Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

Naming your guild is a funny thing. You want it to stand out in some way, but, at the same time, you don't want to give it such a weird or offensive name that people are embarrassed to walk around with it above their heads. It can be an agonizing decision. I remember back in the days before my officers and I founded our guild, we exchanged dozens of messages trying to find the perfect name. So I can sympathize with the author of this week's e-mail, who discovered that her carefully chosen name had also been chosen by another guild with some eerily similar characteristics.

Hello, Scott.

I don't know if I have a conundrum, a mystery, or a coincidence. I find it kinda funny more than anything else, but wonder if I should feel some concern or do something about it--

More than a month ago, I split off from a friendly, pretty well-knit social guild to form my own of same. I had decent ideas about the sort of people I wanted together, and still have aims of trying to build a Kara team (I follow the casual raiding articles religiously). We're still very small, but we're out there, and we have a pretty notable guild name. It was also the only guild of that name across all servers -- I checked the Armory at that time.

Just last night I happened to be trawling the armory, looking up some friends and their gear, and, of course, popped in my own guild name. Much to my surprise, I see a brand new guild (~10 members) on another Normal server with the same name, cross-factioned. Further, their guild tabard is nearly identical (save for a slightly different border; the colors and image are same), and their GL is the same class as I am, a Blood Elf to my Human.

Okay, so technically Waaagh! is a Warhammer Online blog, but we'll forgive Syp this time, if only because S/he writes a pretty good article about choosing your character's name. The first part of it is, to me at least, good common sense. Don't choose a name you'll regret or a name that looks overly bad to other people. Naming after real life celebrities can get a bit tired. Naming your character "something naughty" is probably just going to make most people think you haven't cleared puberty yet. And yeah, it might be funny to call your character Rickroll NOW, but when Rickrolling is the next "All Your Base", everyone on the internet is going to point and laugh at you for being old and busted.

The second part has some excellent ways to comb for new names, some of which many veterans already know, but it's a good compilation, and gave me a few ideas for my next name search. I can confirm to anyone who doubts it that Syp's Rule of Three really is true. I have known only 1 or 2 people who have been able to avoid having their name reduced to a 3 or 4 letter nickname that is used almost constantly in place of the whole thing. You can't avoid it, so sometimes it's not that bad to go with the flow and plan your name around it. Same thing with the similar names across characters thing. It works pretty well, if you like the idea, but woe to you if you accidentally take someone's naming scheme and join their guild or group of friends!

If you're having trouble thinking of a new name, or plan to roll a character at some point in the future, give the article a read. It's pretty keen.

WoW is a phenomenon that extends beyond the virtual world and into our everyday lives. An excellent example of this is Bunnypasta's recent forum post. She asked players for suggestions of WoW-related names for her as-yet unborn bundle of joy.

This isn't the first time I have heard of something like this. In fact, one of my former guildies recently had a child, and gave the little girl the middle name of his best-friend's character. Now I'm not sure that carrying around the name of a rogue will influence her personality, come to think of it.

Ippy on LJ has been thinking names of late. He asked for people to tell him how they came up with the names for their characters. Coming up with a character name is always a challenge for me. It's not that I don't have ideas, it's just that for the most part, when I start a new alt, they are a blank slate on that character selection screen, and I find it hard to pigeon-hole someone I barely know with a name that might only allow them to play a certain way or take certain talents.

As it turns out, there are all kinds of places that players get their names, from mythology to foreign languages to household pets. I currently tend to use two different types of naming conventions. I have those boring character names I have been toting from game to game with me over the years, and I have the "I should so name a druid Roflmeow" inspiration moments. Yes, I can be silly too on occasion.

In any case, I extend this question to you, the reader. Where do you glean your inspiration for naming your characters? Or are you the brave type to choose names from the randomizer and have done with?

Character names in World of Warcraft are very personal, even if you started out trying to be nonchalant. For some players, their character names are the only handle they will ever be known by with their Azerothian friends. I for one am about 75% certain that I would answer to my main's nickname "IRL".

For many, this naming decision, which used to be permanent, and now is potentially too changeable, is a way to express one's interests outside of gaming. Although staying within the boundaries of Blizzard's naming policy requires some extra creativity, the effort is worth it in the end. Mythological figures is a very popular choice, and our very own Elizabeth Wachowski chooses medical terminology when naming her toons. Amanda Rivera has varying logic behind her character names, although by times she takes inspiration from her own works as a writer.

Names can work to bring characters with similar, even obscure, interests together in WoW. Any of you who have ever encountered a character and done a double take, realizing that their name is some obscure 18th Century poet or minor figure in Romanian history, will be able to identify with Jeremy Bruno of The Voltage Gate.

Jeremy has recently become quite interested in WoW characters named after an organism's genus name. He has begun to feature such characters, along with photographic representations of the actual organism and tidbits of interesting facts. As he points out, these organisms are important enough to people to name their characters, which they might have for years, after them; and he wants to help honor them. If you have such a toon, shoot him a message, because he's accepting reader submissions. We're all interested to see what types of animals, bacteria, plants, and fungi will turn up on our realms.

Do you have a theme or an interest that is reflected in the names of your characters? Have you ever stumbled across a character with such an obscure name that you were taken aback?

Last night over guild chat the subject of naming our characters arose. Someone asked exactly how we chose our character names. It's a pretty personal question, at least it is for me. Being a writer pretty much all my life, my player character names are mostly names from my writing. There are also those characters that have been created out of jokes, or as representations of their jobs like Donations. I've built character names out of thin air as well, mostly because I love character creation beyond all other things. Most of my characters' names are fantasy in nature since being a fantasy writer I tend to be a stickler on that sort of thing. But some of my characters have looser based names. My priest is named Mandie, for obvious reasons. My paladin I've called Vashlyra, which is a combination of my dogs' names. I once even had a gnome rogue named Runnt.

Perhaps that is part of why I love creating new characters so much. I get to give them a name, and infuse them with personality and back story. Every new character is a chance to rewrite the story, and each name is so important to me. But I am just one player in millions. I know my guild mates choose names differently. We have one player whose characters are all named variations of the same word. We have another who picks all his names from the random name generator. And yes, we are a guild populated mostly by alts, if you must know, so there are plenty of characters to name.

On the other hand, I have seen many, many names that I cannot stand. I have actually found a correlation between horrible players and those who named their characters by picking a cool word they like and tacking on the letter X at the end (CipherX, you know who you are.) On our server I have run into Linksys, Pallyman and my personal favorite Ooitsahamster. I have even seen some I cannot believe haven't been reported. Now while I am more of a name snob, I can see why people choose to have fun with their character's names. What I cannot see is playing a character with a ridiculous name until 70.

How do you choose your character names? Is it something tied to characters you have always played, or do you close your eyes and hit 'random?' What makes you connect with a name, or do you have no connection to it at all?

Players on each realm are required to have unique character names -- which can be an annoyance if you didn't create on the day the realm opened. Whenever a new realm is launched, common and popular names are quickly used up, and at some point naming becomes an annoyance. (Even more of an annoyance when people attempt to take a name they want by inserting special characters -- I've yet to figure out how to invite some of them to groups.) For my part, my most often played characters are "Lizzy" (uncreative, I know, but I created soon after the realm launched and grabbed it), "Blush" (which seemed to me the perfect name for an undead rogue), "Raawr" (a druid, and the only spelling I could find that worked), and "Coraline" (a book character whose name never seems to be taken).

So what's your character name -- and how did you pick it? Do you have some uncommon standbys that are usually free? Do you abuse the random name generator until you find something you like? Do you just hit random keys on your keyboard?