The "What's a good name for this?" thread

@Nocturna and Jeweled Dragon, thanks I like those

What would be a good name for an evil corporation in a Dungeon Punk sci-fi type setting?

Dungeons 'R Us?

Depending on how subtle vs. obvious you want, you could always go Latinate. "Malus" means something along the lines of "evil" and sounds corporation-y.

What do they do/make?

'Malus' also means 'apple'. You could use that either as a dig at Apple, or as a way for your company to be all 'What? No, it means "apple"! Nothing evil about us!' Either way, that could actually be really funny.

Nah, too silly.

Hmm, that might work.

Short version, they're an energy company. Long version, they draw blood from the veins of a sleeping eldritch dragon god and sell it. It powers robots and airships and space stations and other things, and if a human drinks it, they can do magic-type thingies, but it wears off after a day or so, making professional wizards essentially drug addicts.

...Yeah.

edited 17th Feb '12 2:06:09 PM by thespacephantom

That's actually a remarkably apt metaphor for computing, making the name even more amusing.

I'm doing a comic about a Mafia Boss' son going to college and subsequently terrorizing fellow students with his rowing team as personal thugs (his father pushed him to go to the most expensive prestigious college in the country to blackmail or get chummy with rich people's kids) I can't decide on a title.

• Freshman Mafia
• College Boy Niccolo
• Totally Legitimate Rowing Team
• Completely Qualified (it is implied he has no actual academic skill or at least spends very little time studying and has just threatened people to get grades worth speaking of)

edited 17th Feb '12 9:22:55 PM by Kaxen

Wiseguy on Campus

The Rowing Don

I like Totally Legitimate Rowing Team.

I would suggest

School of Hard Knocks

I need a title for my story.

It's a slice of life story about romantic love and male friendship. Except all the characters are members of an intelligence agency.

I was thinking something like Eat, Spy, Love, but looking for some other options.

Spy VS Spy?

There's isn't any Spy Vs Spy in it, though.

Closest thing is three female spies on the town together, and two of them talk about the third's back, because the third is actually the mole.

That doesn't sound like Spy Vs Spy?

Ok umm, From [CENSORED], with love XOXO?

Just imagine the censored bit blacked out.

Well, yes. They could just as easily all be teachers, or IT specialists. The fact that they're spies is just dressing. It really is about love and friendship.

I kind of like Wiseguy on Campus. Though Niccolo is not a made man so calling him a wiseguy might be mildly incorrect, but I dunno if it's that big a deal.

Though Totally Legitimate Rowing Team, does Completely Legitimate Rowing Team sound any better?

I'd go with Completely. Totally does have unfortunately connotations of Valley Girl-ness. Plus Google returns about three times the results for Completely Legitimate Businessman compared to Totally Legitimate Businessman.

What is a good name for a type of dog/wolf that is a bright cyan color with ice on its paws that cause it to slide around and move faster than usual without tiring itself out? Note that I'm looking for a name of species, not a name for one specific animal of its kind.

Sleet Collie?

Well thanks to Moffat and the bloody detective of his, I need a new name for a completely legitimate chinese-american "business" organisation.

Ok, to anyone who hasn't seen the Sherlock episode "The Blind Banker" I basically need to replace The Black Lotus Society as a name for a chinese-american Tong.

edited 20th Feb '12 5:16:48 PM by AtomJames

I can't think of a name for a war that sounds badass enough. It's the first war between airplane pilots and dragon riders and the rise of military machinery in the story universe in which it takes place.

I'm at:

• Sky War
• War of the Clouds

The Storm War?

Sky war sounds good. It's realistic (well, you know, considering).

When picking a name for something it's a good idea to consider how that name came to be. A war in a 'verse without mass media will likely be named by the people, and the name will propagate by word of mouth. So a simple name is likelier to catch on than a big, badass-sounding metaphor.

Names for wars and other historical events and periods are often coined by academics long after the fact and applied retroactively. People at the time will often just refer to "the war" or "the war in [place where it's being fought]". Sometimes a catchy name will get coined by a newspaper or something like that, and then it will take off, so you could think in terms of what a journalist might come up with.

I'd advise against making it something too Obviously Evil unless you're going for parody. Nobody wants to buy their energy from We Murder Puppies, Inc. A real evil corporation is going to choose an innocuous sounding name like the East India Company, United Fruit, Dow Chemical or Chevron.

If you pick something ordinary-sounding, maybe pertaining to energy or the name of the founder, not only will that sound more convincing and won't immediately give the game away, it will also, somewhat paradoxically, be creepier, since it creates a 1984-esque dissonance.