Oh come ON!
My main character in WoW is a dwarf warrior. When I was creating the character, I decided that I wanted a unique name, but a name that was really a name. Since I knew that I wanted a dwarf character, I started out by looking into the mythological origins of dwarves. I’d expected to find that they were Celtic or Pictish in nature, since Hollywood seem to like giving them Scottish accents (I’m pointing at you, Peter Jackson!). Instead, I discovered that dwarves were primarily Scandinavian in origin.
Unnecessary random side note: The Vikings did have some influence on Celtic culture during the period of Scandinavian expansion, though I’m not sure how much. But it may help to explain the confusion to some extent. Scandinavian influence can actually still be seen in modern English, in the names we use for the days of the week. And now back to our programme …
So I decided to look into Scandinavian names. It turns out that behindthename.com has a section of ancient Scandinavian names. Which was rather convenient for me, since that was exactly what I was looking for.
So I found an ancient Scandinavian name meaning “Wanderer,” and I though that was appropriate, so that’s what I used. My dwarf became known as: “Stigandr.”
You’d think that was a unique choice, what with the research and aptness and antiquity and no vowel between the last two consonants and all. Or at least I’d think so. But we’d be wrong.
According to the Armory, there is a character named Stigandr on eighteen different servers as of today. Eighteen!
I’m all upset now.
Oh, also the Armory is pretty cool, which was what this post was supposed to be about until I got sidetracked by the name thing.
