History Main / CharacterNameLimits

* In the old days of MS-DOS, file names were limited to eight characters, plus a three-character extension. Like many other aspects of MS-DOS, these limits were inherited directly from CP/M. (CP/M was actually more generous in this regard than TOPS-10, a mainframe operating system that influenced it, which limited file names to only six characters.) Today there's still limits on file names and how long the file path can be, but it's impractical to run into these.

* In the old days of computing, file names were often limited to eight characters, plus an extension. Today there's still limits on file names and how long the file path can be, but it's impractical to run into these.

** In the first ''VideoGame/DragonQuestMonsters'' game you only had room for four letters, but the main character's default name was Terry. To solve this problem, the name entry screen starts with [[AC:Terry]] written in a completely different font than the rest of the game, and you can just play through the game with his name spelled like that. But it's not possible to spell "Terry" yourself if you erase it.

* In in the episode "The Name" from ''WesternAnimation/TheAmazingWorldOfGumball'' when Gumball beats a game of beating a monster in a arcade machine, he is prompted to write his three character limit name which it can be either "GUM" or "BAL". The Gumball's name resulted to be changed to "ZAC" from Zach. Near in the end of the episode, he expands the three character limit in the arcade game in order to change to his original name.

* In ''Webcomic/ElGoonishShive'', when Grace is playing ''VideoCame/ChronoTrigger'', she [[https://www.egscomics.com/egsnp/2015-06-19 tries to find a way of naming Robo "Toaster" within the five-character limit]] (rejecting "Toast" because "he's not ''bread''!"). After rejecting all options because they look more like "Taster" or "Tester", [[https://www.egscomics.com/egsnp/2015-06-22 she names him "Bread"]].

* Parodied in ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'' with the name of [[http://mspaintadventures.wikia.com/wiki/File:Kind_Abstrata.png "kind abstracta"]] (weapon proficiencies) which are limited to 8 characters + "kind", leading to "fncysntakind" if you wield a [[http://mspaintadventures.wikia.com/wiki/Fancy_Santa fancy Santa]] as a bludgeon.

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'', the Four Fiends take their names from ''The Divine Comedy'': Scarmiglione, Cagnazzo, Barbariccia and Rubicante; these became "Milon," "Kainazzo," "Valvalis" and "Rubicant" in the original Super NES release and the [=PlayStation=] port. In the same releases, the summons Leviathan and Bahamut appear in the menu as Levia and Baham. In addition, due to the six-character limit on party member names, Gilbart was renamed Edward. On the status screen, a ten-character limit caused Kain's class to be changed from "DragonKnight" to "Dragoon," which has stuck as TheArtifact for other spear-using knights in the series.

* Wiki/TvTropes itself has a 64 characters limit for page names, not including spaces or punctuation that would be included in custom titles. This is due to the underlying software being limited in this way. Any attempt to create a page with a name longer than that will just fail outright.

* ''VideoGame/YuGiOhDarkDuelStories'' for Game Boy Color has an eight-character limit for all card names and the rest is cut. So, "The Unhappy Maiden" is written as "The Unha", and so on.

* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess'' allowed the player to name Link's horse, whose default name was Epona. Of course, the amount of characters that could be used was limited. It turned out that the Wii version of the game had a flaw that allowed a hacked save file to use a name longer than the allowed name length. This led to the infamous "Twilight Hack", which used a hacked save file where the namespace for Epona was instead filled with a ''program'' that was loaded and executed when the game loaded the save file, allowing the installation of unauthorized software. This led to a revolution in Wii homebrewing.

* ''VideoGame/PersonaQShadowOfTheLabyrinth'' has six characters for the main character you choose to use. While this fits the canon names of the characters (Makoto for ''VideoGame/Persona3'' and Yu for ''VideoGame/Persona4''), it's still tiny for a 3DS game.

* ''VideoGame/LittleKingStory'': The titular protagonist's name is limited to 7 characters.

* The ''VideoGame/PrincessMaker'' series: 8 characters for the family name of the protagonist and the daughter's name:
** In ''VideoGame/PrincessMakerRefine''
** ''VideoGame/PrincessMaker3''
** The daughter's name is limited to 8 characters.

* Wiki/TvTropes itself has a character limit for page names, 64 character, not including spaces or punctuation that would be included in custom titles. This is due to the underlying software being limited in this way.

** ''VideoGame/ChronoCross'' has a six letter limit instead. A few of the LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters had a DubNameChange for it (Mamacha to Macha, Marcella to Marcy, Lucky Dan to Mojo, Spriggan to Sprigg).

* In the early days of programming, variable and function names had to be limited to a small number of letters to keep symbol tables small and easy to manage. Many compilers would allow longer names to be written but simply ignore all characters past the limit. For a long time, the most widely recognized limit was six letters, since several popular mainframe computer architectures of the 1950s and 1960s used 36-bit words and 6-bit characters. Extremely early versions of UNIX had a five-letter limit because they used 7-bit ASCII characters; "creat" seems to be a legacy of this. (The official explanation is that Ken Thompson simply disliked typing extra letters, which did also have obvious drawbacks on the 110 baud connections common at the time. By the time UNIX first started to become popular, the limit had been increased to seven or eight letters, depending on which language you were using, but command names were limited to six letters for some reason.) Also, some languages limited each statement or command to a single line and lines were limited to 80 characters or shorter. This required people to come up with creative, short names for their variables, subroutines, etc. One major exception was COBOL, whose grammar was designed from the start to resemble natural English as much as possible and allowed identifiers of more than 20 characters even in very early versions, though many programmers abhorred its verbosity. While line limits are a thing of the past and modern programming language standards require compilers to accept and distinguish names containing a substantial number of letters, it's preferable to keep names as short as possible because a really long name can be annoying to read and cumbersome to type.

* In the early days of programming, variable and function names had to be limited to a small number of letters to keep symbol tables small and easy to manage. Many compilers would allow longer names to be written but simply ignore all characters past the limit. For a long time, the most widely recognized limit was six letters, since several popular mainframe computer architectures of the 1950s and 1960s used 36-bit words and 6-bit characters. Extremely early versions of UNIX had a five-letter limit because they used 7-bit ASCII characters; "creat" seems to be a legacy of this. (The official explanation is that Ken Thompson simply disliked typing extra letters, which did also have obvious drawbacks on the 110 baud connections common at the time. By the time UNIX first started to become popular, the limit had been increased to seven or eight letters, depending on which language you were using, but command names were limited to six letters for some reason.) Also, some languages limited each statement or command to a single line and lines were limited to 80 characters or shorter. This required people to come up with creative, short names for their variables, subroutines, etc. While line limits are a thing of the past and modern programming language standards require compilers to accept and distinguish names containing a substantial number of letters, it's preferable to keep names as short as possible because a really long name can be annoying to read and cumbersome to type.

* In the early days of programming, variable and function names had to be limited to a small number of letters to keep symbol tables small and easy to manage. Many compilers would allow longer names to be written but simply ignore all characters past the limit. For a long time, the most widely recognized limit was six letters, since several popular mainframe computer architectures of the 1950s and 1960s used 36-bit words and 6-bit characters. Extremely early versions of UNIX had a five-letter limit because they used 7-bit ASCII characters; "creat" is a blatant legacy of this. (By the time UNIX first started to become popular, the limit had been increased to six letters, which is reflected in some command names.) Also, some languages limited each statement or command to a single line and lines were limited to 80 characters or shorter. This required people to come up with creative, short names for their variables, subroutines, etc. While line limits are a thing of the past and modern programming language standards require compilers to accept and distinguish names containing a substantial number of letters, it's preferable to keep names as short as possible because a really long name can be annoying to read.

* In the early days of programming, variable and function names had to be limited to a small number of letters to keep symbol tables small and easy to manage. Many compilers would allow longer names to be written but simply ignore all characters past the limit. For a long time, the normal limit was six letters, since several popular early mainframe computers used 36-bit words and 6-bit characters. The earliest versions of UNIX had a five-letter limit because they used 7-bit ASCII characters; "creat" is the most blatant legacy of this. Also, some languages limited each statement or command to a single line and lines were limited to 80 characters or shorter. This required people to come up with creative, short names for their variables, subroutines, etc. While line limits are a thing of the past and modern programming language standards require compilers to accept and distinguish names containing a substantial number of letters, it's preferable to keep names as short as possible because a really long name can be annoying to read.

* In the early days of programming, a lot of languages limited each statement or command to a single line and lines were limited to 40 or 80 characters. This required people to come up with creative, short names for their variables, subroutines, etc. While line limits are a thing of the past, it's preferable to keep names as short as possible because a really long name can be annoying to read.

* In the old days of computing, file names were often limited to eight characters, plus an extension.

* ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'' has the protagonist named "Crono" as there's a limit to five letters to character names. Item names are limited to ten letters, e.g. "[=SilverErng=]" (Silver Earring).

* ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'' has the protagonist named "Crono" as there's a limit to five letters to character names.

* This trope is enforced in UsefulNotes/{{horse racing}}. Thoroughbreds and Standardbreds (the latter used in harness racing) can have no more than 18 characters in their registered names, at least in English-speaking countries. This count ''includes spaces and punctuation''. The US allows apostrophes in names, but the UK doesn't. American Quarter Horses can have 20 characters, again including spaces, but punctuation marks are not allowed. For example, "Unbridled's Song" is a legitimate Thoroughbred name in the US (and was used for a successful, though not all-time great, American horse), but would not be allowed for a UK Thoroughbred or a quarter horse. There are other restrictions that we won't go into here.

** For human characters, the name limit was seven until ''Pokemon X and Y'', where it was increased to eight.

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'', the Four Fiends take their names from ''The Divine Comedy'': Scarmiglione, Cagnazzo, Barbariccia and Rubicante; these became "Milon," "Kainazzo," "Valvalis" and "Rubicant" in the original Super NES release and the Playstation port. In the same releases, the summons Leviathan and Bahamut appear in the menu as Levia and Baham. In addition, due to the six-character limit on party member names, Gilbart was renamed Edward. On the status screen, a ten-character limit caused Kain's class to be changed from "DragonKnight" to "Dragoon," which has stuck as TheArtifact for other spear-using knights in the series.

* In ''VideoGame/SuperMarioRPG'', the mini-boss Belome creates clones of party members which are called "X Clone," except for Princess Toadstool (now known as Peach), whose clone is called "Toadstool 2."

* ''VideoGame/PersonaQ'' has six characters for the main character you choose to use. While this fits the canon names of the characters (Makoto for ''VideoGame/Persona3'' and Yu for ''VideoGame/Persona4''), it's still tiny for a 3DS game.