Basic Trope: A pair of Love Interests shares a Theme Naming.
- Straight: In Troper Tales, a man named Adam falls in love with a woman named Eve, and marries her at the end.
- Exaggerated:
- Every single couple that gets together in Troper Tales follows a Theme Naming. In addition to Adam and Eve, there's Rowan and Willow, Orion and Lyra, Lime and Tea, Clarence and Darcy, Jenny and Kenny, Eric Edwards and Eileen Eckhart, and so on.
- Adam has several potential love interests and all of them are somehow named after Biblical characters—Eve, Sarah, Rebekah, Ruth, and Leah.
- Downplayed:
- Adam and Eve has some mild Ship Tease but never ends up together.
- Alternatively, the connection between the couple's names are not as immediately obvious, e.g. Adam getting together with someone named Deborah (another Biblical character, but who is not directly connected to Adam).
- Justified: Both Adam and Eve comes from a society/culture that puts a high value in names, and an individual's appellation is carefully chosen by their parents and/or elders to reflect their core values and identity. As such, a couple with compatible/similar names are likely to be compatible in other, more important, aspects of life as well.
- Subverted:
- Adam and Eve's relationship are Mistaken for Romance, but they are actually brother and sister.
- Adam and Eve are a pair of YouTubers who use fake names as a part of their show.
- Double Subverted:
- Then they find out that they are Not Blood Siblings, and become a couple.
- The couple's real names are Scarlett and Jett.
- Parodied: A would-be couple are introduced and, upon realizing their similar names, both parties immediately declare the other as their One True Love, share a Big Damn Kiss, and gets married on the spot, despite their obvious lack of compatibility in everything else.
- Zig-Zagged: Adam and Eve starts courting, but later discover that they are siblings. Adam thinks it doesn't matter and wants to continue the relationship, but Eve is squicked out and moves away. Later, both siblings gets new love interests: Eve gets a boyfriend named Noah, which still follows the same Theme Naming pattern, but Adam's new girlfriend Cheryl breaks from the convention.
- Averted: The couple's name don't follow any particular naming convention.
- Enforced:
- The author is fond of Theme Naming and Meaningful Names in general, and applies the trope whenever possible.
- The author isn't good at writing romance, and only hooked up the main characters only due to Executive Meddling. They gave the characters matching names as the sole "proof" of their compatibility to conceal their lack of chemistry.
- The author is too lazy to come up with unique names and uses a pattern to make things easier.
- Lampshaded: "Your girlfriend's name is actually Eve? What a strange coincidence!"
- Invoked:
- Adam's interest in Eve purely stems from the idea that their names match, which he thinks is neat.
- "Eve" is really just short for Evelyn, but she calls herself Eve because it matches with Adam's name.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: Adam takes notice of a pretty girl in his class, but loses interest the moment he finds out that her name is Eve, because a couple named "Adam and Eve" just sounds lame.
- Discussed:Bob: Adam and his latest girlfriend seems to get along really well. Look at them, being all Sickeningly Sweethearts again.
Charles: Well, of course. They're perfect together. They even have matching names.
- Deconstructed: Continuing off of the societal culture in Justified, some parents start to put their children in Arranged Marriages in an attempt to ensure the couple is compatible to one another. Some children grow to hate the societal norm because they're expected to end up with someone with a matching name to themselves, and/or dislike the person they're betrothed to because they have little/nothing in common other than their names.
- Reconstructed:
- One of both parties of the arranged marriage gives a Child Marriage Veto, and the parents respect their children's decisions enough to break it off. The children go on to fall in love with other people, who may or may not have the same naming theme as themselves, à la Zig-Zagged.
- Both of the parties who are betrothed hate this societal norm and bond over that, gradually starting to get along and/or fall in love with each other. This results in a Perfectly Arranged Marriage.
- Played for Laughs: Two people with the same name fall in love with each other. People around them are confused about who does what in the relationship when they hear stories of the couple. Bonus points if it's a same-gender couple.
- Played for Drama: Adam abuses Eve throughout the relationship, but Eve refuses to break up with him due to her believing their name compatibility means it will all work out in the end.
Back to Couple Theme Naming.
