zombie (Strength from House of the Dead 2 is a hulking giant armed with a chainsaw), others not so much (Chariot from the first game is an armored humanoid with a spear)
In killer7, the names of the three spirits Iwazaru, Mizaru, and Kikazaru in Japanese refer to the 'speak no evil', 'see no evil', and 'hear no evil' monkeys, respectively.
A number of bosses and NP Cs in Ogre Battle are named after stars or constellations. Deneb, Sirius, Canopus, the Gemini, Prochon (close to Procyon) and Kapella (close to Capella).
One character's name in Shanghai Youma Kikai is "Kuo". However, the kanji used can also mean "Kyubi," a nine-tailed fox demon of Japanese mythology. (They could also change to a human form.) Though not techincally conformed yet, it seems obvious that since everyone working at Demon Taoist Corperation (other than Su-An) is a demon, Kuo is a Kyubi demon. Main character, Jack, also has a Meaningful Name.
Another Dragonball example is Gohan and Videl's daughter, Pan. She's here because Toriyama had to find something that fit the theme naming of both sides of her family. "Pan" means "bread," which fits her dad's food-based theme. It's also the name of a satyr from Greek mythology that the appearance of the Christian devil was based on, which fits in with her mom's name being an anagram of "devil" and her maternal grandfather being Mr. Satan!
The Inlays in SSDD show multiple examples of theme naming, the different classes are named after chess pieces (pawns=infantry, rooks=tanks, etc.), one of the Kings was named Arthur and his knights were named Lancelot Galahad Bedevere and Tristan, and the name Inlay is derived from Inle.
ARIA... With a handful of exceptions, every character's first name starts with 'A'. Two of the exceptions are cats (three if Cait Sidhe is the character's name and not a description or title). The other two exceptions, their last names start with 'A' instead.
- Even the planet Mars has been renamed 'Aqua'.
Bamse has Skutt's siblings... All of which are named for swedish synonyms for "jumping" (he has A LOT OF THEM, beinga rabbit)
Who can forget the original Pokemon towns? Pallet Town, Pewter City, Viridian City, Cerulean, Vermillion, Celadon, Fuchsia, Saffron, Cinnabar... Running Pokemon Yellow in a Game Boy Color even tinted the screen the corresponding color!
The name of every protagonist character in the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise (as in, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Yu-Gi-Oh! GX and Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds) has the kanji '遊' (yuu), meaning 'fun'. Sort of counts as a title drop for Yuugi ("yuugiou" means 'king Yuugi').
The Quirky Miniboss Squad in Fresh Pretty Cure had its members named after three of the four cardinal directions: Eas (east), Wester (west), and Souler (south). This is also reflected in their civillian names: respectively, Setsuna Higashi, Hayato Nishi and Shun Minami. However, it is still unknown when will a member named after the remaining cardinal direction (by now called "Norther" by the fans) appear.
- Also, given that Setsuna/Eas will become the missing fourth member to the Pretty Cure team, Cure Passion, Toei might think of a new "east" member soon enough.