Giver of Lame Names

"There's a goblin in my clan named 'Stop the Ceremony I Swallowed a Bug.' Yeah, our teller really sucks at naming ceremonies."

— Piss Off I Have a Headache ("Hava" for short), Goblins

Someone who can't think of good names for things. The names are too long, don't fit the thing(s), utterly uncreative and merely state the painfully obvious about said thing(s), or are just plain weird.

Now this isn't how you feel about the names (this is an objective trope). It's about the story making it clear that the character chooses bad or weird names.

We would go for a truly awful title to make it self demonstrating, but this trope usually has the description of the thing stated in the show, just to make it clear how awful the name is.

And this is just about characters, not any work/trope title you don't like. We will nuke any such entries.

Can sometimes overlap with The Nicknamer (if characters find the nickname terrible).

A Super-Trope to Atrocious Alias (giving oneself a lame non de plume), Lousy Alternate Titles (a Just for Fun page where we apply this to tropes).

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In-Universe Examples Only

Anime & Manga

• Comedy manga Agravity Boys has an entire chapter about how the four astronaut main characters are unable to come up with a decent name for the landing site of the new planet they crashed into. Everyone seems to want to boost their ego by put their own name in it.
• Renge from Air Master. She has a tendency to give ridiculously bad names for Maki's signature moves, before one of the other girls interrupt her with a better name. They routinely joke that she has "No naming-sense".
• Aoharu × Machinegun has three characters with this trait: Tachibana Hotaru, Matsuoka Masamune and Midori Nagamasa. Each of them give their partner weapon or survival game team strange names. For example, Hotaru named her gun, A G3 SS High Cycle, "Goemon-San", which everyone(with Midori being the sole exception) thinks is funny. Matsuoka named his survival game team "Toy Gun Gun" because they use toy guns during the fight. He also named his pair of Desert Eagle "Tsubuan" (red bean paste) because he thought the "Desert" is "Dessert". Midori was going to name his survival game team "Savaget" ("Surviwin" in manga translation) from "survival" and "get", before finally settled on the name of the hospital he's working at "Hoshishiro". Not to mention, when they were on the same team, Matsuoka and Midori named their team "W 2 Seconds" because both of them use dual guns, and the other characters commented on how lame it sounds.
• In Asteroid in Love, the bread at the Suzuya Bakery often have strange names. They call a cream bun "The Fairy's Ocarina", a red tea-flavoured melon bun "The English Maid's Awakening", and meat pies "The Secret Garden''. During the sixteenth chapter, both Mira and Ao commented they have a weird naming sense, bordering on Chuunibyou.
• In Azumanga Daioh, Tomo declares that the Osakan transfer student will henceforth be called Osaka. Dismayed (but stuck with the name), she tests a suspicion by asking Tomo if she has any pets. Indeed she does: a dog named Spot and a cat named Whiskers.^note From the first official manga translation (ADV). Other translations vary. In Japanese the dog is Kuro ("black"), and the other pet is a hamster named Ham-chan.
• In Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE!, Wombat is this. The reason why the magical boy quintet's names don't fit under Atrocious Alias is because he chose the names Scarlet, Cerulean, Sulfur, Vesta and Epinard (Gratuitous French for spinach, his favourite food). Note this is an Affectionate Parody, so this is an invoked trope.
• In Dr. STONE when Chrome and Kaseki invent a machine that uses a waterfall's current to continuously turn the gears for the cotton-candy machine, they name it "Contraption That Keeps the Cotton Candy Coming". Everyone else in their village decide to stick with the name that 21st-century Senku called it: a water wheel.
• Everyone in Dragon Ball Super from the Grand Priest on down thinks that Ro's names for his fighters and their techniques (such as the 'Trio of Danger' and their 'Danger Triangle') are silly.
• Fairy Tail has Laki Olietta, who gives incredibly bizarre names to her attacks like "The Dam of Shy Love" and "The Distance Between Two People is Forever". Often, her opponents will pause in confusion and ask what those names are supposed to mean.
• In Fullmetal Alchemist, in an extra story in the manga, Col. Mustang says Lt. Hawkeye is this after she adopts an abandoned puppy and names it "Black Hayate."
  • There's also an omake about how the code names were chosen. The ones chosen by Mustang were completely sensible - Elizabeth, Kate... Riza had the honour of choosing Breda's name. "Bre-ko". (-ko is used for feminine names.) The English version went with "Bredette" or "Braidykins" to give the same connotation.
• Hayate the Combat Butler gives us Student Council President Hinagiku Katsura. Despite being amazing at almost everything, if she names anything it will be immediately called out by whoever is present. They aren't weird or long names either, just really, really simplistic such as basically naming a baby sparrow 'brown bird'. Hayate typically is exasperated by her naming sense, which is funny when you consider that his naming sense is literally just as bad...both named Athena "A-tan", notably a character longer than her actual name.
• Finland from Hetalia: Axis Powers tried to name his pet dog "Go For It! Bomber" before his partner Sweden stopped him. And then he went for "Bloody Flower Egg"...
• In Kengan Ashura's 4-Koma strips, Rihito, Okubo, Himuro and Kaneda, collectively known as "the four idiots" decide to form a band, and ends up naming it "Maximum the Dogegencho", which Yamashita regards as a "shitty band name". Their songs' titles are pretty lame as well.
• Isshin Matoi of Kill la Kill named the anti-Kiryuin organization he founded Nudist Beach, and while It Makes Sense in Context (clothing and those who make it in this world are very powerful, so deliberately rejecting clothing is sticking it to the man) everyone who hears the name comments on how stupid it sounds. He also named an invention of his the "Rending Scissors", something mocked by an an opponent of his, and this tendency is said to be due to his habit of being Literal-Minded and just naming things what they are. He even gave his own daughter a name that can translate to "abandoned child" which is distressingly spot on once we learn her backstory, doubling as Foreshadowing.
• In K-On!, both Mio and Yui are this, at least to Ritsu. When the club finds it needs a name for their band, Mio's names come out too sweet and sappy, while Yui suggests "Gum On The Bottom Of My Shoe", "Ring Finger In The Dresser Drawer", "Clenched Fist", and "Rocket Pencil". Later, Ritsu says that Mio's song titles "are as 'unique' as ever."
• Minato Namikaze from Naruto sometimes falls into this trope. Typically, when he does fall into this trope, he gives techniques extremely long names. For instance, Spiralling Flash Super Round Dance Howl Style Three, or Halo Hurricane Jet Black Arrow Style Zero. Minato himself even admits that last one doesn't sound very good.
• One Piece.
  • Luffy. Generally his nicknames and names involve food, though his first three names for the crew's new ship were "Bear!! Polar bear!! Lion", "Tiger!! Wolf!! Lion", and "Squid!! Octopus!! Chimpanzee" (his fourth name finally brought him back to his comfort zone with "Dumpling, Gorilla, Lion")
  • Nami isn't much better. Usually, when she befriends an animal, she'll name it after whatever trait catches her attention, such as naming a camel "Eyelashes" and a giant crab "Pincers". When Zeus the cloud tells her to give him a new name after he fully joins the side of the Straw Hats due to Big Mom trying to kill him, she decides to name him "Fluff". As a result, Zeus goes back on this, and continues to go by his original name.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • A running gag in Pokémon the Series: XY is that Clemont, Ash's Bungling Inventor friend, can only give his inventions names that amount to Exactly What It Says on the Tin. His younger sister Bonnie gives him no end of grief, but ironically isn't that much better. She calls her newly-found Pokémon "Squishy" because of its squishy body and calls Greninja's Super Mode Ash-Greninja because it resembles Ash.
  • Long before that, in the Johto region, Ash and his friends encounter a band of Diglett thieves who call themselves "The Band of Diglett Thieves." Their leader admits that they used to have a more creative name, but the old geezers who they harass could never remember it.
  • Ash's mother Delia, unlike her son, likes to nickname Pokémon. This starts with her Mr. Mime, Mimey. Later, she tries to nickname Ash's Pokémon. All of her nicknames follow the exact same pattern as Mr. Mime: Litten is "Litty", Rowlet is "Rowly", and Rockruff is "Rocky". Neither Ash nor his Pokémon are terribly fond of her efforts.
• In Ranma ½, Pantyhose Tarō had the misfortune of being named by Happōsai due to his village's tradition of letting the person who helps deliver the child name them, and Happōsai just happened to be nearby and (in a rare moment of altruism) decided to help his mother when she went into labor. He hates his name and seeks to defeat Happōsai so he can get a new one, since the old pervert refuses to change it otherwise. His suggestion on what to change his name to? "Awesome Tarō".
• In Recovery of an MMO Junkie, Moriko names her new MMO character Hayashi, which is just a variation on her own name^note Both "Mori" and "Hayashi" are Japanese words for "forest", and are written extremely similarly. She immediately laments her own choice, but the anime further enhances this trope by showing a list of possible names she'd jotted down, almost all of which trend towards "needlessly edgy" (like "Beast Shadow" and "Cross of Darkness"). In an All Just a Dream bonus episode she actually gets to meet Hayashi, who notices her staring at him and figures it's because of his name, saying "I get that a lot"; Moriko mentally apologizes to him for not coming up with a better name.
• In Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei, Kafuka Fuura gives her teacher, Nozomu Itoshiki, the name "Pink Supervisor" after he tries to kill himself by hanging from a cherry tree in full bloom. He of course hates it, thus prompting Fuura to try and pay Itoshiki to allow her to call him that.
• Seiryo Tenna of Tenchi Muyo! GXP is not the most competent person in the first place, but when naming his ship and finding out that all of the "lucky" names he wanted were taken he decided to call it the Unko, meaning "bringer of fortune" — which, unfortunately, is a homonym for a word that also means poop.
• Roa Kassidy/Roa Kirishima in Yu-Gi-Oh! SEVENS is mentioned to have a pretty lame naming sense. He tried to name his and his cousin Romin's band "Roa and Romin" (which wouldn't even have been accurate given his best friend Tyler/Getta and other friend Toombs/Ushiro are in the band too) and according to Romin, she had to fight hard to get rid of the "and" so they were known as RoaRomin. When he tried to name the team he formed with Getta and Ushiro for the Goha Rush Duel Team Battle Royal, he just came up with "Team Roa and Getta and Ushiro". Later he instead forms a team with Yuga and Nail, and while it isn't confirmed, it's heavily implied he named "Team YugaNail with R". Deuteragonist Luke isn't much better due to his tendency to stick his nickname into everything he names with little regard for it making sense; his Battle Royal team name was "Team Lukeking Lukekings" and he thought it was sublime, while Gavin/Gakuto and Romin tried to Duel him just so he wouldn't name the team, as they knew this trope would likely come into play.
• The girls of Zombie Land Saga decide that Kotaro is this, on the grounds that names like Death Musume and Green Face aren't really that good for an Idol Singer group. They spend a good portion of the third episode trying to come up with a new name; hilariously, Saki's insistance on using showy kanji leads to her coming up with wildly insane names like Wicked Rage Void Slacker (pronounced "Jeanne d'Arc"), leading the girls to also label her a terrible namer. Of course, they eventually go for a name based off the sneeze of the literally mindless Tae, so...

Comedy

• Patton Oswalt has a bit about a kid who wrote a movie which featured a horse named "Michael Tanner." He then, being Patton, says it's like having a sword, "crafted from pure, hot steel from the bowels of hell, and bonded with the soul of an ancient warlord, and its name is Gary Blevins!"

Comic Books

• In All-Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder, Dick Grayson, age 12, tells The Goddamn Batman that "Batmobile" sounds lame. Crazy Steve visibly takes offense and tells Dick to shut up. Later he rants at Black Canary for making the same mistake. Which is odd, as Batman claimed that Dick himself named it the Batmobile in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, which is set in the same continuity. There, "Batmobile" was noted to be a stupid name that only a child would think of.
• In the "The Wake" storyline for The Sandman (1989), some of The Endless create a golem and ask Delirium to name him. After Delerium's first suggestion, "Plippy Ploppy Cheese Nose", Death has to give her a little guidance in naming conventions.
• In one Ultimate Fantastic Four comic, Ben, Sue, and Johnny all complain that Reed can't name things (the example they give being "The Fantasti-car"). Dr. Storm then says they should let Johnny name the shuttle Reed's reinventing. He names it the "Awesome". Reed is not amused. And later, just before the title got canceled, Ben is on his own and helps set up a shuttle to save Sue. He comments that "I finally got to name one of these doohickeys myself" while we see that the shuttle sports the name "Awesome II".
• In the Injustice: Gods Among Us tie-in comic, Green Arrow is being picked on by Harley Quinn for the name of his lair, the Arrowcave. Harley then asks him why didn't he just call it "The Quiver" (a case for holding arrows).
  Green Arrow: That... is actually better.
• Transformers: More than Meets the Eye brings us Crankcase, who manages to deflate his attempt at playing Big Damn Heroes by naming a borrowed Humongous Mecha "Mighty Mega Puncher". He also thinks the name "Mighty Spaceship" sounds noble and majestic. In his defense, he is missing a chunk of his head.
• In X-Factor, a mad scientist has his hands surgically replaced with razor sharp spinning propeller blades. Upon completion of the surgery he shouts out his name as "Number One Fan!!" A few issues later he's introduced to the titular team by a sorcerer who similarly shouts his name with a straight face. The team can barely stand they're laughing so hard.

Fan Works

• Played with in the Altered Destinies Fan Verse. Dennis is a perfectly normal name, it’s just not one you’d expect the son of Dracula to have. Which is why he goes by D.
  • Due to the Death of the Author shortly after his introduction, it is unknown whether Alucard is his real name or if he just goes by that to mess with his father.

It is unknown

• The Guides in Deserving apparently do this to the children the local version of the Harry Potter Marriage Law forces them to father on ex-Death Eaters. It veers into Informed Wrongness as the one example of this phenomenon we meet is called Sin.
• In an Abridged Series of Trigun, Knives is voiced as though he was Dr. Evil, and his plans have names that are sexual in nature, and he never gets it. One plan is to steal a lumber from a place before dawn, and he calls it "Operation Morning Wood".
• This trait seems to be genetic in Game Theory, since all the Testarossas have it.
• In New Reality, Lloyd suggests to Brit that the skill for both of them to use Tiger Blade at the same time is "Tiger Festival". Even Regal doesn't particularly amazed by the name.
• In Fractured (SovereignGFC), a Mass Effect/Star Wars/Borderlands crossover, a krogan observer at the Council Demilitarization Enforcement Mission thinks one of the Trans-Galactic Republic's ships that was sent to defend Tuchanka has a stupid name—it's "Promenade Sunraise" (which by krogan standards, is pretty lame).
• In Magical Relations Harry's cousin, who happens to be magical as well, is given the snowy owl Hagrid bought Harry in canon and names it - Whitey. Harry's Slytherin friends make fun of it in short order.
  Pansy: Oh, you poor dear. Such a plebeian name for such a beautiful bird!
  Draco: Your cousin is terrible at naming things. I refuse to call her that.
• In Tempest of the Fae the Hogwarts Sorting Hat, aka Hathfojd, complains about its name to Luna.
  Sorting Hat: Never let Godric name anything. He was a great wizard but by god the names he came up with. Did you know he spent several years calling Fawkes Redspark? I'd avoid calling him that by the way, it's still a bit of a sore spot.
• In Incarnation of Legends, this is Bell's reaction when Kojiro christens his new sword the Monohoshizao, which sounds impressive until Bell learns that it means "laundry-drying pole". He wonders if this is why his grandpa didn't translate a lot of the names in his stories from the Far East, as it would have removed the mystique.
• Dreaming of Sunshine: As Shikako notes, the Nara clan aren't exactly very good at names, considering that she and her twin, Shikamaru, are named 'deer girl' and 'deer boy' respectively.
• Harry is spectacularly bad at coming up with creative names in Rising Powers. He tries to name his first friend, a snake, Mr. Snake. Following that, Hedwig has to help spell out her chosen name for him when he tries to assign Snowy and Owly to her. And to his surrogate parent, the tree that he'd been living in inhabiting a body reminiscent of his mother, he named her Willow.
• In Dial, Mahmoud thinks this about himself when he names his Asgardian form "Asgarditen". He resolves to rename it later.
• White Sheep (RWBY): Yang laments that she comes from a large group of these. Her adoptive mother Summer named her dogs "Eins" and "Zwei" ("One" and "Two"), Summer herself was simply named after the season she was born, her maternal grandparents named their daughter and son "Raven" and "Qrow" (not Crow, Qrow), and her mother Raven made the brilliant choice of taking her baby-daddy's name, knocking off the first syllable, and naming her daughter "Yang" after Taiyang. Yang is disgusted with herself when the best she can think of for her son is "Yin."
• DNMC: Nara indirectly accuses Junior of being one, since he named his night club... well, The Club.
  Nara: Hmph. Unbelieveable. Even after I've been so nice to give him a few suggestions, he still won't change the damn name.
• Soichiro, similar to Kill la Kill canon, is this in Natural Selection, but it's also revealed that this trait is hereditary, as Satsuki and Ryuko are shown to equally suck at giving things creative names, much to Nui's chagrin. They even state that they like the names they give things because of how simple and basic they are.
• The Huntsman of Red V2: Shirou Emiya loans Jaune Arc a Traced copy of the Noble Phantasm Luminosité Eternelle, since Jaune is an alternate Jeanne d'Arc and can use it. While coaching Jaune in using it, Shirou is about to reveal the Noble Phantasm's name, but Jaune cuts him off and cheerfully reveals his own name for it, Jaune Zone. Shirou gets really annoyed.
• In Days at The Namikaze-Uzumaki Household, Kakashi, Obito, and Rin are aware that their teacher Minato is lousy at names. Obito is baffled that Minato's daughter name, Miruku, is a rōmaji of "milk" while Kakashi recalls that even if Naruto was named after The Hero from Jiraiya's book his name still means "fish cake". Rin suggests that Miruku's name is a combination of her family's name ("Mi" from Minato, "Ru" from Naruto, and "Ku" from Kushina), but it's clear she's trying to salvage the situation.
• In the Better Bones AU, Bramblestar is considered a bad namer of warriors In-Universe for giving names where, despite fitting the cat in question, the combination of prefix and suffix sound weird (e.g Stemleaf, which implies a plant where a leaf serves as the stem). Everyone is also very disappointed that he doesn't give Stormcloud a cool honor title referencing the scars he got from surviving being hit by a car.

Films — Animation

• In Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, most of Flint's inventions have pretty straightforward names, even if they don't exactly roll off the tongue (Hair Un-balder, anyone?). However, his latest invention has the unwieldy title of "Flint Lockwood Diatonic Super Mutating Dynamic Food Replicator" or FLDSMDFR for short.
• As seen in the Western Animation section below, the military in South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut are spectacularly literal minded with their operation names. The first wave of their attack plan, consisting of African American soldiers, is called Operation Human Shield, and the second wave, consisting of everyone else in the army, is Operation Get Behind the Darky.
• Subverted then played straight in Monsters, Inc.: When a co-worker catches Mike yelling at Sulley, Mike plays it off as rehearsing for the company musical, improbably named "Put That Thing Back Where it Came from, or So Help Me...." Later played straight when it's revealed that they actually did put on the musical.
• Monsters vs. Aliens:
  Gallaxhar: But I've told you too much already! Let the conquest of my new planet, now known as... Gallaxhar's Planet, begin!
• The Sea Beast: Maisie names two sea beasts. After the color they are.

Films — Live-Action

• In Down Periscope, we learn early that the electrician's name is "Nitro". But he's working on a nickname: "Mike".
• In the Wild Wild West movie, Artemus Gordon constantly uses long, awkward terms to name his inventions. He finally decides to go with a smaller catchy name for his flying machine: "Air Gordon"
• In Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, after coming upon Shipwreck Island, which contains Shipwreck Cove, and the town of Shipwreck, Jack realizes how unimaginative pirates are at naming things.
  Jack: I once sailed with a geezer what lost both his arms and part of his eye.
  Gibbs: What did you call him?
  Jack: ...Larry.
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day does a bland and uninspired variation. When John has to think of a name for the T-800 when they meet old friends, he calls him Uncle Bob. Even the Terminator questions that choice.
• Immortan Joe of Mad Max: Fury Road has a bad affliction of this trope, naming two of his three sons Rictus Erectus and Scabrous Scrotus. Subverted with his third son, the intelligent Corpus Colossus, which is slightly better, if misleading in that its bearer is the size of a large infant.
• Dr. Evil of Austin Powers has a habit of naming his doomsday devices/plans after cultural references or things not discussed in polite company. In the second film, he calls his plan The Alan Parsons Project, the moon-attached death-ray the Death Star and his doomsday device in Goldmember is dubbed Preparation H. Scott always points out or laughs at said naming conventions, but is always ignored.
• In Jungle 2 Jungle, Mimi-Siku did this to himself — his name means "cat piss".
• "The Derek Zoolander School for Kids Who Can't Read Good (And want to learn how to do other stuff good too)."
• Used as a Running Gag in Trumbo. The blacklisted writer Trumbo makes a living writing scripts that he then let non-blacklisted colleagues claim as their own, but his original titles are bland and unimaginative, so the colleague comes up with the iconic real title. "The Princess and the Peasant" becomes Roman Holiday, and "The Boy and the Bull" becomes The Brave One.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • In Captain America: Civil War, Tony uses a prototype holographic system that he calls the Binarily Augmented Retro Framing, or B.A.R.F., and comments that he really needs to come up with a better name. This is given a Cerebus Call-Back in Spider-Man: Far From Home, where the system's actual inventor, Quentin Beck, was so offended by the name that it became the last straw that got him to start plotting revenge.
  • Avengers: Endgame: Scott decides to name their plan to use time travel to steal Infinity Stones from the past as a "Time Heist". Everyone else scoffs at this name. However, they end up calling it that anyway, which means some of the smartest people in the galaxy couldn't come up with anything better.
  • Eternals: Phastos proposes the "Uni-Mind", a connection between the Eternals that allows them to pool their power. The other Eternals find the name silly, but they end up using it.
• Ghostbusters: Erin keeps trying to maintain the group's standing by sticking to her preferred, more technical, but clunkier name, "Conductors of Metaphysical Examinations". Unfortunately for her, literally everyone around her — her own teammates included — railroads her toward the more memorable "Ghostbusters."

Literature

• Cradle Series: When asked to give a name to her own blood shadow parasite, Yerin's initial suggestion is "Big Red," to contrast the other spirit she knows, Lil' Blue. Min Shuei comes up with the even worse name "Blood Yerin," with "Blerin" suggested for short. Everyone stares at her.
  Min Shuei: [muttering] You think I care what you name it? Nobody names their tapeworm.
• Discworld:
  • Leonard of Quirm invents loads of things, but his names for them just don't work. They are exact, but so wordy they won't catch on.
    • There's a lot of lampshading of this one — for example, he has a device which is designed to be "submersed in a marine environment." Naturally, he names it the "Going-Under-The-Water-Safely Device". One of its parts is a periscope; when Vetinari calls it a "Seeing-Things-Pipe-You-Can-Breathe-Down", Leonard asks him how he knew it was named that.
    • In Nanny Ogg's Cookbook, during the course of preparing a cheese sandwich, he redesigns a war machine to pull a plough and, since its key feature is traction, calls it the Machine for Pulling Heavy Loads. Also, to keep dairies cool for the cheese, he invents a device for regulating temperature by means of metal strips coupled to pulleys. He calls it the Device for Regulating Temperature by Means of Metal Strips (Coupled to Pulleys)
    • The Make Words with Tiles That Have Been All Mixed Up Game!
    • And his code-breaking Engine for the Neutralisation of Information via the Generation of Miasmic Alphabets. He's not sure about that one; it doesn't roll off the tongue.
    • The one time we see him give a name based on a classical allusion rather than a bland description of function, it nearly results in the destruction of the entire Discworld.
  • Lancre as a country is repeatedly said to suffer from this sort of thing, for two reasons. Firstly, its largely rural and uncomplicated population tend to choose names without regard for meaning ("There'd be a Chlamydia Weaver toddling around today if her mother hadn't suddenly decided that Sally was easier to spell"); and secondly, the Lancrastian naming custom dictating that whatever the naming priest says at the appropriate moment is the name. This has led to such gems as Princess Esmeralda Margaret Note Spelling, King My God He's Heavy the First, and James What The Hell's That Cow Doing In Here Poorchick.
    Nanny Ogg: That was a very strange day, I do remember that.
  • Lancre is also the home of the unfortunate Carter family. They started by naming the daughters after virtues (Chastity, Charity, Patience and so on), which is traditional. Then they got a little bit confused and wound up naming their sons after vices. This has worked out interestingly — all the children have natures completely opposed to their names (Anger Carter is even-tempered, and Bestiality Carter is very kind to animals, but Charity is famously stingy and Chastity is a lady of negotiable affection).
  • And then there are the Wee Free Men, including Not-as-Big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-Bigger-than-Wee-Jock Jock. You have to get specific with Jocks among the Feegles.
  • One-Man-Bucket from Reaper Man is from a tribe where new babies are named for the first thing seen by the mother when they look outside the tent (in this case, his name is short for "One Man Pouring a Bucket of Water Over Two Dogs"). His twin brother, born a few moments prior, would have given his right arm to be called Two-Dogs-Fighting.
  • Reaper Man also features the Bottomley family, whose matriarch, out of a confused sense of upward social mobility, named her sons Duke, Earl, Squire, and King.
  • In Thud!, one of the many troll gangs that turned Brick away is the Tenth Egg Street Can't-Think-of-a-Name Gang.
• Fortunately, the Milk: Professor Steg, inventor of the Floaty-Ball-Person-Carrier and discoverer of hard-hairy-wet-white-crunchers, may be a genius but isn't very good at naming things.
• In the book and film Where the Heart Is, Lexie names her kids after the food she craved while pregnant with them.
• In Things Snowball by Rich Hall, Morpheus, the bestower of superhero powers, is partially deaf and liable to mispronounce names. This has resulted, for example, in the superhero duo Mer-Man and Insect Boy (The guardian of the ocean depths and the vanguard of the insect kingdom) emerging from their naming ceremonies as Merman, an Orthodox Jew superhero who refuses to fight crime on the sabbath (to the delight of supervillains everywhere) and Incest Boy, whose superpower activation ritual involves his family in rather disturbing ways.
• Yozora in Haganai is consistently bad at naming things. She calls her air friend "Tomo-chan", which means "Friendy", more or less. The name "Neighbours Club" is one of the many aspects of her club proposal that don't impress Kodaka. She names Sena's dating-game character Semoponume at random, but then keeps using it like it's a sensible name. Even her nicknames are unimaginative, from "Meat" for buxom Sena to "Night" for her own RPG character (it's just the first kanji in her name)... and of course "Sora" for herself, unwittingly matching Kodaka's equally lazy nickname "Taka" ^note Unvoiced consonants at the start of words become voiced when used in a compound word, hence Yo+sora=Yozora..
• Harry Potter:
  • Hermione starts the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare in the fourth book. Too bad she didn't pause to realize what the acronym was...
  • The Malfoys seem to be this in-universe. Ron snickers at Draco's name, and Draco's son Scorpius is met with some derision.
  • Seems to run in the Black family (of which Draco's mother was a member) since his maternal cousin Tonks hates that her mother gave her the first name Nymphadora. Her middle name isn't much better, since her mother apparently decided to continue the Black family tradition of naming after stars and constellations by picking Vulpecula. Meaning that two out of three parts of her name can be construed as "nymphomaniac fox", so it's no wonder she goes by her surname.
• In the Midst of Winter: Richard adopts four cats strictly for rodent control purposes. As if to prove his detachment, he names them Um, Dois, Três and Quatro (one, two, three, and four in Portuguese). The cats are aloof but they become his companions.
• Madeleine L'Engle's "Kairos" series includes Canon Tallis, who is given the honor of naming Meg and Calvin O'Keefe's first child. He comes up with Polyhymnia. It's a lovely name with a lovely meaning (referring to holy music), but it's laughably inappropriate for 1960's America, and no one knows how to spell or pronounce it. The girl goes by "Polly" in later life. (Meg and Calvin never let him name another kid.)
• In Life of Pi, the tiger Richard Parker got his name from erroneous paperwork: the hunter who captured him accidentally wrote his own name in the space for the name of the animal and vice-versa, and a literal-minded clerk dutifully reproduced the error. The hunter's own first and last names were thus recorded as "Thirsty None Given".
• Murder for the Modern Girl: When Ruby finds out that Guy's pet dog doesn't have a name, she tells him to keep the dog away from Henrietta, who insisted on naming their cat Mr. Hubert and said cat hasn't forgiven them for giving her that name. This implies that Henrietta will give a questionable name to the dog if given the opportunity.
• In The Record of Unusual Creatures, both Hao Ren and Raven 12345 have terrible naming sense. Raven 12345 named a space station "Crystal Apple Core station" or "Crapple" because it looked like one, and Hao Ren is stopped by others every time he tries to come with a name for something.
• One ending in Romeo and/or Juliet mentions that Romeo is banned from naming his and Juliet's kids since the best he could come up with for their first daughter was Romeo-ella.
• Kagura, of She Professed Herself Pupil Of The Wise Man, gives terrible names to her various shikigami, such as Meowmaru and Tweetsuke. This is lampshaded by both Mira and Solomon, with the former able to use this tendency of hers to identify her without seeing her face.
  Solomon: Sounds like a certain mage with a terrible naming sense.
• In the Zachary Nixon Johnson series, all of the characters agree that while Dr. Thompson was a brilliant scientist, he was somewhat less adept at choosing names. He created a Pointless Doomsday Device which he named the D-Cubed (doomsday device); and furthermore, he named his four daughters Ona, Twoa, Threa, and Foraa.

Live-Action TV

• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.:
  • Fitz does not find much approval in calling his sedative rifle "Night-Night Gun". He gets better at it (probably due to shared input with Simmons), as the evolved edition is called ICER.
  • Raina gave a pyro the completely unimaginative alias of "Scorch", though it was just to stroke his ego until he had outlived his usefulness. Still, her coworker implies this isn't the first time.
    Debbie: Oh god. You gave him a name, didn't you?
• Angela's father in Bones. "But wait!" you say, "Angela's a perfectly normal name!" That's true enough, but she dubbed herself Angela Pearly Gates Montenegro. Her given name (still her legal name, because she promised she wouldn't change it legally while her father was alive) is Pookie Noodlin. When Angela is pregnant, he declares that he has the perfect name for his grandchild: Staccato Mambo. Which he defends as being gender-neutral. She ends up naming the child Michael Staccato Vincent, but he's referred to thereafter as "Michael Vincent".
• On Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy's mom once formed an organization called "Mothers Opposed to the Occult," or MOO. The other characters were not impressed.
• Abed from Community is shown to be not very good at naming characters.
  • In the episode "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons", we have examples such as Bing-Bong, Zippididoo, Maarrr, and...
    Annie: I'm... ew, "Hector the Well-Endowed"? Abed!
    Abed: I didn't know you'd just grab one at random. I made that one with Troy in mind.
  • In another episode, he shows Buzz Hickey a script for a movie he wrote, Police Justice. It turns out that's the main character's name.
• On The Daily Show, most of the segments involve Punny Titles that Jon Stewart or his staff come up with to riff on the media issue he's discussing. Occasionally Stewart will go through a series of lame versions before settling on the final one. For instance, one section was titled "Jon Stewart Touches Kids" and once that's rejected "Jon Stewart Looks at Children's Things" and "Uncle Jon Wants to Show You Something". Usually his reaction is along the lines of Who Writes This Crap?!.
• When playing with his toy dinosaurs in the pilot episode of Firefly, Wash has the stegosaur name their newly-discovered land "This Land".
• Phoebe in Friends. Regina Phalange anyone? Not to mention the time she legally changed her name to "Princess Consuela Regina Banana-Hammock".
• On Gilmore Girls, Liz's new husband T.J. really wants to be The Nicknamer, but is portrayed as too dim-witted to come up with anything good. He tries to ingratiate himself with Liz's son, Jess, by giving him a nickname. The best he can come up with is "Reads"...because Jess reads a lot.
• In Good Luck Charlie PJ was supposed to be named after a relative "Patty (Patrick) John" but Bob messed up while registering his birth, so when PJ sees his birth certificate he finds his name is actually shown as "Potty John". Bob tries to get it corrected, but PJ's name is now officially "PP" Duncan.
• In the Horrible Histories song about the Pilgrim Fathers, when they're trying to name towns in the New World, one guy says "I'm from Newcastle, can we call this New Newcastle?" Everyone else's reaction makes it pretty clear they think this is a lame name, even though all their own had just been "New (Place in England)" too.
• In the French series Kaamelott, this is a habit of young knights Gauvain and Yvain, mostly because they're trying to use words that they think sound cool without having a clue of their meaning. Gauvain insists on the nickname "Knight of the Pancreas". For their duo, they came up with the name "Les Petits Pédestres" (which sounds a lot like "The Little Faggots"). After encountering traveling Indians with an elephant, Yvain wanted to be called "The Elephant of Cameliard" — but he got it mixed with "The Orphan of Cameliard", starting the rumor that his parents, the king and queen of Cameliard, were dead. They weren't pleased.
• Kamen Rider:
  • In Kamen Rider Den-O, protagonist Ryotaro is accused of having no naming sense by his allies. He gives his Imagin partners names combining figures from Japanese mythology with the ending "Taros" (such as Momotaros, Kintaros, etc). When he finally develops his own Super Mode, Ryotaro's friends press him to name its Finishing Move while he's in the middle of performing it. Put on the spot, all he can come up with is Densha Giri — "Train Slash" — which prompts his friends to all groan in unison.
  • A few years later, Kamen Rider Drive got in on the action as well. He tends to name his weapons after their most prominent feature: the Handle Sword^note Steering Sword in some translations because it's got a steering wheel on it, and the Door Gun because it's shaped like a car door. After the latter case, Mr. Belt complains about his terrible naming sense. When Drive's Mid-Season Upgrade rolls around, Mr. Belt says he decided to save everyone the trouble and dubbed its new weapon the Trailer Cannon — no points for guessing what it looks like.
  • Of course, other bits of Rider gear in Drive are just as on-the-nose; Mach's main weapon is the Zenrin (Front Wheel) Shooter, a handgun with a motorcycle tire on the front, and Chaser's main weapon is the Shingou (Signal) Axe, a battleaxe with a crosswalk signal built into it.
• In The Magicians, when they're crowned the rulers of Fillory, they also title each other: Elliot the Spectacular, Alice the Wise, and Margo the Destroyer. Quentin meanwhile is dubbed "the Moderately Socially Maladjusted" by Margo.
• In Peacemaker (2022), the title character names his pet eagle Eagly, and the ARGUS agents have a field day with this once they find out.
• On Scrubs, the Janitor said another doctor used to eat lunch with him but stopped when the other doctors made fun of her, calling her "Janitor lunch eater".
• Stargate:
  • Stargate Atlantis:
    • A recurring theme. Lieutenant Ford is supposed to be terrible at naming things, but his names really aren't that bad. For example he wanted to call the original people from Atlantis the Atlantians. Shepperd scoffed at that, but it isn't that different from the name they eventually use anyway.
    • Similarly, a number of people tried to name the Lantian shuttle a GateShip (it's a ship that goes through the Gate!), which turned out to be what the Atlanteans originally called it. This was shot down, again by Sheppard, who felt that was too formal a name for such a little and rather unimpressive ship. He decided to call it a Puddle Jumper. It stuck.
    • And the Wraith never use names (if they even have them) around humans, so Sheppard took to naming them things like "Michael", "Todd", and "Kenny". Lampshaded when Dr. McKay got jealous that Sheppard always got to name everything.
      McKay: We can name it later.
    • The Ancients named an incredibly powerful warship the Hippaforalkus, which was apparently the name of an Ancient general. The Atlantis team quickly renames it the Orion.
    • The Ancients also named a whale-like creature a Flagecallus. The team just calls it a whale.
  • In Stargate Universe, after discovering the alternate crew from "Twin Destinies" were actually sent back in time and founded their own civilisation, Adam Brody never lives down the fact that his doppelgänger named a country "Futura".
    Everyone: It's a font!
• Dean of Supernatural earned his place on this page in season 6, when Eve starts creating her brand-new monster hybrids. Sam and Bobby are understandably skeptical.
  Dean: What do you call these?
  Bobby: Well, congrats, you discovered it, you get to name it.
  Dean: Jefferson Starships... because they're horrible and hard to kill.
• In an episode of Waiting for God, a burnt-out vicar is said to have christened a child "Ugly Little Bastard Jones".

Podcasts

• Magnus of The Adventure Zone: Balance isn't the best at naming things. Case and point, in the finale of The Stolen Century he names the artifacts he builds "Bearface" and "2th Necklace" (pronounced "Tooth Necklace").

Puppet Shows

• In Dinosaurs, the Elder is responsible for giving all dinosaur babies names, and his clerk makes it official. Unfortunately, the clerk writes down whatever the Elder says during the ceremony. Baby Sinclair's original given name was "Augh! Augh! I'm Dying, You Idiot!" when the Elder suffered a fatal heart attack. It makes it very difficult for the family to play the Name Game.

Radio

• In The Castle, Thomas the inventor seems to follow the same invention-naming conventions as Leonard of Quirm.

Video Games

• Aurica from Ar tonelico: Melody of Elemia. You can still go with her names for the items you make, but really, you're better off using your own or a different Reyvateil to name stuff. In the second game, Mir even refers to her as "the girl who sucks at naming things."
• In Borderlands 2, it's mentioned that Handsome Jack, Corrupt Corporate Executive and Big Bad, is one of these. All of the weapons that the Hyperion Corporation makes are named after business terms (his justification being that he wants them to sound like "smart weapons for smart sons of bitches") Thus, while these guns tend to be quite good statistically, they suffer from having terrible names; shotguns like "Projectile Diversification," for example. He named a female horse "Butt Stallion", and Nisha, the Sheriff of Lynchwood also mentions that, if it wasn't for her suggestions, Jack would have named Lynchwood "New New Haven".
  Nisha: I love the guy, but he doesn't exactly have a way with words.
• Destiny has a Running Gag with fireteam names across both games. Apparently between Destiny 1 and 2 the Tower switched to a name generator because letting Guardians name their own fireteams led to gems like "Fireteam The-bad-guys-don't-care-what-we-call-ourselves-do-they?" In the second game, while the generator usually assigns reasonable names, it occasionally spits out things like "Babydog," "Piccolo," and "Oboe," which Zavala takes as seriously as he can muster. Cayde and Devrim, not so much.
• In a conversation between Owain and Lucina in Fire Emblem: Awakening, given the former's habits of naming his weapons, the latter opts to try it for herself. Its later revealed that Lucina has named her version of the Falchion Pointy Demonspanker. Owain quickly manages to convince her to change it back.
• Sucrose from Genshin Impact isn't great at naming her specimens beyond extremely literal/numerical scientific descriptions. For example, she calls a strain of sweet flower that she worked on as "Sweet Flower Project 9, Version 28, Scent-Strengthening Trial." This applies to her ingame combat skills as well, known only as "Astable Anemohypostasis Creation 6308" and "Forbidden Creation - Isomer 75 / Type II." Ironically, she dreams of making a fairytale-like paradise with her work, but she can't come up with more fantastic names for her specimens; she ends up deciding that, if it's a paradise of her making, she's free to name the flora in it the way she likes best.
• Simultaneously averted and played straight by a civic group in GTA: Liberty City Stories. Citizens United Negating Technology For Life And People's Safety. Try making an acronym out of that. (Acronym NSFW)
• Kariya Masaki from Inazuma Eleven gives terrible suggestions of names to his teammates' hissatsu techniques, which make them laugh. For example, his suggestion for Tenma and Tsurugi's tactic, which is eventually named "Double Wing", is "Run Run Running".
• The sluggies of Kukoo Kitchen are really bad at coming up with names for things, such as assigning the Fearful (a fearsome monster who can turn invisible and sneak up on ships), their centuries-pursued prey, this name because it's said to keep fearfully evading their weapons every time they try to catch it. As the captain says:
  Sluggy captain: We are great hunters, but terrible at picking names...
• Littlewood: Arpeggio admits to not being very creative with names when the best name he can come up with for the former Dark Wizard gone Amnesiac Villain Joins the Heroes is "Dark". Dark goes along with it because he has no better idea.
• Lufia:
  • Guy pulls this one off during one conversation in Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals. After giving Maxim and himself nicknames designed to inspire awe to the listener, he calls Selan "The Magical Wife." She is less than amused.
  • Dekar gives the rest of the party their nicknames instead in Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals. Everyone hates the nicknames he gives them.^*Guy is "The Strike First and Think Later Man of Pure Muscle", Maxim is "The Burning Swordsman", Tia is "The Girl with the Mysterious Giant Hook", and Selan is—naturally—"The Magical Wife".
• In the Mass Effect 3 Citadel DLC, James Vega will boast that he's the master at making parties awesome, such that his academy friends dubbed him..."Party Vega".
  Cortez: That's a little...lame.
  Vega: I ran with a simple crowd.
• Rouge from Mega Man Zero turns out to be this in one audio drama. When pressed to give a name to the Baby Elves, a pair of cute, ball-shaped Energy Beings, she seriously proposes "Crime and Punishment". This gets her into an argument with the other operator where they accuse each other of being this.
• Nibblers: Flappydactyl, the boss of Cloud Peak Cliff, criticizes his parent's choice of name for him, and he wished they'd give him something that's menacing, like Terrordactyl.
• Nema from Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs zig-zags this trope. Most of her inventions' names, despite accurately fitting their purposes, tend to be much longer than needed, such as "Call Pokemon by Drawing Fun Signs with Lines Mode", which is shortened to just "Sign Mode". On the other hand, though, she does sometimes scale it back and a couple names are kinda catchy (like the "Battery Flattery Mini Charger"). This was taken to an extreme in a post-game Quest, where Nema tried to help give Booker Bridge a new name. The name is long enough that they had to put three signs by the bridge to show it all.
• Persona 5 Tactica: Both Toshiro and Erina have a habit of giving their plans terrible names, like "Operation Sneaky Sneaky Bang Bang". Takes on a much more tragic tone once it's revealed Toshiro picked up the habit from his late mother and Erina inherited it due to being an early form of his Persona.
• In the Nintendo DS game of Puzzle & Dragons, one of your friends who is known for being a ditz suggests you name your new dragon companion Drake the Souped Up Muscle Dragon. Actually choose it and your new companion rips into you about how lame the name is.
• In Roots of Pacha, Ata and Garrek melt various metals together and come up with names for the alloys made out of them. Ata calls the alloy of copper and tin "bronze" while Garrek calls the alloy of gold and silver "electrum". Ata then comments that Garrek's not good at naming things, but is otherwise okay with it.
• In Sengoku Rance, Kou decides to call the dungeon in Oda the "Miso Katsu Dungeon". Rance is probably an even worse namer, suggesting "The Biographies of Eight Satomi Dogs" (which actually turned out to be somewhat accurate,) as a good dungeon name. And then there's the hyper weapon...
• Soul Nomad & the World Eaters In the Demon path, Gig decided to name his new empire the "BFF Empire". Pinot says what everyone was thinking about the name ("It sucks. It sucks hard"). Naturally, Gig threw a hissy fit and dug his heels in to spite everyone. So BFF Empire it is!
• In Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People episode Strong Badia the Free, you can have one member of the Teen Girl Squad (any will do) attempt to name a cat "Miss Jumblepuddins". Then the cat's mother - actually a saber-toothed tiger — appears and eats the girl for giving her cub a lame name.
• Lucretia, The Strategist from Suikoden V has a habit of giving things such as your army or your castle, overly long pseudo-poetic names which everyone else finds clearly embarrassing, thus letting the Prince taking the choice.
• Karol from Tales of Vesperia. Unluckily for him, his name suggestions are always rejected and he is klonked on the head.
• Remilia Scarlet of Touhou Project: in a world where Calling Your Attacks is the norm, Remilia can't quite seem to get the hang of the whole "naming" thing. This results in spellcard names that range from the cliched melodramatic trying-too-hard-to-be-badass (like Midnight Sign [Devil King Cradle] or Destiny [Miserable Fate]) to the truly baffling (like Demon [Remilia Stretch] or the infamous Scarlet Devil [Scarlet Devil]).
• The eponymous Transistor ends up naming a lot of the different enemy types on the fly. Some of them are sort of creative (Younglady, The Spine,) some are just him insulting the enemy during their first appearance (Creep, Jerk). And then there's the last two enemy types (a humanoid and an Action Bomb that's normally attached to the former's head) named by him when he's delirious after the second Spine starts screwing with his head, where he lazily calls them Man and Haircut.
• King Asgore Dreemurr from Undertale. It's a Running Gag that most monsters think that he's a great guy and a fantastic king, but he really sucks at naming things. His name for the monsters' original home in the Underground? "Home". And when they moved to a new location, he called that "New Home". The town with all the snow? "Snowdin". The area with all the lava? "Hotland". The area with the waterfalls? "Waterfall". Even his son's name, Asriel, is a combination of his name and his wife Toriel's. This even extends to his own boss theme, which is literally just his name in allcaps. The intro, however, actually has a creative and Meaningful Name: "Bergentrückung". Worse yet, it seems to be hereditary — Asriel's resurrected form, a self-aware Golden Flower, refers to himself as Flowey the Flower.
• A lot of things that gnome and goblin engineers make in World of Warcraft. Wrench? No no no, it's an Arclight Spanner. Screwdriver? No, that's a Gyromatic Micro-Adjustor. Heat Sink? Hyper-Radiant Flame Reflector. Fishing Lure? Aquadynamic Fish Attractor.
• In Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Noah is pretty embarrassed about his naming choices, and usually defers to others when he needs to name something. Although, the new name he gave to Lucky Seven, Sword of the End, ends up being both fitting and badass.
  • Expanded upon in Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed when in the final battle, N declares Matthew's knuckle weapons to be the "Fists of the End", suggesting he tends to slap "Of the End" onto whatever he's naming.
• If you don't type in a player name on You Don't Know Jack, the host will assign you a completely random name like "ladder" or "toilet."

Visual Novels

• In Double Homework, Uncle Tommy and his band mates called their band The Tits. Apart from being a lame name in itself, it lends itself to many a pun.
  Morgan: Just tell him you’re a big Tits fan. Wow, now I know why they chose that name.
• In The Fruit of Grisaia, Michiru names her cat Nekonyaa. Literally Kittymeow. She realizes how lame it is.

Web Comics

• The players from Darths & Droids consider the GM to be one of these (and many times end up taking Sally's names instead).
• In Everyday Heroes, Mr. Mighty once worked for a superhero group known as the Group Of Official Do-Gooders United In Suppressing Evil... or for short, GOODGUISE.
• Goblins: All babies are traditionally named by the clan fortune teller, who both can see the future and typically has bad names.
  • Young-and-Beautiful gives names to the goblins of her village based on what's destined for them. While some get names like Chief, Big Ears, or Fumbles, there's also Dies-Horribly, Can't-Think-of-a-Name-Cause-He-Looks-Like-a-Regular-Guy or Shaken-Unfairly. And calling herself "Young-and-Beautiful" when she's a fat old hag. Guess from where Complains-of-Names gets his moniker (and why, for that matter)? And then there's the fact all the names she gives are very, very accurate (except possibly her own, though we never see her when she was young). Which is why Dies-Horribly is such a mental wreck...
  • Then there's the shaman who gives goblins names like "Piss-Off-I-Have-A-Headache" ("Hava" to his friends) and "Stop-The-Ceremony-I-Swallowed-A-Bug". He was really bad at naming ceremonies.
  • Saves-A-Fox tried to defy fate by killing the fox she was supposed to save. She later learns that the fox had symptoms of a disease that would give it a painful death, meaning Saves-A-Fox gave it an unintentional Mercy Kill, thus "saving it", giving Saves-A-Fox an Heroic BSoD. Besides that, she cut off the fox's tail and kept it, "saving" it in another sense.
• In Grrl Power, Archon does this on purpose to piss off supervillains. Maxima renames Super Massive to Gravity Goomba, and shortly after downgrades him to Suck Hole. Earlier, Sydney threatened to have For Whom The Death Tolls renamed to The Periwinkle Butt Sniffer. Not that she's not much better at giving non insulting names to aliens.
• In Jupiter-Men, Quintin first idea for a superhero code name is "Super-Ultra-Slime-Man". Nathan tells him to cut it down to four syllables or less, after which Quintin chooses the much more manageable (and slightly cooler sounding) Gusher. Subverted for Jackie, as she likes the name "Powerhouse" that he comes up with. He later comes up with "Spellblazer" for Arrio, but only after going through, "Heat-Hands", "Knight-Light", "Sunstroke", and "Fire-Finger", all of which get veto'd until Arrio agrees with Spellblazer because he's too tired to argue otherwise.
• Appellomancers in Oglaf are wizards that have the power to name things. They are only shown renaming people to offensive names (that then changes the person's personality to suit their new name).
• Sensei Greg of El Goonish Shive first called his martial arts dojo Anime-Style Martial Arts, and then considered renaming it Real Martial Arts. Nanase comments that he should consider hiring a marketing consultant.
• In this Scandinavia and the World, King Europe demonstrates his naming skills with the European Extremely Large Telescope.
• The epilogue of 8-Bit Theater shows the brotherhood of Last of His Kind clan survivors founded by Red Mage is struggling to grow... probably because he named it "Sects Buddies".
• Quain'tana of Drowtales is a warlord whose naming sense shows a lack of creativity when it's revealed that she named one of her grandsons "Pup" (which is something of an It Makes Sense in Context as the wolf is the Sarghress' clan animal) which Ariel, who herself was a case of Last-Minute Baby Naming, immediately lampshades. Subverted though, as his brother says a few pages later that he doesn't have a name. Pup is presumably something one of the boys chose just so he wouldn't be referred to as "brother" in place of a name.
• Asha in Kubera is basically considered the smartest person on the planet. She comes up with three names for their new party member: Blacky, Whitey, and Spotty. Immediately lampshaded by Leez, who then proceeds to find a proper name. Asha takes a short while to suck it up.
• Antimony of Gunnerkrigg Court isn't too good at this, as two of her friends, Shadow the Living Shadow and Robot the Robot, can attest. Lampshaded when she needs to find Robot in a facility full of robots:
  Robot Receptionist: Make, model number, serial or name, please.
  Antimony: His name is Robot!
  Robot Receptionist: [silent stare]
• The Gatekeepers/F'sherl-Ganni from Schlock Mercenary seem to have a gift for this: Their specific nouns seem to be contractions of sentences describing the thing that it named. Two examples shown in the comic are the Gatekeeper word for a Dyson Sphere, buuthandi, which means "this was expensive to build" and their word for the Dark Matter Entities, Pa'anuri, which means "that gravitical distortion is giving me the willies".
• Sally from Sleepless Domain is incredibly uncreative with attack names. When she's paired up with Gwen, who just doesn't care enough to come up with something better, their combo attack gets named "Lava Whatever".

Web Video

• Golf Ball is accidentally this in the Object Show Battle for Dream Island:
  • In the original season, Firey says that their new team needs to be the "Squashy Grapes," but Golf Ball points out that's already the name of the team next to them and that their name needs to be "another name." The Announcer assumes this means she is saying their team name is "Another Name," and it stays that way until teams are disbanded.
  • In BFB, when she learns about Death P.A.C.T.'s team name, she says that, to win, her team's name needs to be "a better name than that." And it keeps that name until the team disbands.
  • In TPOT, when Pen tries to name their team "Death P.A.C.T. Again," Golf Ball points out that the other former Death P.A.C.T. members already named their team that, and stops herself right before she accidentally names her team again... only for Tennis Ball to ask her "Are you okay?" And that becomes the team name.
• In Let's Game It Out, if the game lets you change a character name, Josh will make it something as absurd as possible for maximum comedy. In his playthrough of Crusader Kings III, for instance, he promptly changes the name of France to "MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM", renames his dynasty "Hungie for Brekkie", and names his heirs "Lunchtime", "Second Breakfast", "Brunch", and "Tea Time".

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • Sokka and Toph tend to do this a lot. Suki's sole attempt, however, was considered too lame even by them, and in the last episode they tell her "Leave the nicknames to us, honey."
  • While pretending to be Aang's parents, Sokka's disguise name is "Wang Fire", and he refers to Katara as "Sapphire Fire". One has to wonder how anyone fell for that, considering that Sokka using his regular name to Master Piando gave him away.
  • The silent, explosion-bending assassin sent after the Gaang gets initially called Sparky Sparky Boom Man. It's later changed to Combustion Man, which is not much better, but ends up sticking for the lack of an actual name.
  • Zuko ends up in a bit of this at the start of season 2 as he and his uncle Iroh end up fugitives hiding in the Earth Kingdom. When asked on the spot for their names, Zuko resorts to calling himself the innocuous-sounding "Lee", but calls Iroh the less dignified-sounding "Mushi". Iroh swiftly retaliates by claiming his nephew was named after his father, so they just call him "Junior".
• Ben 10:
  • The Ben Tennyson of Dimension 23 in Ben 10: Omniverse gave different names than his prime universe counterpart. However, the names he gave are less than creative. Examples: Shocksquatch=Electric Yeti, Heatblast=Charcoalman, Arcticguana=Freezelizard. Apparently, some of them were focus group tested.
  • The Ben of the Ben 10 (2016) series has a running gag starting from season 3 in which he tends to give his later aliens poor names before their final name comes up: for example Humungosaur was nearly named Roar Thing and Mega-Stega Dude while Jetray was nearly named Wingy Alien Guy.
• Danny Phantom:
  • Jazz has this problem, mostly because she insists on being "helpful" by giving names that are unnecessary to boot (such as calling Danny's ghost hunting team "the Ghost Getters" or trying to rename Skulker "Ghost X"). Her parents are just as bad (they named a normal baseball bat "The Fenton Anti-Creep Stick").
  • Don't forget what the media called Danny's ghost half... Invis'o-bill.
• Family Guy:
  • In the "Blue Harvest" Star Wars: A New Hope parody, Grand Moff Tarkin (voiced by Adam West) announces to Princess Leia his plans to use the "Death Star Planet Blower-Upper Gun" on her home planet of Alderaan.
  • In the sequel, the rebels on Hoth fire the "Giant Boob-Nipple gun" at the Imperial fleet. An immature rebel runs out to cop a feel on it in case the joke didn't sell itself.
  • In the series proper, when Peter declares his house a sovereign country, the military arrives and threatens to commence "Operation Bomb the Crap Out of Your House". The guy declaring this then adds, "The guy who names things is on vacation."
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends has Goo Goo Ga Ga, Mac and Bloo's Motor Mouth friend whose parents allowed her to name herself when she was still an infant.
• Infinity Train: Jesse Cosay has a habit of naming every animal denizen he met on the Train "Dracula". When MT dares him to call the deer in the Family Tree Car something other than Dracula he just adds "Alan" in front of it. This habit of his still continues when MT finally makes it out of the Train and the first name he can come up with is "Dracula...2".
• Invader Zim seems to like giving out overly long names as part of his Large Ham persona, including "Burger Lord", "Human Dog Monster", and "Frolicking Dirt Child". Then again, this seems to be a staple of his species, as a lot of the recently-conquered planets that belong to the Irken Empire are given names that are more like descriptions, such as Callnowia for a phone-operated ordering service planet or Foodcourtia for... well.
• Trixie has shades of this in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, in particular the episode "No Second Prances" where, after she alienates her only friend Starlight Glimmer, she changes the name of her now-solo magic show to "The Pathetic and Friendless Trixie's Way-to-Go-Dumb-Dumb-You-Really-Messed-It-Up-This-Time Repentance Tour".
  Trixie: It's a working title!
• The Owl House: In "Eda's Requiem", Raine's band of freedom fighting rebels is called the BATTs (short for Bards Against The Throne), complete with bat-themed masks. When they're later joined by several people from other covens, the name gets changed to the CATTs (Covens Against The Throne). Darius openly hates the name, insisting over and over that he didn't agree with it and pleading with Raine to not make their battle cry a hiss.
• Phineas and Ferb:
  • Dr. Doofenshmirtz. It's always the whatever-inator. Lampshaded (where else?) in another episode, where he reveals his very first invention: the Inator. (He couldn't decide what it would do at the time.) At one point he decides the "inator" name is responsible for his failures, and calls his latest invention a "non-inator" since it's not one.
  • His rival is convinced that his latest invention is better than Doof's because it isn't an "inator", but rather an "izer".
  • Also, the Organization Without a Cool Acronym, which may be slightly better off than the League Of Villainous Evildoers Maniacallly United For Frightening Investments in Naughtiness (also named by Doofenshmirtz).
• The Simpsons:
  • When Marge becomes a Moral Guardian, she forms the protest group SNUH (Springfieldians for Nonviolence, Understanding and Helping).
  • Similarly, the episode Marge vs. Single, Seniors, Childless Couples and Teens, and Gays brought the pair of tongue-twistingly long acronyms SSCCATAGAPP and PPASSCCATAG — "Singles, Seniors, Childless Couples and Teens, and Gays Against Parasitic Parents" and "Proud Parents Against Singles, Seniors, Childless Couples and Teens, and Gays".
  • One "history episode" lampshades the Real Life unimaginativeness of the original new world colonists proclivity to name everything "New *".
    Flanders: I just thought of a name for where we're headed, "New England".
    Willy: Oh that's great. What do you call your foot, "New Hand"?
    Flanders: Hey, at least I'm pitching.
• The Military in the South Park movie "Imaginationland", whose projects and operations tend to be a little too on the nose: i.e. Project Imagination Doorway and Operation Nuke the Imagination Through the Imagination Doorway.
• Ludo from Star vs. the Forces of Evil apparently doesn't bother remembering the names of any of his minions, so he gives them overly-descriptive names, i.e. Buff Frog, Spike Balls, Man Arm, Lobster Claws, Beard Deer, Three-Eyed Potato Baby, etc.
• Star Wars:
  • Star Wars Rebels: When Sabine was still in the Imperial Academy, she designed a "theoretical" anti-Mandalorian weapon that targeted their ancestral armor. She named it "the Duchess," after Duchess Satine Kryze, the last decent ruler Mandalore had before the Empire took over. "Duchess" is a questionable name for a weapon on its own, but what makes it bizarre is that Satine was a pacifist.
    Bo-Katan: Wait, you named it after my sister? The former leader of Mandalore?
    Sabine: It was a series of bad decisions, okay?
  • Star Wars: The Clone Wars: In "Deal No Deal", one of the few things Ahsoka Tano and Rafa Martez agree on is that the name Rafa's younger sister Trace has given her starship, the Silver Angel, is questionable at best.
• In one episode of Time Squad, the Earl of Sandwich attempts to give his new food creation the moniker of "Stinky Pile o' Poo". He claims that it was his mother's maiden name.
• WordGirl has Chuck The Sandwich-Making Guy, a wannabe villain with an obsession with sandwiches. His attempts at more imposing names don't fare any better than his current label.

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