Good Boye Guild Name Reveal, part 2! (Patreon)

Happy Monday, patrons! After weeks of sorting through thousands of comments, narrowing down the name selection, and gathering your votes, I proudly present the names of the remaining DnD class characters!

You can view the names in the album above, but if you'd like to dive into voting breakdown and reasoning behind certain names, read on.

NARROWING THE SELECTION

Thankfully I had the foresight to take notes on names throughout the day after posting a new character post. It made gathering names and narrowing the selection much easier than the round of character naming. Below are the lists of top names that really stood out to me or were very popular suggestions. I tried to gather a few suggestions from each site (Tapas, Tumblr, Twitter, Patreon, Facebook, and Instagram).

From there I had the tough task of narrowing names. I tried to keep in mind a few things:

The personality of the dog

The originality of the name (aka lack of reference to another character/IP or troll and joke entries)

How the names would 'fit' together as a group (didn't want all the names to accidentally start with the same letter or all be names of food, etc)

That magic 'spark' (basically if the name really stood out to me for whatever reason)

I tried to narrow suggestions to about 20-30 names, but toward the end of the naming week I think people were getting a bit fatigued and I noticed a dip in suggestions. Makes sense, it was a long week!

I finally managed to pick the five name options for each character:

As always, I also set aside name suggestions that I thought would work for last names depending on the poll results. Here's the list of names I set aside:

Now let's do a deeper dive into voting breakdown and decisions behind each character's name!

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THE RANGER

I was rather fond of all these names, as I've known dogs named Scout and Radar in the past, and one of my DnD character's name was Pip. Archer made it into the selection by sheer number of times it was suggested. In the end, I'm happy Scout was selected!

I chose "Fletchear" as the last name because many of the dogs' last names included a trait about themselves and a dog body part. (Daggertooth, Sparktail, Holypaws, etc). Plus, Fletchear is very close to fletcher. Felt like a no-brainer!

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THE PALADIN

The Paladin had one of the most straightforward poll results of the batch. There weren't any names that I was secretly rooting for since I felt all options would fit the Paladin well. In the end, I think "Percy" was the best choice because it has a goody-two-shoes feel to it.  

It took me the longest to decide the last name for Percy. "Goldhart" and "Goodheart" were name suggestions I set aside. I liked a lot of the last name choices, but since I feel the Paladin is very much like a Golden Retriever, I decided to really up the goodness factor to include the last name and a title.

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THE FIGHTER

Now, it may have been obvious by the two Spanish name choices I included, but for some reason I really really wanted the Fighter dog to have a Spanish name. I think the idea stuck in my head when reading through the name suggestions. I was also a particular fan of the name "Zorro" but didn't include it in the top five names because of the reference.

There weren't as many name suggestions that I liked for the last name, so in the end, I stuck with my formula of cute name + dog body part to come up with "Rowdysnout". I think this combined with Maverick for the first name really paints a picture of the Fighter character as a rambunctious hellion.

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THE MONK

This was the only name where I ran into some roadblocks. I was getting a lot of really cute names which on their own were adorable names for dogs, however, combined with the class of monk, there were just certain stereotypes and connotations that made me uncomfortable. I ended up running a bunch of initial names by a few of my friends who confirmed that they could lead to issues. In the end, I tried to narrow the selection down to very vague 'spiritual' types of names or generic words translated to Latin. In particular, I was fond of "Manu" as it had a mystic ring to it and is also part of my last name's (MacKay clan) family motto "Manu Forti".

With "Manu" winning the vote for first name, I felt a monk character would not have or mention a last name, so the monk is simply "Manu"

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THE SORCERER

The Sorcerer had the largest disparity in votes, with the name "Jinx" demolishing the other choices. Not gonna lie, I was rooting for "Uno" since it sort of referenced Wild Magic, but it was thoroughly stomped into the ground haha. I think in the end Jinx is a better fit.

When combining "Jinx" with all the last name choices, I felt like none of them really stood out to me. They were all great choices, but it didn't have that special something when combined with the winning first name. Since I was also fond of the name "Cinder" as an option, and because it came in second place I decided to cobble together a last name with that choice. (cute name + animal part = last name)

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THE DRUID

The Druid had some cute heckin' names to sort through, and up until the last minute I was struggling to decide which characters to include in the top five choices. Once the final five names were selected, though, everything came together smoothly.

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THE WARLOCK

OF COURSE, YOU GUYS COULDN'T MAKE IT EASY FOR ME! No, there had to be a FOUR-WAY TIE between the names choices for the little Warlock. I'm massively impressed, not gonna lie. What this told me was the name choices were all in the same realm and feel and any would be a solid choice. In the end, I took the vote to Jane, who is also a patron, to be the tiebreaker. "Puff" was selected because of that vote, but also because it had a lead on the other names up until the very end of the polling session. When I referred to the character in my head, the name "Puff" really stuck more than the others, so "Puff" the warlock became!

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FINAL THOUGHTS

And with that, the naming of the original 12 DnD classes is complete! These characters will show up way less than the main Guild characters, but it's nice to have names for them all the same. Thank you so much to everyone for voting and submitting name suggestions for these good boyes!