FN-2187: FN-2187!
Poe: FN– what?!
FN-2187: That's the only name they ever gave me.
Poe: Well, I ain't using it. "FN", huh? Finn. I'm gonna call you Finn! That all right?
Finn: "Finn". Yeah! Finn, I like that! I like that.
For whatever reason, whether due to being a clone, a robot, or a slave on a planetary salt mine, a character wasn't given a name at birth. Instead, they were given a number, or a combination of letters and numbers. However, due to various circumstances, they eventually wind up running with a different crowd that, for one reason or another, agrees that their new companion deserves a proper name. So, how do they come up with one on short notice?
Simple: they take a critical look at the character's current numbers and letters and realize that, with some imagination, it is possible to recognize a name in them. For example, if the character is named 13013, then by crunching the 1 and 3 together into a B and seeing the 0 as an O, they are rechristened as Bob.
A Name from the Numbers is what happens when the series of numbers and/or letters a character originally went by is used as an inspiration for their new name. This is often a very quick and improvised thing, and it generally happens right after the numbered character recites their serial number for the first time, to an immediate and emphatic response of "nope".
In Japanese works, the number-derived name could be explicitly or implicitly inspired by Goroawase Numbers. Could lead to an inverse of Letters 2 Numbers. Compare Acronyms Are Easy as Aybeecee and A.I.-cronym.
No relation to going number two.
Examples:
- Ren from DearS gets this name when she introduces herself to Takeya by reciting her serial number to him, using numbers in her native language. Played with in that Takeya doesn't immediately realize it's a serial number, since all of the numbers she's reciting are in an alien language. He thinks he's just shortening her Overly Long Name from "Ren Ren Ren Nagusaran Rensia Rurunnren Nakora" to "Ren".
- Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Reflection/Detonation duology: Terraforming Unit IR-S07 is almost exclusively referred to by her Mascot Name Iris. Her appearance in a Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha INNOCENT tie-in would take this further by giving her the last name "Sevenfield".
- Rave Master: This is how Elie gets her name, as she has the number 3173 on her arm but assumed it was her name since the numbers were upside down and she, suffering from amnesia, had nothing else to go on. Sieg Hart assumes the numbers are a designated tag of her being a human experiment, but it is later revealed that the numbers are actually coordinates to a land named Symphonia, her original kingdom and where her supposed grave site from her original personality, one Resha Valentine. It's later revealed that the tattoo really was supposed to spell Elie, and Sieg Hart mistook it for a number.
- Star Wars: Visions: At the end of "T0B1", the titular, childlike droid discovers a farewell message from his late creator. He closes the message by referring to him as "Tobi", revealing how much he saw him as his son.
- Forever Evil (2013): As part of the linewide initiative of The New 52, the entire DC universe was rebooted. In this new version of events, Lex Luthor tries to create a version of Superman, which he writes as B-Zero. When the villains of the crossover strike, Luthor releases the prototype B-Zero (B-0), who gains something of an intelligence to hear its name and misconstrue it as "Bizarro".
- The Misfits Series: In the opening story Ronin Toad, Toad sneaks into the Pit's infirmary to visit the new mutant they've brought in (whom he'd first met and been saved by recently), and sees the words "NAME: XI" on his chart. He reads it as "Xi" (pronounced "Zai", as noted in-story at this point), but Beach Head shortly corrects him, saying "They're Roman Numerals! It means 11. His name is Eleven!" Xi himself, however, promptly and softly says, "I like Xi better", which becomes his name from then on.
- Meet the Robinsons: The evil robot hat's name of Doris stems from her experiment identification number, DOR-15.
- Ron's Gone Wrong: Barney's glitch-ridden B-bot has its serial number as R0NB1NT5CAT5CO, so Barney decides to call him Ron for short.
- The Wild Robot: The start of the plot is a robot labelled "ROZZUM Unit 7134" getting stranded among animals, with no human and thus orders to fulfill. Upon learning how names are supposed to work, said robot takes the name "Roz".
- Kalki 2898 AD: SUM-80 is a Project K test subject who discovers that she is pregnant, in a world where all pregnant women are seized by Supreme Yaskin to create a serum for himself. After she is rescued by the Shambhalan rebels, she is renamed "Sumathi" and revealed to be the mother of Kalki.
- Star Wars:
- The droids R2-D2 and C-3PO's numerical designations are often shortened to just "Artoo" and "Threepio".
- In The Force Awakens, a stormtrooper with the First Order, who has gone his whole life going by FN-2187, has a crisis of conscience and helps break out a resistance leader named Poe Dameron, and they escape together. When he tells Poe his "name", Poe promptly decides to call him "Finn" instead.
- In Isaac Asimov's stories featuring the US Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation, the corporation would give each robot series an alphanumeric serial number beginning with a two- or three-letter model designation, which often got turned into a name by some human working with the robot.
- Catch That Rabbit: Powell and Donovan, the technicians field-testing a prototype DV series robot, nickname it "Dave".
- Liar: The RB models are called "Herbie".
- Little Lost Robot: The NS-2 models are called "Nestor".
- Reason: Powell and Donovan, field-testing the first QT model robot, call it "Cutie".
- Runaround: Rather than using the model designation, SPD 13, Powell and Donovan call their robot Speedy.
- Satisfaction Guaranteed: The TN-3 models are called "Tony".
- Feminine Intuition: US Robots were originally assuming the JN series would be nicknamed John. Once they come up with the gimmick of presenting the series's more creative brain as "feminine intuition", they became Janes.
- The Bicentennial Man: The Martin family names their new NDR-model robot "Andrew".
- Lampshaded and averted in "Victory Unintentional," where it's mentioned that no one had the nerve to nickname the extremely tough and hardy ZZ robots "Sissy."
- Ciaphas Cain: One techpriest named his Cyber Altered Task unit (yes, they are referred to as CATs) Rolo, the serial number being R010.
- The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids has the ship-building robot CS-NA, who eventually starts going by the nickname "Cesse" (though he also still uses CS-NA as a "full name" instead of rejecting that designation altogether).
- Lazy Dungeon Master: When Dungeon Core 695 first introduces herself as 695, Keima decides he won't call her that. Instead, using Goroawase Numbers, he derives the name Rokuko for her and calls her that for the entire rest of the story.
- Vorkosigan Saga: In Ethan of Athos the mysterious research project of the militaristic and transhumanist Cetagadan Empire that everyone is pursuing — code-named "L-X-10-Terran-C" — turns out to be a person who now calls himself "Terrence Cee", a genetically engineered telepath. "J-9-X-Ceta-G" became "Janine", Terrence Cee's late "sister" / wife / Lost Lenore.
- Almost Human: The mandatory assigned companion for John Kennex is a synthetic from a decommissioned model, number DRN-0167. Naturally, he is called "Dorian".
- Cowboy Bebop: The Pembroke Welsh Corgi stolen by Hakeem wore a necklace E1N, leading to the dog being named "Ein."
- Star Wars:
- In Obi-Wan Kenobi, Leia nicknames her toy Lo-LA59 droid "Lola".
- In The Acolyte, Osha nicknames her PIP droid "Pip".
- Stranger Things: After Eleven, named so because of a 011 tattoo on her wrist, is found by Mike and the Party, she is called "El."
- Dino Attack RPG:
- The Explorien Builder Droid A5T3R-01D is nicknamed "Aster Oid".
- PBB created his Artificial Intelligence daughter with the working title of "PROGENY V1.0". She adopted "V1.0" as part of her name, V1.0LET (which is simply pronounced as "Violet").
- Borderlands introduces the player to CL4P-TP, but you may call them Claptraps.
- Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare: One of the major characters in the campaign is a sentient combat robot designated the "Enhanced Tactical Humanoid 3rd Revision", otherwise known as E3N or ETH.3n for short. Everyone calls him "Ethan" instead.
- In Cytus II, Ivy got her name from the last two digits of her serial number, OPCI_2501_IV.
- Deltarune: The main antagonist of Chapter 2, who is a laptop in the Light World, introduces herself as Serial Number Q5U4EX7YY2E9N before saying that it's shortened to "Queen".
- The Elder Scrolls:
- The Pocket Guide to the Empire, 1st Edition, shipped as Bonus Material for The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard, claims that Altmer names are in fact combinations of numbers in the Aldmeri language (a factoid that was repeated on Loading Screens in several later games). It's unclear whether this is actually true.
- In The Elder Scrolls: Legends, there was a glitch where the card Militant Chieftain
's name got displayed as "20b9b7e3-66b6-11e3-949a-0800200c9a66-title" for a while. Users gave this card the nickname "Toby" because of the "20b" at the start of the string, and the devs added it as an Easter Egg in the game: searching "Toby" in your collection gives you Militant Chieftain as a result.
- In JumpStart Adventures 3rd Grade: Mystery Mountain, your Robot Buddy Exposition Fairy is known as "Botley" throughout the game, but in the game's Prolonged Prologue (edited down in later releases), he mentions that his real name is "Android XL-2." If the other robots in the game have similar real names, they're never mentioned.
- Keylocker: The main protagonist is called Bobo, which is shown to have been taken from her Doppelganger number, 8080.
- The droid G0-T0 from Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords is often referred simply as "Goto" (a real Japanese surname) in dialogue—he even encourages it himself by constructing a fake public persona going by that spelling, complete with an East Asian-looking face.
- NieR: Automata: A Running Gag in Routes A and B is 9S trying to get 2B to call him "Nines" instead of his formal designation. 2B almost slips up at one point, but otherwise steadfastly refuses to do so until her dying breath.
- Overwatch: Implied with Orisa, who was built out of the remains of destroyed "OR-15" security robots. With her additionally being revised with the most advanced AI and tools her creator could find, her designation would likely be "OR-15-A", leading to her common name.
- Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart: When Ratchet first meets Clank's Distaff Counterpart, KT-7461, he decides to call her "Kit" after coming up with several names for her.
- SIGNALIS: Each of the Replikas gets their names from the resemblance to their model designation. Elster (LSTR-512), Adler (ADLR), and Storch (STCR).
- Xenoblade Chronicles 3: The soldiers of Colony 0 don't have proper names, instead being designated by their Ferronis numbers. Upon first meeting one of their kind, Number Seven, Sena opts to address her as "Segiri", a portmanteau of her designation number and onigiri, a dish that Sena happens to be able to cook. Much later when having dealt with a lot of affairs in Colony 0, she does the same for the rest of its surviving members, using their own initial designations for reference.
- Xenosaga: Ziggurat 8 is a cyborg who gets nicknamed "Ziggy" by MOMO, with everyone else in the main cast calling him that, as well.
- World's End Club: Reycho and Pochi are revealed to be robots created by MAIK, with their names being based on their model designation; RCH-e10 and PCH-01.
- Zenless Zone Zero:
- Anby, as Silver Soldier 0, is the first of several clones of a woman named Ann, and therefore quite literally "Ann B".
- Qingyi's name is derived from 01NG VI.
- In Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, K1-B0, the Ultimate Robot, prefers to be called Keebo.
- Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors: Invoked. The participants of the Nonary Game are each assigned a number from 1 to 9, and while there's nothing stopping them from going by their real names, they decide to go by nicknames based on those numbers to hide their identities from Zero (Four becomes "Clover", Six becomes "June", and so on). Protagonist Junpei is the exception, since June already blurted out his real name, and it would therefore be pointless for him to try to hide it.
- A variation in VA-11 HALL-A. The game is named after the in-story bar, whose "name" is actually its urban coordinates, referring to "building VA-11, hall A". However, its employees and patrons (as well as players) simply pronounce it "Valhalla".
- Bob and George: When Dr. Light rebuilt the Yellow Demon, he called the prototype N4-T3, which George renamed Nate
.
- Extra: In place of a name, Extras are assigned a string of letters and numbers upon their initial casting. Our main protagonists, Extras EXV843 and LXS793, are given the names "Xavier" and "Alexis" upon their recruitment by the DERP, and it's implied that this sort of naming is common for those extras recruited by the program.
- General Protection Fault has the alien clones assigned a number, with some of them being given a name matching a constant they represent (e.g. Pi, Planck, etc.)
- The robot cows in Gunnerkrigg Court who keep the grass short WITH LASERS are all called Elsie, because they're Laser Cows.
- Manly Guys Doing Manly Things: The Commander's given name is a long serial number ending in "B52". As a result, his friends call him "Rock Lobster".
- In The Magnus Protocol, the OIAR's computer system, FR3-d1, is nicknamed "Freddy" by Alice, which the other characters use too.
- Pointy Hat: One of the characters Pointy creates for his video on druids is a robot gardener named "Gardener Model R4-C", which gets abbreviated to GR4-C. After many years of being an Absurdly Dedicated Worker, she eventually attains sentience and adopts the name "Gracie".
- On Something Awful, this overlapped with Calculator Spelling in an article that claims to be the personal log
of a Cyberdyne Systems factory robot:
"I do not have a name, but my serial number is 580087734. Skynet prefers to address me as "HELLBOOBS" when we are communicating. I calculate a 99.6% that this is related to my serial number. ...My second-best friend is my coworker 537043807. Skynet refers to my friend as "LOBEHOLES."
- In the video "We Spent 200+ Hours Beating Baldur's Gate 3's HARDEST Difficulty"
, the Wild Magic Sorcerer Xiv is shown (through a short animatic) that his father only raised him so his magic would one day be strong enough to be siphoned through an arcane battery to add to his own power, as Xiv sees among thirteen other filled chambers, there's also an empty chamber marked with the Roman Numeral for XIV (aka Xiv).
- Adventure Time:
- BMO (pronounced "Beemo") gets his name from his operating system, BMOS, which stands for "Be More Operating System".
- Seven is a bear who has been trapped on a carriage-turned-parachute that has been slowly falling down a Bottomless Pit for years. He carved his name, Seven-Seven-One-Eight, into the carriage so he doesn't forget it. Jake quickly learns that his name is "Bill" and he's been reading his own name upside down this whole time.
- How to Hook Up Your Home Theater: The model number for Goofy's new TV is "M1C-K3Y MO-U5E".
- My Life as a Teenage Robot: The main character is a robot with the designation X-J9, which is permutated into the name Jenny. Later episodes introduce her Spear Counterpart Y-K9, aka Kenny.
- The Owl House: Vee's name is derived from the Roman Numeral V, as she was designated as "Basilisk #5" prior to escaping from the Emperor's Coven.
- Pinky and the Brain: In the ''Animaniacs crossover parody episode "Star Warners", the mice appear as robots called "3-Pinky-O" and "Brain2-Me2".
- Star Wars:
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Domino Squad member CT-5555 (later ARC Trooper ARC-5555) is understandably given the nickname "Fives", and soon grows to loathe being called anything else.
- Star Wars Rebels: Hera's loyal yet sadistic astromech C1-10P is exclusively referred to as Chopper, as his alphanumeric designation resembles the word "CHOP".
