Meaningful Name, Named After Somebody Famous, Shout-Out: Interrelation

What's the relationship between Meaningful Name, Named After Somebody Famous, and Shout-Out?

Should examples of Named After Somebody Famous in Meaningful Name's example list(s) be excised if the name's meaning doesn't hold any inherent significance to the character or plot?

And would a character whose name (or part of which) is a Shout-Out to another character count as an example of Meaningful Name? Case in point: Yu Gi Oh GX has Asuka Tenjoin and Rei Saotome (the latter is a Sweet Polly Oliver, BTW, alluding to her namesake being an actual Gender Bender via magical transformation curse). ^note Of notable significance is that the two characters switch around the respective signature colors of the Evangelion characters that they are named after — Yugioh!Asuka is blue vs. NGE!Asuka's red, and Yugioh!Rei is red vs. NGE!Rei's blue. Also, where NGE!Asuka is excitable and NGE!Rei is calm-headed, it's reversed for Yugioh!Asuka and Yugioh!Rei.

edited 9th Aug '12 1:24:50 AM by MarqFJA

Those tropes can overlap but they are not the same thing.

Named After Somebody Famous is exactly that: a character named after a famous person, like Albert Einstein. It need have no other meaning.

Meaningful Name is when the name reflects something about the character within the story, like how Neo in The Matrix is an anagram of "One".

Shout-Out is when something in a work is a direct reference to another work, without necessarily having any significance to the plot.

Any or all of these could notionally be present in any given name.

So, in the Yu Gi Oh GX example I pointed out above, Asuka and Rei would qualify as a Subverted Trope case of Meaningful Name since they switch around which character they are a Shout-Out-type Expy of when it comes to general personality and color scheme?

And I suppose then that any entry in Meaningful Name's example subpages where the only "meaning" in a character's name is that they're Named After Somebody Famous (that is, there's no relation between the namesake and the character's personality, actions, abilities, etc.), whether or not it's a case of Theme Naming, should be excised as a non-example and transplanted to Named After Somebody Famous?

edited 10th Aug '12 12:03:57 AM by MarqFJA

I'm not sure that I would classify those Yu-Gi-Oh examples as Meaningful Name as much as I would a Shout-Out. It's not like their names are directly symbolic of their personalities; it would only mean something to someone who had seen NGE.

As for your second question, yes, those would not be an example of Meaningful Name.

edited 10th Aug '12 7:12:13 AM by Fighteer

Ah. So, if a character is Named After Somebody Famous, and they're clearly an Expy of that famous person (e.g. Nina Einstein; she even invents her Alternate History world's first WMD, a Fantastic Nuke), they would be an example of Meaningful Name?

Say, does Named After Somebody Famous cover being named after world-famous fictional characters, like Sherlock Holmes?

edited 10th Aug '12 11:06:53 AM by MarqFJA

To your first question, that is correct. To your second, I would say so, although I feel like we might have that as a distinct trope. Nothing comes immediately to mind, though.

edited 10th Aug '12 11:07:41 AM by Fighteer

I'll see if I could make a YKTTW draft for the second later (though I wish I could get some worthwhile feedback on the dozen-plus ones that I already have, and which have been floating in limbo for months if not nearly a year).

No she doesn't, much like real world history, Code Geass features the presence of chemical weapons first. Presumably biologicals since they're an easy step as well.

Okay, correction: She invents her Alt-Hist world's first nuke, like how real-life Einstein was the ultimate reason the Manhattan Project was started in the US, and thus the reason why WW 2 ended with two A-bombs on Japanese soil.

It's close enough for Hollywood History, anyway. The point is the intention, not the precise facts.

edited 10th Aug '12 11:42:56 AM by Fighteer

Can the Meaningful Name trope apply to objects as well?

Because you know the Daylight Vaccine from Resident Evil Outbreak?

It was named that because as it's creator said: "You don't need an Umbrella in the Daylight"

edited 28th May '17 2:58:06 AM by draph91

Before this got locked because of necrobump:

Yes, it can apply to anything that has a name.