Basic Trope: Someone is named after a disease.
- Straight: A character is named "Malaria".
- Exaggerated: A character is named "Malaria Syphilis-Rabies Poliomyelitis".
- Downplayed:
- Alice's initials happen to spell out "AIDS" (Alice Isabella Denise Smith).
- A character is named "Alexia", which some people will recognize as the medical term for loss of the ability to read.
- A character's name happens to resemble the name of a disease in a foreign language.
- Justified:
- Malaria's parents were idiots who heard the word "malaria" and thought it sounded nice, so they named her that without bothering to check what it meant.
- Malaria's parents Aerith and Bob come from a culture with a tradition for naming people after diseases.
- Malaria is the Anthropomorphic Personification of the disease itself.
- Inverted:
- A character is named "Penicillin".
- Alice names a disease after herself.
- Subverted: "Malaria" turns out to be a nickname.
- Double Subverted: Her actual name is "Syphilis".
- Parodied:
- Several characters are named after diseases whose names don't sound like people's names at all. This leads to names like "Common Cold" and "Black Plague".
- A character's Overly Long Name is just a Long List of random diseases that ends with "Common Cold".
- Zig-Zagged: Malaria and Cancer were named after the diseases of the same names, but Hepatitis was named after his uncle — and he was named after the disease.
- Averted: No one is named after diseases.
- Enforced: "Malaria" is a parody name — they couldn't use the original character's name for legal reasons.
- Lampshaded: "Your name's 'Malaria'? What were your parents thinking?!"
- Invoked:
- Malaria's Abusive Parents intentionally named her after a disease to emphasize how little they think of her.
- Mary, who enjoys offending people, changes her name to Malaria.
- Exploited: Malaria touts her name when she wants to make herself sound more dangerous than she is.
- Defied:
- Malaria changes her name.
- Aerith and Bob try to name their daughter "Malaria", but there's a naming law in place that forbids parents from giving children embarrassing or offensive names. They have to name her "Mary" instead.
- Discussed: "I don't know ... I think 'Alexia' sounds nice, but I've heard that it's a medical term for something..."
- Conversed: "That's the most morbid way to name kids I've ever seen. Just provided nobody tries to follow this show's lead, I can handle it..."
- Played for Laughs: Malaria Smith changes her name ... to Malaria Jones.
- Played for Drama: Malaria is bullied because of her name.
- Played for Horror: After years of being shunned and bullied for her name, Malaria gets the power to spread malaria and decides to embrace it.
Back to Diseased Name.
