Noun Verber

So, you're a Filmmaker. You're sitting down with a Scriptwriter between the Watercooler and the Coffeemaker, trying to decide on a name for your epic story about a guy who verbs nouns. Yeah, he verbs them till they're adjectives. Wait, that's it! He's the Noun Verber!

This isn't a very popular trope for the actual titles of movies or TV shows, but it's an old standby for fantasy and science fiction authors who need a name that sounds detached from the real world and yet is immediately understandable. For some reason, a very common verb for this is "stalk." The most common noun is probably "death."

Of course this construction is extremely common in Real Life too. Firefighter, cab-driver, wine-maker, ironmonger, car dealer, Ambulance Chaser, ditch-digger, lion-tamer, news-reader, coal-miner, watchmaker, computer programmer, bartender, gas-fitter, dishwasher, childminder, wine-taster, greengrocer, snack-dispenser, bricklayer, dressmaker, chess-player, piano-tuner etc. etc.

Compare Luke Nounverber (when the same principle is applied to character names), Verber Creature (the same principle applied to how a species is called) and The Noun Who Verbed. Adjective Noun Fred could be considered the intersection of this trope and Protagonist Title. See also We Will Use WikiWords in the Future. A common part of a Verbal Business Card.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Airmaster
• Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba
• Devil Hunter Yohko
• Speed Grapher
• Speed Racer
• Soul Eater.
• The SoulTaker.
• Night Walker.
• Many characters in the Scryed universe are Alter Users. Guess what they do.
• Fairy Tail has Dragon Slayers and their offshoots, God Slayers and Devil/Demon Slayers.
• Princess Lover!
• Vampire Hunter D
• Witch Hunter Robin

Comic Books

• Hero and villain names often follow this trope, with such names being almost as common as Something Person. Also, once upon a time, Captain America's comic was subtitled "Commie Smasher".
• Marvel supervillain Death Stalker.
• Hellblazer: Doesn't explicitly blaze hells but should probably qualify for this trope.

Film — Live-Action

• Blade Runner. In fact they bought the rights for the term from Alan E. Nourse purely because it sounded so cool.
• Deathstalker Series
• Firestarter
• Who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters!
• The Horse Whisperer
• Nightcrawler
• Nightrider in Mad Max
• Moonraker.
• The Night Stalker
• The Onion Movie: Cockpuncher.
• Soultaker
• Super Troopers: Bear Fucker!? Do you require assistance?
• Trash Humpers
• Windtalkers
• Averted with Zoolander

Literature

• The Beast Player.
• The Death Eaters from Harry Potter.
• In the book The Gift, the Chosen One's title is Wind Tamer.
• Stormbreaker.
• Banewreaker and Godslayer by Jacqueline Carey.
• The Bladerunner by Alan. E. Nourse. Bladerunners smuggle medical supplies to Back Alley Doctors.
• David Gemmell's Druss the Legend is known as "Deathwalker" to his enemies. Well, one nation of his enemies.
• In the comic book tradition of doing this with super-person codenames, the Whateley Universe has one of its heroines named Bladedancer. Plus side characters like Shadowdancer.
• In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Arthur Dent is... The Sandwich Maker.
• The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
• In The Black Company series by Glen Cook, most of the original Ten Who Were Taken with the exception of the Limper and the Howler. (Stormbringer, Soulcatcher, Bonegnasher, Moonbiter...the list goes on. Most are Exactly What It Says on the Tin, too.)
• And another Deathstalker, just to prove a point.
• Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
• Firekeeper Saga
• The Shadowhunters from The Mortal Instruments and The Infernal Devices.
• Trollhunters
• The Cosmere:
  • Warbreaker has many of the Returned with names like this, such as Blushweaver, Lifeblesser, and the titular Warbreaker, although not all Returned have this type of name.
  • ''The Stormlight Archive:
    • Each of the ten Orders of the Knights Radiant identified by such an appellation. Only the Dustbringers have a problem with theirs, insisting on the euphemistic "Releasers" out of a feeling that their proper name is too close to the similar name of the forces of the setting's Big Bad: the Voidbringers.
    • Many Shardblades have been given a name of this type. We see examples such as Sunraiser, Loremaker, and of course, Oathbringer.
  • In Wax and Wayne, 300 years after the Catacendre, Feruchemy has been diluted in the population to the point that instead of all sixteen powers, a Feruchemist only has access to one each. Each type of Feruchemist has a name, four of which are this trope: Bloodmaker, Soulbearer, Windwhisperer, and Steelrunner.
• The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness: The main antagonists are a band of corrupted mages called the Soul Eaters, and The Hero is revealed to be a spirit walker. Also, four of the six books are titled this way.^note Spirit Walker, Soul Eater, Oath Breaker, Ghost Hunter
• The DC Comics "DC Icons" series of YA novels are all titled like this: Wonder Woman: Warbringer, Batman: Nightwalker, and Catwoman: Soulstealer.

Game Books

• A few installments of Fighting Fantasy uses this naming method, notably Star Strider, Spellbreaker, Moonrunner, Magehunter, Stormslayer and the spin-off adventure Dungeoneer.

Live-Action TV

• The Babylon 5 villain Deathwalker.
  • And don't forget the Soul Hunters.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• Community: Punch Kicker and his nemesis Kick Puncher.
• Doctor Who:
  • "The Time Meddler"
  • "The Myth Makers"
  • "The Gunfighters"
  • "The Mind Robber"
  • "The Sun Makers"
• Farscape appears to subvert this trope. The Peacekeepers are much more unnecessarily violent and cruel than peaceful, but the majority of them seem to believe they are doing what's right to protect the galaxy, even when they do more harm than good. In "The Peacekeeper Wars", it is revealed that a group of the shared ancestors of Humans and Sebaceans were taken from their homeworld by Eidelons, a group of very powerful negotiators who can influence rationality in others, and used to keep the peace after negotiations finished. Once the Eidelons disappeared, the Peacekeepers kept peace the only way they could, "at the barrel of a gun", indicating that originally, at least, the trope was played pretty straight.
• Ghost Hunters
• Ghost Whisperer
• Knight Rider
• Kolchak: The Night Stalker
• MythBusters
• Night Stalker
• Shadowhunters

Music

• Night Ranger.
• "Star Star", by The Rolling Stones fits this trope in its original form of "Starfucker"
• The Beatles: "Day Tripper"

Tabletop Games

• Magic: The Gathering is positively brimming with nounverbers, such as the famous Planeswalkers. Many of their nounverbers verb nouns with verbs that don't even make sense. How does one weave smoke? Or braid it? How does one grin gristle? Why would some elves who live in the wild want to slay it? What's so great about a creature who can see something six feet away? And who would ever want to buy spirits from a giant monster?
• Dungeons & Dragons also has its fair share of monsters that are nounverbers, most famously the Mind Flayer.
• Warhammer 40,000 has a few Chaos Legions that fit this trope - Word Bearers & World Eaters, for example.
  • As does the Imperium, such as the Blood Drinkers and Flesh Tearers. Yes, those are the good guys (relatively speaking, of course).
  • Many Chaos forces use the [noun/adjective]verber template:
    • Bloodthirsters and Bloodletters are the greater and lesser daemons of Khorne (Bloodletters riding Juggernauts, giant evil rhinos made of living metal, are called Bloodcrushers instead), while Blood Slaughterers are huge tick-like Walking Tanks. Earlier editions included siege weapons such as the Blood Reaper, Death Dealer, and Doom Blaster. If you're sensing a theme here, Khorne is empowered by the spilling of blood, from his faithful's enemies or themselves.
    • Chaos warmachines include the Forgefiend (giant robot centaur with guns instead of arms and head), Maulerfiend (melee version of the Forgefiend), and Heldrake (living metal dragon).
    • Nurglite forces can include Plaguebearers, Eyestingers, Spoilpox Scriveners, and Sloppity Bilepipers, and favor a huge scythe called a Manreaper.
  • The Tyranids have a Carnifex variant known as a Screamer-Killer.
  • The orks, being a straightforward lot, tend to give their troops, weapons and vehicles names that are as subtle as a choppa to the face: Tankbustaz are anti-armor specialists, the Lifta-Droppa lifts and drops a vehicle (preferably on its allies), the Deffrolla is a big spiky cement roller affixed to a battlewagon (itself a combination of tank, bunker and pickup truck), and then there's the wonderfully evocative Bonebreakaz, Braincrushaz, Bonecrunchaz, Gutrippaz, Spleenrippaz, Gobsmashaz, Lungburstaz, and other Bowelburnaz.
  • The Eldar, not to be outdone, have troops such as the Death Jester, Bonesinger, Spiritseer and Dark Reapers, and a class of weapons known as Deathspinners. The users of said weapons, however, are an aversion - at least until someone figures out what it means to be spiding the warp.

Video Games

• Darkstalkers
• World of Warcraft might be the number one addict of this trope. If you can make nounverbers and put two words together into a made-up compound word, congratulations, you're at least as good as the whole Blizzard creative team.
  • Somewhat justified by the theme-park nature of the game, in that the name you see may not be the "proper" name of the creature/person, but merely a description. For example the warlock pet called a "voidwalker". This is obviously a description of the creature given to it by warlocks who summon the creatures, as the voidwalkers themselves don't speak any intelligible language. Contrast with other warlock pets like the felguard (which is clearly a rank title). Occasionally though the game will be very annoying and not actually show the creature doing the thing they are named after.
  • When it's a name (like Kael'thas Sunstrider), it's clearly intended as a translation from a fantasy language. Not helping matters though, Blizzard never made these languages. Still it's a naming convention rather than this trope.
• Fate: There are many examples of these in its randonly-generated monster names. Each part of the names is picked at random from a list.
• Landstalker
• Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
• In the opening sequence of Interactive Fiction game Zork: The Undiscovered Underground (a prelude to Zork: Grand Inquisitor done in the style of golden-age Infocom), desperately trying to get out of a dangerous assignment, the player character rattles off the names of a half-dozen Noun Verbers better qualified for the job. He is cut off as he asks about "Kolchak the—"
• Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter.
• The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.
  • Note that this is due to the American translation. The original name of the game was "Kaze no Takuto" which translates to "Baton of Winds".
  • Not that 'Baton of Winds' is that dramatic of a title.
• The weapons in the Mega Man (Classic) series often follow this format, such as Air Shooter, Flash Stopper, Crash Bomber, Dust Crusher and Ice Slasher.
• In the Interactive Fiction game The Gostak, the darftunder tunds darfs.
• Street Fighter (wouldn't it be weird if they actually fought streets?)
• Road Fighter, which also doesn't involve fighting roads.
• Kart Fighter, which doesn't involve fighting karts but rather the characters of Super Mario Kart fighting.
• Dragon Fighter, which does involve fighting dragons.
• Power Blazer, the Japanese version of ''Power Blade.
• Road Blasters
• Bad Street Brawler
• Jewel Master
• Stick Hunter: Exciting Ice Hockey
• Dragonstomper
• Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver
• Loopmancer

Webcomics

• Cloudscratcher
• Lightbringer

Web Original

• TV Tropes:
  • Trope Namer
  • Noun Verber
  • Ambulance Chaser
  • Face Stealer
  • Emotion Eater

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender.
  • Also the nightmarish Koh the Face Stealer.
• Parodied in Home Movies, when Brendan does a fantasy movie where he plays the character "Landstander". Who stands on land.
• South Park: Bigger, longer & uncut has a song called "Uncle Fucker".
• Trollhunters

Real Life

• The U.S. Military has often utilized Code Talkers, Native American servicemen and women who use their native language in conjunction with code to create an unbreakable radio cypher. The most famous of these were the Navajo Code Talkers who served in the Pacific theater during World War II.
• Also for the U.S. military, the adoption of the term "warfighter" to refer to those soldiers who participate in combat (as opposed to Armchair Military, Desk Jockeys, etc.)
• Jon Stewart made a Letterman appearance where he claimed this was George Bush's favorite speech pattern. "I A B — I'm a B A-er. I make decisions — I'm a decision maker!"
• The slang term "motherfucker".
• There is a particularly venomous species of scorpion in the Middle East called, like several other things on this page a death stalker.

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