Okay, so you want to make a character on City of Heroes (or Villains, or Going Rogue...for the rest of this piece assume "City of Heroes" means the whole ball of wax), but you're having trouble with names. There's two reasons it can be hard to find a name, one little and one insanely huge...although both seem to cause equal hassle.

    The little reason is that the admins of City of Heroes play it more strictly than trademark law requires when it comes to names that are already in use with major publishers. Trademarks are limited to particular sectors of commerce, and generally require more than just a word. For instance, the archer Hawkeye™ at Marvel Comics® (okay, I'll stop that now, take trademarks and stuff as read from here on out) is trademarked. But to count as infringement, you have to be close enough that a reasonable consumer might be confused as to whether your creation is the same as Marvel's, and it has to be in some area where Marvel does business. You could probably sell a purple and blue car called the Hawkeye without getting sued. But certainly not a comic, nor a toy or game, as Marvel has recent releases in all those areas. If you created an Archery Blaster with a Mohican appearance and called him Hawkeye, you'd be ripping off James Fenimore Cooper, but you wouldn't be violating any active trademarks (Last of the Mohicans is public domain). However, if the admins see an Archery Blaster named Hawkeye they're likely to generic you just in case. Heck, if you make him an Axe Tanker based on Cooper's Hawkeye, you still might have trouble, since Hawkeye is a sufficiently high-profile name for Marvel that the admin might decide it's better safe than sorry.

    The big reason, of course, is that the playerbase is HUGE. All the obvious names like Paladin or Enforcer or Sidewinder are taken on every server. You might get lucky and snag one during a brief interval between the old one getting deleted and someone else trying it, but most of the good names are taken on all servers.

    The rest of this article concerns ways to get around the "namespace" problem. Some are good, some are bad, some depend on how you use them. I will also use examples from my own roster to illustrate the various methods.

• Aggressive Obscurity
• No Codename
• Job Title
• Synonym/Translation
• Name Mangle

    For instance, my Inv/SS Tanker "Enforcer 1003" is NOT a case of the "numerical suffix" trick explained below, picked after seeing that there were hundreds of Enforcers already. When I first came up with the character in the mid 1990s, he was Enforcer 1003 from the word go. Similarly, a lot of my characters come from my own (not very widely read) writing, so I can be pretty sure no one else would have thought of it (Acton Lord from my Legion of Net.Heroes stuff going back to 1992, Antiochus V from various things starting in the mid-90s, Rechtigkeit from Academy of Super-Heroes, Kopikat and Per Annum from Legion of Net.Heroes).

    Of course, the problem with this approach is that you might not be as creative as you think. I thought I was being so clever to call an Earth/Elec Dominator "TerraRize" only to find it was taken on every server already. (I first renamed him TerraRyze, then later Terra-Rize.)

    The main advantage of the "no codename" approach is that if the name you picked is taken, you probably don't have a lot of emotional investment in the specifics and can change it easily. Geoff Johnson already taken? Try Jeff Johnson, or Geoff Johannsen, or Carl Smith. It's something of a cheap way out, but if you don't want to bother with finding open namespace it turns the phone book into a random name generator you can use.

    Note, a "not codename" that happens to be some sort of pun really faces the same problems as codenames, because you've picked a specific name for a reason, and if you can't get it you're stuck. For instance, my first character was named Sharon Venturi as a mixed reference two 1980s Ms. Marvel Sharon Ventura and the rocket element "venturi", since the concept was for a flying scrapper. In the unlikely event the name was unavailable, I'd have had to try a different server or a new pun. Similarly, my Ice/Ice Tanker Penny Gunn is penguin themed, my Sonic/Mental Blaster Mike Sounders is a reference to Mic Sounders XIII from GaoGaiGar, and my Longsword/Willpower Scrapper Bertie Page is a mix of "male Betty Page" and Bertie Woostere. So, while not codenames, they Don't really get around the namespace problem other than by being obscure.

    Similarly, if the "not codename" is taken from a pre-existing character, you might have too much attachment to it to want to change it. For example, my Dark/Regen Scrapper Jimmy Nishimura is based on a Scion character I played a while back. I suppose if the name were taken on all the servers I could have tried Jim Nishimura, but my heart wouldn't have been in it.

    Yeah, it turns out I have no characters who are really in this category. All of the "real name" characters I have are acutally some sort of reference, and being unable to get the name would have messed up my plans.

    My first two Arachnos were named Operative Brubaker and Operative O'Hara, so I followed the convention there. But, as with the "No Codename" characters of mine, they're actually references (Brubaker to a government agent I wrote in my SuperGuy stories, O'Hara to Mig O'Hara aka Spider-Man 2099). Even Doctor Dave is supposed to be me, so I couldn't really have named him Doctor Steve. I guess I've just managed to get a lot of mileage out of Aggressive Obscurity.

    Related to this, you can always translate your codename into another language, or pick a codename that's not in English to start with and translate it back into English. For instance, when I made a Kekko Kamen homage, I simply named her Splendid Mask (one way to translate "Kekko Kamen" into English). My Optimus Prime homage is named Peaceseeker, a very loose translation of Orion Pax (one of the names Prime has had in fiction before being rebuilt into a leader). On the other hand, I've had a character named Rechtigkeit kicking around since college (I took a year of German in college). Just be sure that you know exactly what you're doing if translating a codename into another language, you may run afoul of idiomatic usage that wasn't covered in Japanese 101 or high school French. And certainly beware of asking a friend to translate for you, especially if they have a twisted sense of humor! Being informed that your L50 Warshade's name really translates to "I have a social disease" can be...bad.

    One warning, regarding pretty much all of these methods. They may make it a little frustrating for people to send you tells or invite you to teams. Yes, it's possible to click on your name in chat or in person to send a tell or an invite, but a lot of players prefer doing things manually (i.e. /invite playername) and if you've used any of these tricks they might get annoyed as they waste time typing in what they thought your name was.

• Punctuation insertion: Put a period or a hyphen or (if you're feeling Rikti today) a colon into the name. Examples I've used include Terra-Rize (for TerraRize), Solar.Max (for Solar Max), Pala-Dyne (for Paladyne). The advantage of this is that it's still pretty clear what you were shooting for. The "period at the end" version is particularly subtle and susceptible to the mis-tell issue. Also, extreme examples of this like D.a.r.k.s.t.a.r. or . o O (Mind Master) can get stupid.
• Numerical Suffix: If you transfer a character to a server where the name is already taken, you'll get a number tacked on until you take the time to permanently change the name. For instance, when I moved my original TerraRyze to another server, he was suddenly TerraRyze1 and I had to rename him Terra-Rize. Sometimes people who use a numerical suffix will work the number into the concept, but often it's just a tacit admission that they can't be bothered to come up with a different name and they'd rather be ElfLord24 even knowing that there's a bunch of other ElfLord characters on the server. While I have some numerical names, though, they're all tied to the concept somehow rather than being a way to get around the name being used (Enforcer 1003 and AIM-9 explained above, I also have Woody 40 who's dressed like a can of WD-40).
• Letter Suffix: Similar to the numerical, although these are always taken on purpose rather than being the result of server transfer renames. X is a good letter to put at the end...if Swordmaster is taken, how about Swordmaster X? Mysteeeeerious! Again, I don't have any characters where I used this to get around the namespace, but I do have some letter suffix codenames for other reasons (Artemis A is a riff on Dianan D from Mazinger, Carnivore X is named after an as-yet-unnamed dinosaur). A sort of fusion between this and the numerical suffix has the trailing number spelled out as a word.
• Portmanteau: This is a term for words that are mashups of other words (not the same as a simple compound word like Nightstrike or Flametalon). Superhero/villain codenames often use these, like how I mixed "Paladin" with "dyne" (okay, it's a unit of force rather than energy, but my character wasn't a scientist and wouldn't know the difference) to get PalaDyne. Too bad someone else came up with the idea on multiple servers first. :) Similarly, my perky Warshade Nyxi mixes the goddess of night Nyx with the spritely nixie.
• Vowel Swap: The letter y is popular here...replace an e or an i with a y, for instance. I considered making Myrmidon into Murmidon or Myrmydon before changing his name entirely, but I generally don't care for simple vowel swaps, trying for a portmanteau at the least. There's a lot of vowel swaps out there, though, especially of vowels that are schwa'ed to begin with and won't sound any different with a new letter. At least this usually doesn't look like simple inability to spell.
• Intentional Misspelling: This is sometimes hard to distinguish from unintentional misspelling, and usually makes you look ignorant. It can sometimes be used effectively, though, especially if the misspelling is itself a reference to something else (i.e. my Skwirl Torch's spelling comes from how the writer of the webcomic "The Devil's Panties" spells squirrel) or if the character is clearly someone who can't spell (again, Skwirl Torch is a transformed squirrel and is pretty illiterate). I've been informed that some people take advantage of the sans serif font in the game to replace capital I with a lower case l or vice versa, to get around a claimed name. However, it's possible to change fonts, so you might end up looking stupid to anyone who isn't using the default font.
• Unintentional Misspelling: Okay, the player thought that "Infirno" was the correct spelling of "Inferno" and was surprised it wasn't taken yet. Alternately, the player's fingers slipped on the keyboard, but they didn't notice the error. If the mistake isn't pointed out very quickly, the player faces the choice of abandoning the leveling already done, paying for a name change, or just living with the typo.
• FR34KSP33K: Also known as L33T or B1FF, it's canonically used in the names of Freakshow Bosses. Full-on L33T isn't possible because some characters are reserved for command purposes, but there's still a lot of latitude for character replacement. If you're willing to look exceedingly stupid or are playing a character who's a current or former Freakshow, this method may be for you.
• Stupid Forum Tricks: Web boards devoted to specific properties also run into namespace issues, because everyone wants to be Optimus Prime on a Transformers board or WedgeAntilles on a Star Wars Board. In addition to the above tricks, board users who refuse to give up a name also wrap their names in (usually symmetric) strings of characters, often using a leading and trailing x or -. (The system will only let you have one non-alphanumeric character: . ? - ' and only one of them, so full stupid tricks are limited to the ones using letters.) You might see a -Defender running around the Rikti War Zone or xXx StarLord xXx hanging out in Pocket D. Some of these can get particularly baroque, not to mention broken, and they make it hard to /tell to the character manually.