Cannot Name Character During Character Creation

[MajorDisorder]

Greetings,
I am a first time DDO player and cannot name my character. Despite my various, and dare I say brilliantly creative naming efforts, I constantly receive "Name already taken". I have tried dozens of names and, unless I've unknowingly tapped into some manner of collective consciousness, cannot advance past this point. Any guidance or advice would be appreciated.

- Cheers!

[redspecter23]

Greetings,
I am a first time DDO player and cannot name my character. Despite my various, and dare I say brilliantly creative naming efforts, I constantly receive "Name already taken". I have tried dozens of names and, unless I've unknowingly tapped into some manner of collective consciousness, cannot advance past this point. Any guidance or advice would be appreciated.

- Cheers!

I feel your pain. I just recently tried naming a new character I made to test with on Lamania. Here's a list of names I tried that were stated to be already taken

TestElf
DemoElf
DemoElf2
DemoElf22
TestDemoElf2
NotTestDemoElf
NotElf
NotAnElfTwo

And this is the name I settled with
dlghasdghafsdghbkb

[Therigar]

Welcome to DDO.

One of the greatest faults is the inability to name your character a name that has already been used on the server where you play. It does not matter that in real life there are hundreds, thousands perhaps, with the same name and that we can tell them apart from one another. In DDO there can be only one.

And, it does not matter if that name belongs to a character that is actively played or that belongs to an active player. If anyone, at any time, ever logged in to your server and created a character with that name -- well, if that happened then the name is used and lost to the community forever.

This is a fixable problem but one that either is not recognized as a problem or that is too low on the priority list to merit developer effort. It essentially has to do with the way data is accessed by a key value. To keep things separate there has to be a unique key for every character. And, in DDO, that unique key is your character's first name.

This has been addressed multiple times on the forums with players routinely asking for a fix and for the release of names back to the player pool for characters that are archived but inactive. Yet, there has been no action and there is no indication that this will ever be fixed.

I suspect that this is because the database structure is so entrenched that changing the primary key is likely to break too many things. Still, every player is uniquely registered; every player has a specific (but expandable) number of character slots. It would have been easy to spoof that information as a resident address accessible to players for mail purposes and accessible by the game as a unique key to each character.

That did not happen and the result is what we have now.

So, welcome to DDO and good luck getting through the stream of consciousness that is the naming event at character creation.

[danotmano1998]

And this is the name I settled with
dlghasdghafsdghbkb

Darnit!

That was supposed to be MY name! Now I know who took it. Mister dlghas, you sir, are in big trouble.
:P


Yes, this can be a real issue, OP. Best of luck coming up with something NOT totally unintelligible.
If all else fails, just roll your face on the keyboard and hope for the best.

[Loromir]

.
If all else fails, just roll your face on the keyboard and hope for the best.

Got to say...this is the funniest thing I've heard all day.

[Tscheuss]

Greetings,
I am a first time DDO player and cannot name my character. Despite my various, and dare I say brilliantly creative naming efforts, I constantly receive "Name already taken". I have tried dozens of names and, unless I've unknowingly tapped into some manner of collective consciousness, cannot advance past this point. Any guidance or advice would be appreciated.

- Cheers!

What kinds of names have tried thus far? As far as tapping into a collective consciousness, you are not far wrong. You are trying to play DDO. Chances are that you have read the same books, watched the same movies, and played the same games as many others that have/are/will play DDO. That said, you probably have a lot of the same 'seeds' and 'fertilizer' for your choices of names.

Truth is, there are billions of good permutations available with twelve characters. Don't give up.

Try:

Decide how many characters you want in a name.

Draw scrabble tiles.

Try thinking in terms of syllables, and build from there.

Look up the meaning of a desired name, and then google a translation in another language.

Good luck.

[zwiebelring]

If you happen to NOT be a native English speaking person try mother language names/meanings. It works very well for me. if not, there are some PnP name generator tools out there.

But if you want to be a known fantasy character like Elminster it will fail. I name my toons mostly for the role/TR life they are built for which circumvents inventing fantastic unique names. Like 'Mercantus' in my sg. It is a Bard haggle toon.

[jalont]

Greetings,
I am a first time DDO player and cannot name my character. Despite my various, and dare I say brilliantly creative naming efforts, I constantly receive "Name already taken". I have tried dozens of names and, unless I've unknowingly tapped into some manner of collective consciousness, cannot advance past this point. Any guidance or advice would be appreciated.

- Cheers!

There seems to three ways people in DDO name their toons. Either one, they add some common word or misspelling to death, two, choose a random word as a name, or 3, come up with a fantasyish but original name. I would think the third option would be the easiest for you to try. There's billions of combinations of letters that form something that resembles a word that would make a great fantasy name.

[thouston]

i feel your pain, it seems all the good names are already taken.

this name generator may be helpful,

http://www.seventhsanctum.com/index-name.php

[Tscheuss]

i feel your pain, it seems all the good names are already taken.

this name generator may be helpful,

http://www.seventhsanctum.com/index-name.php

Nice link.

[Wanesa]

Greetings,
I am a first time DDO player and cannot name my character. Despite my various, and dare I say brilliantly creative naming efforts, I constantly receive "Name already taken". I have tried dozens of names and, unless I've unknowingly tapped into some manner of collective consciousness, cannot advance past this point. Any guidance or advice would be appreciated.

- Cheers!

Double any letter in your favorite name. For example, my rogue toon has the name: "Arankaa"

If doesn't help, try double two letters or triple the letter.

Use two worlds as single name. My bladeforged toon has the name: "Bladetooth"

Replace: Y -> I, I -> Y, W->V, V->W (Vanessa -> Wanesa).

However choose a name which is easy pronounceable by the speakers in the voice chat (and you will able to detect that they are talking about you)

[HarryDDO]

1hr now trying to pick a name....lol and you devs want me to sub......your mmo won't let me pass the name screen terrible start so far.

[C-Dog]

But you were able to resurrect a 6 year old thread, so your necromancy is spot on!

Seriously, tho', some names are just popular, and most every variation on them was thought of long ago. Gotta either get really creative in your spelling, add a bit more to the name (e.g. ConanTBarbar), or just accept you are not the first (nor anything remotely near), give it up and go a diff direction.

o http://www.20000-names.com/

(If you think it's a bug, create a throw-away character (just random stats/feats/skills), type something truly gibberish - literally roll your face on the screen - then once you've shown that you can name one, delete it, and go back and do it for reals. GL.

[TraversityI0I]

Welcome to DDO

And what you have encountered is perhaps one of the most frustrating things in the game, personally I have not had much trouble in naming my characters - though currently it only stands at 28 of them.

A tip to naming a character is try slight adjustments to the spelling

Example

The name 'Crystal' will likely to taken so adjust slightly like 'Krystael' or 'Krystel' - the spelling may not be accurate - but it is a name and the sound of it might be close to what you want.

Further one can find all sorts of names - try the Bible [no I am not pumping advertisement for the book], it has a great section for names which can be modified.

So try translators on like English to Quenya

Example

I want the name Darkfire - but this is already taken - in Quenya it comes up as More Nar - this might not be taken, and the translation means Dark Fire...

There are plenty of sources

Just be patient

Have fun

[Mindos]

I'm Not Sure (get it? Name joke!), but I seem to remember that titles are not allowed, at least in regards to Arti' pets. I tried naming my dog Kingmoo, but couldn't. This might or might not apply to char names as well?

[Hobgoblin]

I'm Not Sure (get it? Name joke!), but I seem to remember that titles are not allowed, at least in regards to Arti' pets. I tried naming my dog Kingmoo, but couldn't. This might or might not apply to char names as well?

it shouldwork..... named my dog kingslayer.....

[Melkazar]

After running into the same problem I finally heaved a sigh of relief and pulled an old actress out of obscurity.

Thus the rogue Merleoberon. Emboldened I then created Mischaauer.

Oh and there is a bard named Olivianewton Cher out there as well.

It is tough but try some different spellings and combinations. Remember, only the first name counts in DDO.

Good luck, see you soon, Bettedaviz. (See if that one is taken.)

[Micki]

Hi.

The most common way I see people solve this is is to add an additional character to the name you're trying to name your character. I have a char I wanted to name Evilynn. The name was taken, so I added an extra -n to the name, and she's named Evilynnn.