Space Wizard
Uh... depends on the setting and/or circumstances?
Programming and surgery have a lot of things in common: Don't start removing colons until you know what you're doing.
TV Tropes' Sonic Wiki Curator
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
What Lock said applies to me, too. Context is necessary.
CONTEXT
OH THE CONTEXT
...
i.e. Context is mucho grande de important.
Was Aliroz the Confused
Single name.
If you want any of my avatars, just Pm me I'd truly appreciate any avatar of a reptile sleeping in a Nice Hat Read Elmer Kelton books
'80s TV Action Hero
Normal names, like a real person in the character's time and place would have.
edited 2nd Jul '12 10:12:49 AM by InverurieJones
'All he needs is for somebody to throw handgrenades at him for the rest of his life...'
Indecisive pumpkin
Yeah, it really depends... There were absolutely no named characters in The Little Prince, and I thought that was pretty cool. And in Avatar The Last Airbender and The Legend Of Korra, only upper-class families have last names, and that's pretty cool, too.
edited 2nd Jul '12 10:38:19 AM by Haldo
‽‽‽‽ ^These are interrobangs. Love them. Learn them. Use them.
Nemesis
I liked the inversion of that in Iain Banks' Against A Dark Background; number of names is inversely proportional to social class. There are so few in the Great Houses that only one name is required to tell them apart, and besides, everybody knows who they are. A street urchin may have five names, because there's a lot like him.
A brighter future for a darker age.
You'll never see it coming.
Like others said above, it's a case-by-case basis.
"Oh no, Sanji's Chronic Simprosis!" - Kou The Mad
Uniocular
Yep. Context is le importante.
"It's so hard to be humble, knowing how great I am."
Definitely Not A Swarm Of Bees
Exactly. Context is everything.
If you are not very careful, your possessions will posses you
If I'm roleplaying, I try to refer to my characters by their last names frequently so that people don't forget that they exist- e.g. "McKickass leaps out of the water, grabs the sailboat by its mast, and smashes it against the pier like a hammer" instead of "Fergey jumps..."
Of course, this requires a non-lame latter nomen.
edited 5th Jul '12 12:08:06 AM by Muramasan13
Smile for me!
'80s TV Action Hero
Huh. I do that in real life. All my friends are 'Mr. X' or just 'X'.
Force of habit.
Is that cake frosting?
I like unusual naming schemes in fiction. For example, I think that Banks' The Culture series has problems; but the way in which Culture names work is pretty cool.
edited 5th Jul '12 12:42:26 AM by Carciofus
But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.
Which do you prefer more for characters?
Yep, I'm still here.