Named Weapons and "I Call it Vera"

I think we need to sort through the differences between these two tropes.

The way I have always seen Named Weapons used is when a weapon is given a formal name. It is often treated as a character in its own right, might be an Ancestral Weapon, and if it is passed on to a new person, they will use the name. Even if the weapon is never passed on, there's a weight to the name, and you tell someone else would use the same name if it was passed on.

I Call It "Vera" was, I thought, supposed to be for nicknames. The psychopath names the knife in his boot "Jimmy," but if anyone else uses the knife it's just a knife. Maybe they'll call it Jimmy if they need to humor the psychopath, but it's not a huge, formal name. It's just a nickname.

Now I'm seeing a bunch of famous Named Weapons examples being deleted because "we have no proof that the entire culture practices this." Part of the problem seems to be that I Call It "Vera" has the line "Compare Named Weapons (in which this is the practice of a whole culture)." Which seems ripe for misinterpretation.

I wouldn't be opposed to a merge, but I don't think we need to go that far on this.

I don't know if there needs to be any "cultural habit" for Named Weapons to apply. (And please revert that guy's edit.)

I Call It "Vera" is a personally named weapon, and tend to have human names. As for Named Weapons, there are ways I've seen this being used:

• the name comes from a legend.
• The weapon is formally christened (usually by the forger, with or without some witness) after it's finished forging.
• The work itself gives it a name, i.e where the name came from is never addressed. Many video games do this.

I don't know what's exactly uniting them, but if I were to guess, they're "as much of a character as actual people in the work".

E.g Avtomat Kalashnikova 47 is Named Weapons. If someone decides to call his AK-47 "Katarina", that's I Call It "Vera".

Named Weapons I don't think is necessarily cultural, but it differs from I Call It "Vera" in that the item in question has a recognized title (possibly etched on to it) rather than a sentimental nickname. There might be a tradition of giving the primary cannon on a battleship an acknowledged name by the crew, even if it's not recognized in any paperwork other than it's serial number. A official name applied to a specific manufacturing line is not the trope at all (it's like calling a Mustang a Mustang), while external nicknames to a specific manufacturing line is probably a different idea as well (ie a 1968 Mustang is called the Bullitt Mustang, even if it wasn't used for filming the movie).

Edited by KJMackley on Oct 7th 2019 at 8:26:52 AM

Is the image on Named Weapons an example of the trope?

It's not a good image otherwise, basically Just a Face and a Caption.

Edited by KJMackley on Oct 8th 2019 at 3:19:55 AM

The bit on the I Call It "Vera" page was added six years ago, and most of the deletions I've noticed are pretty old too. Part of the reason I started this thread instead of just bringing it to discussion was because they're too old to really argue about specifically.

Anyway, I Call It "Vera" already has Nicknamed Weapon as a redirect, but even then it's hard to tell where the line is. Battleship cannons are a good example of a Nicknamed Weapon that a lot of people use; it's a casual, informal thing, not intended to be written down in the history books and passed down. But we can't say that the name needs to be etched into the weapon, because sometimes not even the most important weapons have that, while in some cases it's common practice to etch in the model name that no one cares about.

This feels like it should be easy. Formal versus informal. But I'm having trouble thinking of formal examples that no one will disagree with short of the most blatantly obvious like Excalibur.

The distinction is fairly straightforward in principle. As I said before, Named Weapons (the plural trope name makes me twitch, but whatever) is about a weapon whose identity is well-known throughout a culture or other large group. I Call It "Vera" is about assigning a personalized name to a weapon that is meaningful only to one person or to a very small group. Now, sometimes those personal names become memetic and widespread, and thus "Vera" can get promoted to a named weapon over time.

Nicknaming the main guns on a battleship is I Call It "Vera". Excalibur is a named weapon. The titular swords in Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn are named weapons. Many characters in that book also have personal weapons that they have named, which go under I Call It "Vera".

Glamdring in The Lord of the Rings is a named weapon because its reputation as an orc-killer is known throughout Middle-Earth. Sting is "Vera", because its name is only really known to Bilbo and Frodo.

Another way of looking at it is whether a knowledgeable person looking at a weapon would know its name and history. If so, it's a named weapon. Glamdring, Orcrist, and Sting are all weapons of ancient Gondolin, retrieved from a troll hoard by Thorin's company, but when Elrond looks at them, he recognizes only the first two. Sting is a dagger or "toy", not considered suitable as a main weapon, and thus not bestowed with a name by its makers. Bilbo only names it after using it to kill a giant spider.

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 8th 2019 at 12:13:03 PM

Most of the examples get massively murky at different points. If other people start calling it by the name or it gets engraved into the weapon.

For example to counterpoint your example.... in the Lot R movies it was engraved with "Maegnas aen estar nin dagnir in yngyl im" which translates to "Sting is my name; I am the spider's bane".

In the case where an adaptation changes the trope, just make note that it's one trope in the book and another in the film; we do it all the time.

That does open the question, though: does Bilbo have the inscription put on after he names it Sting, or was it forged in Gondolin with those runes, which makes little sense in context unless they had a big problem with evil spider infestations.

The thing about "everyone starts calling it by its name" isn't really all that murky. That's the very definition of a "Vera" being promoted to a named weapon. The fuzziness comes in when you look at where exactly the dividing line is, but are there really that many works where it's unclear?

"That's Lisa's mace; she calls it Blitzkrieg," is different from, "Lisa is wielding the famed mace, Blitzkrieg." A named weapon should be recognized by its own distinct identity separate from whoever is using it.

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 8th 2019 at 12:40:41 PM

Named Weapons are that cause someone named them nickname or whatever, it became their name.

Now if ya wanna make the distinction to be Unique Custom Weapon With A Name vs Generic Weapon With A Name that could work but I don't think that is an extremely big distinction.

The question would remain though if Sting was unique or not as it was found in the Troll-hoard next to Glamdring and Orcrist and the only one directly stated to glow blue when near orcs.

Edited by Memers on Oct 8th 2019 at 10:11:43 AM

"Named Weapons are that cause someone named them nickname or whatever, it became their name."

That is factually incorrect. Named Weapons are famous. I Call It "Vera" is personal. That is how the tropes are defined. If you want to argue for common usage, that isn't going to fly very far.

I wonder where this would stand, though: in Devil May Cry 3, many of the Devil Arms are named after the demon that Dante acquired it from, or more like, the demons he defeated transform into those Devil Arms.

(To compare: Kalina Ann from the same game is I Call It "Vera")

I don't really think that qualifies for either. I suppose that if weapon and demon are metaphysically the same thing and have been recognized as such (by someone other than Dante), then it could work. "Skrillax has been known through the ages as a fearsome tomahawk, and it has even been seen to transform into a horrid demonic creature that thrums with deep bass harmonics..."

If they are uniquely crafted weapons given a distinctive name and have one-of-a-kind value, then they might. I Call It "Vera" tend to be special or modified, but named for sentimental value.

I'm still struggling to come up with specific examples, but I'm thinking maybe the problem is a missing supertrope. There are more weapons that have names than just "formal" and "informal." That's a very blurry binary; some informal names sound formal, some formal names were informal but they caught on, so on so forth.

So here's my idea (which I literally thought of two minutes ago, so it probably needs some kinks worked out): Legendarily Named Weapon is for when the weapon gets a formal, awesome introduction. "This is Andûril, Flame of the West, reforged from the shards of Narsil." I Call It "Vera" is when the weapon is just nicknamed. "This is my friend Bessie. Bessie has been helping me with the zombies." Then the supertrope would be Named Weapons, which would cover stuff like the Devil Arms or Warframe's weapons, where everything has a name but the story doesn't really stop to explain exactly how important these names are. Maybe the Devil Arms are legendary weapons and centuries in the future they will still be called the same formal names... but right now, we don't know, they're just names.

The reason I feel like a supertrope is needed is because I feel like we're trying a bit too hard to establish a difference between the two tropes that doesn't necessarily exist. Authors don't really think "I'm gonna give this weapon a name, should it be informal or formal?" They just think "I'm gonna give this weapon a name, how can I find a way to mention it in-universe without it being awkward?" This is also why video games have a lot of instances of weapons with names, because they can easily just put a unique name on the equipment screen with a short description, and never have it mentioned outside that.

Giving a weapon a name is kind of chairs-y, though. It needs a narrative purpose, and I Call It "Vera" is very different thematically from "This is Glamdring, the Foe-Hammer."

Naming a personal weapon shows various aspects of characterization and is really about the character. It shows that the character always uses the weapon, has trained with it for so long that they consider it an aspect of themselves, has a great deal of emotional investment in it, is obsessive about naming things, etc.

A "legendary" named weapon, on the other hand, is about the weapon. Sure, the character wielding it matters, but the important part is that the weapon itself is recognized, renowned, has some sort of memetic fame for its own sake.

I don't disagree that the title of Named Weapons is kind of bad. First, it's a plural (and we hate those), but it's also too broad. I could see Named Weapon as a supertrope with I Call It "Vera" and, say, Legendary Weapon as subtropes. This would require TRS action.

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 9th 2019 at 12:02:29 PM

I don't think giving a weapon a name is chairs, though I can see how it could look that way. Names are super important, but we're so used to characters having them that we have a bunch of tropes for when a character doesn't have a name (No Name Given, The Nameless, Nominal Importance). Weapons are the opposite; they normally don't have names, so giving it a name means something.

Let me give an example that doesn't quite fit under either of the current definitions: Every single weapon in Warframe is named. Not industrial names like Ak-47 but unique names like Kraken and Pyrana. The message the game is sending is clear: "These weapons are unique, you can't treat the Gorgon machine gun and the Soma machine gun as the same thing with slightly different stats." But whether they count as Legendary Weapons or I Call It "Vera" is impossible to say. A handful are definitely legendary, but a whole lot others are probably legendary, and there are even a few that you can name yourself which are definitely I Call It "Vera". But of course the example written for Warframe wouldn't list every single individual weapon, it would just be a general explanation of how names are used.

I think I'm in my rambling stage. I'm trying to hammer a few things out before taking this to TRS. Partly because I suck at TRS threads.

tl;dr: My vote is Named Weapons as a supertrope, Legendary Weapon, Legendary Weapon Introduction, and I Call It "Vera" as subtropes.

Edited by Discar on Oct 9th 2019 at 9:38:09 AM

Weapons are not normally named, sure, but for Video Games (particularly those you can equip), they have to have names, if only for the sake of identifying the weapon.

What should we do about that? Would Named Weapons count cases like that? How would the trope be played with?

I think the real issue is that I don't see much difference between naming a weapon vs. naming a tool or vehicle. Indeed, a number of examples are not weapons. Any sort of clean up should reflect that.

And like I mentioned earlier, most everything has some sort of name. Calling a Mustang a Mustang is not this trope, and names or nicknames given to weapons by the game's inventory is not the trope, it should be an Infinity +1 Sword or Infinity -1 Sword with notable lore attached to it.

"Things have names" is the very definition of People Sit on Chairs, but there is a clear difference between a flaming longsword +1 and Flabagash's Flamberge of Flatulence. The problem with applying the trope in the latter case, especially to media like video and tabletop games, is that a given work may have hundreds or even thousands of such items, and listing each one is a recipe for insanity.

Even if you bring it down to "fabled weapon wielded by some really important character", it can get into the dozens or more.

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 9th 2019 at 8:44:08 AM

That's what I was saying about how obviously you wouldn't list every named weapon, you'd explain how they're named. I haven't played World of Warcraft in years, but I assume it still follows that pattern, where the vast majority of weapons are just "descriptive designation that is nothing but literal" and some are given real names. So in that case, the example would be something like:

• Named Weapons: Many quest chains grant weapons named after either the quest giver or the final boss of the chain, often with Punny Names such as Flabagash's Flamberge of Flatulence. Epic quests can even grant Legendary Weapons like Shadowmourne, an axe intended to mirror the Lich King's Frostmourne. And of course most boss-tier NPCs have their own named legendary weapons, such as Fordring's Ashbringer or Hellscream's Gorehowl. Sometimes these weapons eventually end up being available to players.

Like Meaningful Name, listing every single instance is generally frowned upon, so it's better to talk generally about how the trope is used.

Edited by Discar on Oct 10th 2019 at 7:32:21 AM

Yep, that's perfect.

To go along with the 'famous' aspect... 'Shadowmourne' the name existed before the weapon actually did and it wasn't exactly famous it took pieces of famous unique weapons to make one axe.

It was a custom build unique weapon with a name, that's what made it special.

In the same way Unique Ace Customs and Super Prototypes get names.

If its just a random uncustomized M-16 but someone calls it a name then it should be I Call It "Vera".

Seems like we're all on the same page here, so I started that TRS thread.

I wish I had realized that this would need a TRS thread from the start, because then this could have started as a TRS thread, but whatever.