Ironic Name

That's like a smart person being called "Stupid".^note At least he does try to have moments of bravery.

"For example, your leader is named Thinker, yet he appears to be something of a dullard."

— Yui, Sword Art Online Abridged

Sometimes, a character has a name that is ironic considering their personality, lifestyle, or whatnot. Often, this is Played for Laughs, but more serious examples do exist.

A Sub-Trope of Non-Indicative Name. See Ironic Nickname for cases when the character's nickname, instead of their given name, is ironic.

Related to Fluffy the Terrible (where a scary monster or animal is given a decidedly non-scary name), Deathbringer the Adorable (where a cute, relatively harmless animal is given an imposing name) and Tom the Dark Lord (which applies Special Person, Normal Name to an evil character). A Dog Named "Cat" may also count as an ironic name, especially if the animal is named after its natural enemy, predator or prey. When this trope is applied to an object or organization rather than a person, see Super-Fun Happy Thing of Doom. Contrast, of course, Meaningful Name.

Real Life examples of this are also called "inaptronyms," the opposite of aptronyms, which mean Meaningful Names.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You:
  • Iku's name (in the Japanese naming order) is "Sutou Iku", or "stoic". She is perhaps the least stoic person in existence.^note At least according to the Western definition of the term; it’s more appropriate according to the Japanese idea of stoicism.
  • Kurumi is a rare justified example; her given name means "walnut" in Japanese, and her food obsession has triggered so often from hearing her own name that she no longer craves them when she hears it, though she does admit to still liking them.
  • Naddy's real name is Nadeshiko Yamato, or "Yamato Nadeshiko" in the Japanese naming order. She hated being forced into that type of life as a child so much that she pretends to be American, viewing American values as more freeing compared to her strict, traditional upbringing.
• In Asteroid in Love, while Moe Suzuya's character design follows the Moe style like the rest of the series, her tropes are usually not the kind that would be considered Moe, i.e. triggering the protective instinct of the reader/viewer, since she's a lesbian Lovable Sex Maniac. This is obvious when comparing her with her closest friends, Mira and Ao.
• Black Clover:
  • Yuno is named after the goddess Juno, the wife of Jupiter in Roman Mythology infamous for her jealousy over her husband's many affairs. Instead, Yuno is anything but jealous of his rival Asta, encouraging him to become stronger with the two maintaining a close bond.
  • "Noelle" is a name distantly derived from the Latin word "natalis", meaning "birthday". She was mocked by her older siblings for indirectly causing her mother Acier's Death by Childbirth as well as her Power Incontinence.
• Bleach:
  • Baraggan Louisenbairn, the Segunda Espada, has a name inspired by a Mexican architect, Luis Barragán. Despite the fact that Las Noches (Barragan's base of operations) didn't even have walls or a roof when Sousuke Aizen showed up to take control. This fits with the Espadas' Theme Naming, as they're usually named after arhitects.
  • Kaname Tosen named the Proto-Arrancar White even though its body is pitch black. Aizen commented on the irony. Since Tosen is blind, he wouldn't know that White was colored black. That said, a blind person shouldn't name things after colors.
• Chainsaw Man: Violence Fiend, despite his name, is one of the most peaceful members of Division 4.
• Dance in the Vampire Bund: Why on Earth would someone name a son pledged as the personal servant of the (reasonably benevolent) Vampire Monarch he has served his whole life Daybreak? Yes, that is exactly how Akira Regendorf's given name is written.
• The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated!: Druj's name means "deceit/disorder" in Zoroastrian mythology. Druj is both honest to a fault and has her life together.
• Hungry Marie has a male protagonist named "Bijogi Taiga". The "bijo" in his name means "pretty girl"... which he actually becomes when his soul ends up in the body of a dead French princess after serving as a sacrifice in a fishy ritual that went wrong.
• In Idol Densetsu Eriko, Eriko's dogs are named Fortissimo and Pianissimo. Fortissimo is quiet and Pianissimo is noisy.
• The male protagonist of Itsudatte My Santa! is a boy named Santa who hates Christmas.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Stardust Crusaders:
    • The "Steel" in Steely Dan's name would make one think he's a physically strong or brave character, yet he's a Dirty Coward with a physically weak Stand.
    • N'Doul's Stand, Geb, is named after the Egyptian Earth god, yet its ability allows N'Doul to control water.
  • Golden Wind: Ghiaccio's name is Italian for "Ice". While this is meant to refer to his Stand ability, it's also quite ironic when his personality is anything but icy.
  • Steel Ball Run:
    • As apart of the Musical Theme Naming of the series, Johnny Joestar is a paraplegic, yet his Stand, Tusk, is named after the song by Fleetwood Mac, a song commonly played by marching bands.
    • Funny Valentine eventually gains an ability called D4C: Love Train during the climax. Valentine's goal is to use Love Train to redirect all of the United States' misfortune onto the rest of the world, leaving Americans standing above everyone else. The song "Love Train" by the O'Jays is about uniting the world and spreading peace, which is the opposite of what Valentine is trying to do.
  • JoJolion: The Big Bad, Tooru, has the Stand, Wonder of U, named after the song, "The Wonder of You", by Elvis Presley, which is about the unconditional love a mother has for her child. Tooru, however, never knew this kind of love, as his mother abandoned him in the woods when he was an infant, as all Rock Human women do to their children, with Tooru's parasitic relationship with a hornet being the closest thing he had to a motherly relationship.
• Kiss and White Lily for My Dearest Girl has "Moe", a Comically Serious girl with a blunt character, who may or may not stalk her girlfriend as a hobby. Adding to the irony, said girlfriend Mizuki, whom people see as the Tomboy of the two, is far more prone to exhibit typically moe behaviour (shyness, blushing, insecurity, etc.)
• Komi Can't Communicate: One of Komi's classmates is called Toutoi Son, or "respect" in Japanese. Toutoi is one of the raunchiest people around.
• In Komori-san Can't Decline! the first syllable of Komori and Ootani's names mean "small" and "large" respectively, an irony that they point out when talking to each other for the first time (Komori is six feet tall and Ootani is really short). They jokingly refer to each other as Oomori and Kotani.
• In K-On!, the kanji for Ui's name has rather negative meanings like "sad" or "melancholy", but Ui herself is a sweet-natured Nice Girl who's rarely ever sad for long.
• In Laid-Back Camp, despite Nadeshiko's given name literally being one half of Yamato Nadeshiko, she's too ditzy to actually fit the trope, as commented by many characters in-universe.
• Risa and Atsushi, the protagonists of Lovely★Complex have surnames that translate to "little spring" (Koizumi) and "big valley" (Otani), respectively. Their names would be fitting if it weren't for their contradictory heights.
• There's a relatively minor character named "Arisugawa Kintarou" in Maria Watches Over Us. Kintarou is named after a famous folklore hero renown for his strength and masculinity. Kintarou is a transgender Girly Girl who prefers going by the given name "Alice".
• Maria no Danzai: Nozomu Okaya first name is written with the kanji for "hope", and he horrifically bullies anyone deemed lesser than himself, tormenting and stripping them of every ounce of their hopes.
• Mission: Yozakura Family:
  • Goliath is named after the Biblical giant of a man. Goliath himself is a tiny little terrier.
  • Taiyo's name translates to "morning sun". Taiyo himself is a shy, meek recluse who struggles to interact with people without falling unconscious.
  • "Makoto" means "sincerity" or "truth" depending on how it's written. Makoto Kawashita is a duplicitous Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who thinks nothing of killing people, and takes sadistic pleasure in his activities.
• Mobile Suit Gundam:
  • One of the recurring minor villains in the second season of Mobile Suit Gundam 00 is a ruthless General Ripper and all-around Bad Boss, with zero redeeming virtues. His name? Arthur Goodman.
  • In the final episode of Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team, Shiro Amada, whose name is a homophone of the Japanese word for white, adopts a group of Artificial Newtype children, the eldest of whom is a black boy who is rechristened as Shiro Amada Junior.
• My Hero Academia:
  • One of the OVAs introduces one of Tsu's middle school friends, whose quirk is having a snake head. Her name is Habuko Mongoose.
  • Chapter 310 introduces a civilian woman whose mutant quirk makes her a ten feet tall creature. She is referred to solely as "Ordinary Woman".
• One Piece:
  • The island of Little Garden is only little to the huge prehistoric beasts that live there.
  • "Massacre Soldier" Killer seems to have an ironic name (if it's his real name, of course) and epitaph. Among all the Eleven Supernovas/ Worst Generation, he's the one of the Only Sane Man and anything but Ax-Crazy. He's the one who has to keep his captain, Eustass Kid, calm.
  • Trafalgar Law, despite literally being named “Law”, is a notorious outlaw.
  • The first half of the Grand Line is called "Paradise". Ironic, considering that the Grand Line is home to Weird Weather and giant sea monsters, among other phenomena. Turns out that the name isn't intended to be ironic: compared to the hellish New World, the first half is literally a paradise.
  • The Pacifista, a series of robotic humans modelled after the Warlord Bartholomew Kuma, are Killer Robot weapons that the Marines use against pirates. Their creator, Vegapunk, had intended them to live up to the name, having created them to act as soldiers of peace, but unfortunately, the Five Elders had other ideas.
• Pokémon: The Original Series: In the controversial 18th episode of the original series "Beauty and The Beach", a character of the day is an unattractive, Dirty Old Man named Moe.
• In Pokémon Adventures, the former Gym Leader was Falkner's father who, like his son, specializes in Flying-types. His name is Walker.
• Pretty Cure:
  • In Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash★Star, Saori, whose name meaning "weaving", is not a tailor or seamstress, but instead a baker.
  • In Suite Pretty Cure ♪, Ellen's name meaning "shining light". Ellen herself is a Dark Magical Girl with the darkest colour scheme of all the Cures.
  • In the Glitter Force dub of Smile PreCure!, Miyuki/Emily's hero name is Glitter Lucky. Normally, she is anything but.
  • In HappinessCharge Pretty Cure!, Iona's name can mean "blessed". However, Iona has suffered the most of the four Cures, having had her sister kidnapped and brainwashed to fight on the villains' side.
  • In Go! Princess Pretty Cure, Ibuki's name means "brave", however he is the most broken up about Haruka leaving to attend boarding school.
  • In Maho Girls Pretty Cure!, the "ko" in Kanako's name means "child", however she is the oldest member of Mirai's family, being her grandmother.
  • In KiraKira★Pretty Cure à la Mode, Akira's surname, Kenjou, means "sword" or "castle", implying royalty, however Akira is not associated with those things at all and is instead a modern-day high schooler.
  • In HuGtto! Pretty Cure, Sumire's name means "violet", however the only thing violet on her design is a small scrunchy, and her main colours are instead gray, black, and red.
  • In Hirogaru Sky! Pretty Cure, Sora's younger brother, who has blue eyes, blue hair, and typically wears blue clothing...is named Red.
• Zig-zagged with Homura in Puella Magi Madoka Magica, whose name means "flame". You'd expect a Hot-Blooded character, right? Homura is quiet, introspective, mysterious and her affect is rather flat. Madoka says she should act to match it. However, later on it is suggested that this 'flame' is of a more indirect, metaphorical meaning - as in 'flame of passion', hinting at her unending desire to avert Madoka's horrendous fate. Furthermore, Lucifer is also known as the 'light-bearer', explaining why there were so many things burning in Rebellion. This also explains her salamander motif in said movie, as they are the elementals of fire.
• Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei:
  • The given name of Nozomu Itoshiki means hope, which is ironic in light of his deeply pessimistic personality. It ends up becoming a Meaningful Name though in that due to a quirk in Japanese, the way his name is spelled in a western way (left to right rather than up to down) leads it to being misread as Zetsubou, meaning "Despair" or "Hopeless".
  • On the opposite side his brother Mikoto's name is written with the Kanji for 'Life', a Meaningful Name given he's a doctor by trade. When added to his family name in the same way, it becomes the Ironic Name Zetsume, meaning "Death".
• The Severing Crime Edge: Iwai's name means celebration. However, as she points out, she has nothing to celebrate due to her curse and the various dangers in her life.
• Space Patrol Luluco has Midori Save-The-World. Despite a very heroic sounding last name, she's the Token Evil Teammate. Although it's mentioned in supplemental material that she's descended from a race of space-eco-terrorists and she becomes chief of the Space Patrol Ogikubo branch in the epilogue.
• The kanji for "kyouka"^note 強化 translate into "to strengthen/fortify/bolster", but Kyouka Suigetsu from Superwomen in Love! suffers acute Villain Decay after Hayate and Honey defeat her for the first time.
• Fuka Reventon from ViVid Strike! is probably the single poorest named character in the entire Lyrical Nanoha franchise, yet she's named after one of the most expensive cars that Lamborghini ever produced.
• With the Light:
  • Hikaru's full name is Azuma Hikaru, or "light of the East", and upon hearing this name, his new father Masato's first hope was that Hikaru would grow up to climb the corporate ladder. His autism makes that unlikely.
  • Miyu means "beautiful feather", but she acts far less delicate than her name would suggest, as does the fifth-grade kendo champ Misaki, whose name means "beautiful blossoms".
• Zombie Land Saga: Pre-transition, Lily Hoshikawa's name was "Masao Go". This is a very masculine name (one of the kanji used to write it even means "male"), yet she's a cutesy girly girl. Saki lampshades how ultra-masculine the name "Masao" is.

Arts

• Raphael Rooms: The "The School of Athens" might be titled like that but only 1/3 of the people depicted there are Athenians. (Admittedly, several of the non-Athenians did live and study in Athens—most notably Aristotle, a Macedonian who both studied under Plato in Athens and then founded a school in Athens.)

Asian Animation

• In Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf, the Little Fairy is the same size as Jonie, the largest of the goats, and yet he has "little" in his name.

Comic Books

• The Avengers, despite a name that would imply an aggressive and uncompromising attitude out to punish criminals, have actually been one of the most welcoming and forgiving Super Teams for most of their history, with many of their members (Hawkeye, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, and Black Widow, just to name the more famous ones) being reformed villains.
• Batman: Kite Man is named Charles “Chuck” Brown after the Peanuts character of the same name who is infamously bad at flying kites.
• Captain America: In the early 80s a US spy ring was busted, led by Navy man John Walker. In the mid-80s Captain America was replaced by the Super-Patriot, who changed his name to U.S. Agent after Cap reclaimed the Captain America role. His real name: John Walker.
• Cyclops: Scott Summers lost any shred of idealism long ago.
• Empowered: The title character frequently ends up in fanservicey bondage situations and is plagued with self-confidence and body-image issues.
• The Fantastic Four: Ben Grimm has his moments, but for the most part he's a pretty jovial guy who loves kids.
• Zig-zagged with The Flash villain Murmur, who can't speak at all because he cut out his own tongue and sewed his mouth shut, but did so because his habit of muttering about the murders he committed (itself the source of his alias) was what got him convicted in the first place.
• Iznogoud: To quote Wa'at Alahf's mini-biography from the beginning of each book, "This fellow, despite his name, didn't laugh very often."
• Kraven the Hunter, a longtime enemy of Spider-Man, is many things — but despite "craven" being another word for "cowardly", Sergei Kravinov is anything but.
• Lex Luthor is the archenemy of Superman, the Superhero, and a major criminal mastermind. "Lex" is usually short for some variation of his current name, Alexander (his real name was also been given as Alexei or Alexis in the Gold and Silver/Bronze Ages, respectively), which is derived from the Greek word "Aléxandros" meaning "protector of men". "Lex" itself is Latin for "law".
• Ofelia from Mortadelo y Filemón. While Hamlet's Ophelia is portrayed as a fair, fragile, delicate maiden, the TIA secretary is her exact opposite: overweight, strong, aggressive and ill-tempered.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW): In "All in Moderation", the pony promoting an extremist stance against sugar and who has to be taught the value of moderation is named Temperance — that is, "moderation".
• New Gods:
  • Granny Goodness is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a nice old lady.
  • Amazing Grace is far from the saint her name implies.
• Planet Terry has Princess Ugly, who turns out to be beautiful when Terry and his friends go to search for her.
• The Smurfs: Each Smurf is named after their most notable personality trait, but Harmony Smurf is a Dreadful Musician.
• Transformers: Shattered Glass takes place in a Mirror Universe where the Autobots are evil and the Decepticons are good, making the latter faction's name ironic. Various characters that had Meaningful Names for their original personality likewise become this: for instance, Deathcobra and Black Shadow are now good guys.
• In The Umbrella Academy, Vanya ("gift of God") is The Team Normal who later goes on to destroy the world. Perhaps her mother wanted to make her feel appreciated?
• Watchmen:
  • Rorschach is an extreme moral absolutist who believes in a definitive, uncompromising right and wrong, who named himself after the famous test because he found it reflected his Black-and-White Morality and his attempts to impose order on an unordered world. However, the Rorschach Test's entire purpose is that there isn't a wrong answer for how to look at it, and everyone sees something different.
  • Ozymandias, who seeks to create world peace, took his name from one of the titles of Pharaoh Ramses II, as a symbol of his love for the grandeur of the past and his desire to build an empire of his own. The most famous use of the name, though, is in a Percy Shelley poem whose moral is simply that nothing lasts forever. (This is a reason for the common interpretation of the story that Ozy's "world peace" doesn't last long.)
• Wolverine's real name, Logan, is ironic as he is generally drawn as short, but Mount Logan is the highest mountain in Canada.
• Gay Frollik, a woman whom Wonder Woman rescued from a suicide attempt before befriending, was a straight-laced dour person from childhood, who became suicidal after spending years in prison for a murder she did not commit—though as she had hit the man to escape him and fled she wasn't certain if she was responsible—and having the only person she cared about die while she was locked up.
• Y: The Last Man: Yorick was named for the Shakespearean Posthumous Character of the same name and his most interesting trait is that he doesn't die. Similarly his sister Hero spends a lot of time as The Atoner for a good reason...

Fan Works

• Meet Sunshine Smiles of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, the eyepatch-wearing bat pony that is friends with / works for Princess Luna, the princess of the night. How he got the name makes perfect sense, but still...
• Godzilla fanfiction Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): Lubyov's name seems to be derived from the name Lubov, which means "love" or "beloved". For someone who was subjected to a Medical Rape and Impregnate, the irony in that name is cruel. Doubly ironic, by all accounts, Lubyov lacks her fellow victim Esfir's insane delusions of being loved by Ghidorah, and her other fellow victim Nadezhda's keenness on loving her offspring regardless of its origin.
• Pokémon one-shot fanfiction Confrontation: Jessie's maiden name is "Jessica Paton". Despite her name referring to patricians, she grew up poor.
• Ma Vie En Rose one-shot fanfiction C'est ma vie: Subverted. Luce always thought that her deadname Ludovic, which translates to "famous fighter", was ironic. It wasn't until her teens that she realized what a fighter it was. She believes it would have been a fitting name for her if she had been a boy.
• Danganronpa: Komm Susser Tod: Masato Oda's first name means "greatness", and his surname is that of one of Japan's most infamous warlords. He's a lowly worker at a Burger Fool fully convinced that nobody cares about him.
• Geometry Dash Episodes stars Totalpro64, a complete Noob at Geometry Dash who took one million attempts to complete its first level.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender fanfiction The Legend of Genji: Bolin named his youngest daughter after his idol and grandmother-in-law, Toph Beifong. Despite her namesake being a legendary earthbender and the inventor of metalbending, Toph Beifong II herself is actually an airbender.^note In-universe, air is widely viewed as the element opposite to earth.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure/Miraculous Ladybug crossover fanfiction Miracles on the Golden Wind: Pannacotta Fugo is given the hero name "Medico" by Mista since his disguise (as the visiting Passione members are Hero with Bad Publicity outside of Italy) is a doctor costume. This is made ironic because Fugo's Stand Purple Haze is a Poisonous Person with the power to Make Them Rot, which both of them lampshades.
• Harry Potter fanfiction Muggle Intervention: One of the main characters is a policeman named Rob Banks.
• RWBY fanfiction Null: An Atlesian arms company calling itself "Chivalric Arms" kidnaps and murders hundreds of innocent civilians, including children, while committing human rights violations on par with the worst concentration camps of 20th century Earth.
• Lord of the Rings fanfiction Pip-napped: One of Pippin's kidnappers is named "Tiny". He happens to be the fattest man Pippin has ever seen.
• Pretty Cure fanfiction PreCure in a Nutshell: Tsubomi, who is canonically a Shrinking Violet, gets the parody name of "Tsundere", which denotes loudness and haughiness.
• The Project Arrhythmia custom level series Black Heart plays with this. The boss Colossus is a microscopic virus, but he actually does appear giant since you fight him from the perspective of a white blood cell.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil fanfiction Queens of Mewni:
  • Solena, acknowledged as the first of the Night Queens of Mewnian prophecy, is named for the sun.
  • Vesper, who is known as "The Morning Star" and ushered in the Mewnian Renaissance, is named for the word for 'dusk', as her mother, the mad queen Heaven, believed she would be the destruction of the Butterfly Kingdom.
• The Muggle Schoolteacher mentions a goblin healer named Deathwish.
• Forge's Opposite-Sex Clone in My Copy sarcastically suggests she be named Makkitotosimew but the person filling out the form thinks she's serious. Now she's a woman with a flat chest and a name that means She Who Has Large Breasts.
• In Pokemon Opal And Garnet, one of Kaylie's Pokemon is a moralistic Emberhund who cares deeply about injustice. That injustice-hating Emberhund's name? Frollo. As in, the cruel, cold-hearted, Knight Templar judge from The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
• In A Quiet Night In one of Harry's Auror instructors, Barry Wellbeloved, is far from even being liked due to his Drill Sergeant Nasty status.
• In Two butterflies: gone with the wind., Mirabel finds it hilarious that the Madrigals' mansion sized family home is called "Casita" (little house) while hers and Bruno's smaller four room home is called "Casa" (house).
• In the Punch-Out!! fanfic Ma Fille, Glass Joe, a homely, weak klutz, is given the surname Beaufort, which means "beauty and strength".
• A Thing of Vikings: Both Adalwin and his real name Alvin are names that mean "noble friend". Adalwin is neither.

Films — Animation

• Atlantis: Milo's Return has Edgar Volgud. His name seems a bastardization of the German vohl gut ("all a-okay", "entirely good"). Did we mention he's the Age Without Youth soul-bankrupt antagonist with hardly any redeeming qualities to his name?
• The main family's last name in The Incredibles is Parr, meaning "average". Something the Parrs definitely are not.
• In Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, Alex finally reunites with his lost parents when he and his friends find themselves in Africa after a failed plane ride back to New York. During a ceremony, Alex (who unbeknownst to him thinks it's a dance-off) must fight and defeat another lion as a rite of passage into the pride as alpha lion. Alex's father's scheming rival, Makunga, tricks him into parring with a lion named "Tsetse". When the time comes for the rite of passage, Alex does indeed choose Tsetse, who turns out to be something like the Incredible Lion Hulk, and defeats him in one blow. The name comes from tsetse fly, a genus of flies, which actually are EXTREMELY dangerous because they carry African sleeping sickness so it may not be so ironic at all.
• My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Friendship Games:
  • Sugarcoat doesn't seem to sugarcoat anything, and in fact is blunt to the point of tactlessness.
  • The Friendship Games themselves are anything but friendly.
• In the Rainbow Magic movie, the three dumb goblins are named Newton, Leonardo, and Edison.
• Wreck-It Ralph: The Nicelanders are extremely rude and hostile toward Ralph. Generally, a case of the Nice Character, Mean Actor trope.
• Zootopia
  • Nick explains that Flash is the fastest guy at the DMV, who turns out to be a sloth. Then subverted in the ending, where Flash is revealed to be a street racer.
  • Tundra Town's most notorious crime boss, Mr. Big, turns out to be a shrew, one of the smallest species of mammals.

Films — Live-Action

• Aliens: Private Frost dies by getting accidentally roasted by a fellow Marine's flamethrower.
• Angel Terminators: Bullet, from the second movie, is killed by a bullet.
• Attack of the Clones: Early in the movie, Obi Wan is trying to locate Kamino, the whereabouts of the mastermind behind the failed assassination of Padme. The name Kamino comes from the Spanish word camino, which means "path". However, this planet was erased from the official map of the galaxy, so Obi Wan is unable to locate it and thus cannot devise a path to reach it until he consults Yoda about it.
• Benigno's name in Pedro Almodóvar's Talk to Her translates as "harmless", and it certainly seems to fit the sweet, demure nurse, until it is revealed he has raped Alicia, the coma patient in his care.
• A meta-example with the title of the Tom Cruise film American Made, as the film is an American-Japanese International Coproduction between Universal and Toho, as are most Universal films since 2009.
• The hotel in Are You Being Served? is called the Don Bernardo Palace Hotel, but the Grace Brothers staff are required to sleep in tents as their rooms aren't ready yet.
• Basic Instinct: Catherine means 'pure'. She is a murderous vamp.
• The Dark Crystal: The Skeksis scientist's laboratory, where he keeps all those jailed critters and drains Podlings and Gelflings from their vital essence? Its official name is "The Chamber of Life."
• Dear White People: Sam White identifies strongly as being black.
• The Devil's Advocate: Christabella, aka "Christ the Beautiful", is the Daughter of Satan.
• The Devil Wears Prada: Rather ironic that the titular Devil is named Miranda Priestly.
• In Die Hard, the terrorists arrive in a truck labeled "Pacific Courier" which translates to "Bringer of Peace".
• Doctor... Series:
  • Drs. Richard Hare and Tony Burke from Doctor in Love have the same surnames as a pair of notorious killers from the 19th century.
  • Miss Sweet (the Matron from Doctor in Clover) is anything but, instead being a bad-tempered Battleaxe Nurse.
• DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story has Big Bad and Jerkass supreme White Goodman.
• In Enchanted, Disney's Affectionate Parody of itself, Nancy, who is about to marry a single father, has the same last name ("Tremaine") as the Wicked Stepmother in Cinderella. Nancy turns out to be perfectly nice, wants her beloved to be happy and snags the prince at the end.
• Erik the Viking: Leif the Lucky is actually pretty unlucky, being among the earliest crew members to die when he falls off the ship's mast.
• Ernest P. Worrell who despite his name, is anything but earnest.
• Fear Street: The Goode family it turns out are responsible for all the murders which occurred since the late 1600s, due to a pact with Satan.
• The Fifth Element: "Jean-Baptiste" and "Emmanuel" are a pair of given names rich in Christian symbolism. So they're given to Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg, an insane and callous weapons magnate with a fetish for "creative" destruction.
• In a subtle version which crosses over with Shout-Out, the protagonist of the The Fly (1986) is named Seth Brundle. His surname is taken from that of Martin Brundle, a famous British racecar driver (David Cronenberg is a huge racing buff)^note the sequel The Fly II names his son Martin to continue the gag...but Seth suffers from chronic motion sickness and says early on "I hate vehicles." It's a, if not the, key reason he became interested in teleportation technology.
• In The Force Awakens, John Boyega's character takes on the name "Finn", which means "white" or "fair" in Irish.
• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: "The Ugly"'s name is Tuco Benedicto Pacífico Juan María Ramírez. "Benedicto" means "blessed" and "Pacifico" means "peaceful," fitting names for a violent Bandito who suffers the most of all the main characters.
• Higher Learning: Malcolm Xerox Fudge's last name is White, it turns out, to Malik's incredulity.
• The ship that Stan takes Mavis on to have it off with her is unnamed in Holiday on the Buses, but in the trailer, it is called the "SS Platonic".
• Holocaust 2000: The Antichrist has the given name "Angel".
• In The Impostors, Happy Franks is so depressed he keeps trying to kill himself.
• Insomnia: Dormer's name is a cognate for the word "to sleep" in several Romance languages. Even moreso, his first name is "Will." His name is literally "the will to sleep" when in fact he is The Insomniac.
• Richmond Valentine from Kingsman: The Secret Service. "Valentine" is widely known as the holiday to offer love towards your fellow man. On the other hand, this Valentine has nothing but contempt for humanity and is engineering a worldwide Hate Plague.
• In Mean Girls 2, the promiscuous member of the new Plastics is named Chastity.
• Monty Python's Life of Brian: The Judean Popular People's Front has only one member.
• My Animal: Heather is more butch, with a conventional name. Jonny is feminine, though her name comes off as more butch (granted, it's a nickname for Jonine).
• Pacific Rim: The Kaiju Otachi's name is a corruption of odachi, or greatsword in Japanese. Guess how she's killed.
• In Please Turn Over, the womanizing, playboy doctor from Naked Revolt is Dr. Adam Gay.
• The Big Bad of The Postman is a warlord who shares his name with Bethlehem, the town where Jesus, one of the most famous pacifists ever to live, was born.
• The Punisher (2004): Contrary to what their name implies, the Saints are ruthless mobsters responsible for the death of Frank Castle's family.
• In Room, while Ma's name was never revealed in the book, in the movie, it was revealed to be Joy.
• In The Suicide Squad, Starro the Conqueror was given that name by the Thinker as a joke (the Thinker has held it in captivity since it was discovered).
• The Summer of Sangaile: Sangaile means "with strength". However, Sangaile is pretty quiet and passive, while noting her mom said she didn't really deserve her name. A major part of her arc includes growing strong and thus fulfilling it.
• Tango from Tango & Cash has made a small fortune playing the stock market. Thus, he's wealthier than his partner, Cash.
• In Up Pompeii, Lurcio points out the irony of Ludicrus Sextus to the audience:
  Lurcio: This is my master, Ludicrus Sextus. All "tus" and no "sex".
• Vicious Fun: Out of all the serial killers in this movie, the most dangerous one is named Bob Nice (pronounced like "niece").
• The Wind (1928): What would you name a town in the middle of a bone-dry desert that is afflicted by neverending, punishing winds? "Sweet Water", of course.

Jokes

• One fake flyer reads, "Lost dog. Three legs, ear missing, blind in one eye, tail broken, recently castrated, answers to the name, 'Lucky'."
• A classic Rakugo tale, "Jugemu", features this. The titular child's Overly Long Name is made up of several characters blessing him with long life and prosperity, only for him to suddenly die young in a drowning accident.

Literature

• Angela Nicely: Mrs. Nicely, despite her last name, is actually quite a cross-patch, complaining about things such as messes and Mrs. Charmers’ bragging.
• In The Bad Guys, the dour and gothic Agent Doom's real name is Joy. Mr. Snake taunts her mercilessly over this when he finds out.
• In Beauty: A Retelling of Beauty and the Beast, Beauty is plain-looking compared to her more beautiful sisters Grace and Hope. The irony disappears at the end, however, when she learns that her time at the Beast's castle has turned her into a true beauty.
• Blandings Castle: Galahad shares the name of the purest knight from Arthurian Legend. It's Lampshaded at least once how ill-fitting this is.
• The Cask of Amontillado: "Fortunato" (Italian for "Fortunate") is a very ironic name for a guy who gets buried alive.
• Shoemaker Snäll from Children of Noisy Village. Snäll is Swedish for kind, but he's an alcoholic Jerkass who abuses his dog.
• A Certain Magical Index: Ayu Mitsuari's family name actually fits her (Mitsuari means "honeypot ant" and that is her Animal Motif), but her given name Ayu means "love" and "joy" while she is a very bitter and angry person.
• In Children of the Red King, the albino protagonist is named Billy Raven. On the other hand, it fits his power.
• Chocoholic Mysteries: In Jewel Case, two of the characters are revealed in the last chapter to be named John Tallboy and Kurt Small. However, their surnames and their physical descriptions are exact opposites: Tallboy is short, and Small is tall.
• The Complete Adventures of Lucky Starr: John Bigman Jones; he's 5'2", and sensitive about height jokes. (Bigman seems to be his legal middle name, but he insists on using it due to his obsession that people not overlook him.)
• Cudjo's Cave: Dr. Villars named one of his daughters after Virginia, the same state that now leads the Confederacy that both father and daughter strongly disapprove of.
• The Devil is a Part-Timer! has a character named Miki Shiba. According to her, Miki means "shining beauty", which doesn't describe her at all. However, she apparently used to be rather beautiful.
• The Devil Wears Prada: Rather ironic that the titular Devil is named Miranda Priestly.
• The Dinosaur Lords: Little Nell is a two-tonnes dinosaur much bigger than a horse.
• Patience, in Dinoverse. Impatience isn't her primary personality trait, but it's among them.
• Discworld
  • The Carters from Lords and Ladies: the daughters, as is traditional, are all named after virtues (Hope, Patience, Chastity), but then Mr and Mrs Carter got a bit confused and named all the sons after vices (Bestiality, Covetousness, Anger). None of the children live up to their names. Bestiality Carter is also part of a second, unconnected joke where none of the Lancrastian characters with occupational surnames actually have that career, with Carter being a baker, Baker a weaver (as is Tailor), Weaver a thatcher, and Thatcher a carter.
  • Adora Belle Dearheart from Going Postal is anything but adorable. Most people who know her call her "Killer". Her love interest, Moist von Lipwig, calls her "Spike". Mind you, she's a wonderful person, just not "adorable".
  • Captain Murderer from Snuff is a smuggler (but quite attached to his name).
  • Short Street is the longest street in Ankh-Morpork.
  • Also in Snuff, Vimes meets a retired soldier who introduces himself as "Colonel Charles Augustus Makepeace — strange name for a military man, or perhaps not, I don’t know."
  • "Nobby" Nobbs, street urchin turned "soldier" (read: battlefield looter) turned low-ranking copper, whose surname is English slang for "posh person". Feet of Clay indicates that it might be just a Meaningful Name after all, with some indications that he's the heir to the seemingly defunct Earldom of Ankh; however, he runs away from his first big encounter with the nobility, and between his own disinterest in claiming the title, the ulterior motives of the genealogist making the claim, and the fire at the College of Heralds at the climax of the story, it settled back down to ironic again.
• The Divine Comedy:
  • There's an idiot in Purgatory punished for reveling in the suffering of her neighbors, and she points out that, "Although my name is Sapia, I was anything but Sapient."
  • The lowest sphere of Heaven is relegated to the inconstant who failed their vows in some way, so it is quite the coincidence that a woman named "Constanza" is one of the two saints the protagonist meets here.
• One of the protagonists of Doctrine of Labyrinths is named Felix, as in "lucky," but his misfortunes include Mind Rape, slavery, forced prostitution, physical torture, temporary insanity, incarceration in a dungeon and a Bedlam House, frame-ups for murder and treason, exile, and the horrible deaths of various people close to him.
• The short fantasy comedy Dragon-in-Distress has Sir George, who is trying to rescue his dragon. The irony comes from his namesake: St. George, famed for being a dragonslayer.
• Dreamspeaker: One of the three main characters, He Who Would Sing, can't even talk, let alone sing. Subverted at the end after he goes to the afterlife. Peter and the Shaman watch him as he sing loudly.
• Charity Carpenter in The Dresden Files is notably short on her namesake virtue, particularly where Harry is concerned, until Molly rakes her over the coals for it in Proven Guilty. She's not a bad person - just overprotective and dealing badly with guilt - but it is worth noting that despite her husband being one of Harry's closest friends, she still treated him like some kind of enemy, giving him only very sparing and begrudging help, until nearly the end of book eight.
  Harry: I hear they make antiseptics that don't sting anymore. But Charity used iodine.
• Durarara!! has Shizuo Heiwajima whose name means "quiet hero/peaceful island". Shizuo is a Hot-Blooded man with Hair-Trigger Temper who can barely spend a day without getting into a violent fight — especially if Izaya is involved.
• In Everworld, Jalil at one point mentions that his name is Hindi for "godlike," and Lampshades how odd that is for an African-American atheist. Also, the queen of the Amazons is named Pretty Little Flower.
• Falling in Love With the Villainess: Olivia's bodyguard is named Yuri. While Yuri does have a Bodyguard Crush on Olivia, he also happens to be a man.
• Felix Castor: What do you call a character who accidentally killed his own little sister a second time, accidentally made his best friend's Demonic Possession permanent (and had to do it a second time to save the world) and is in unrequited love with a lesbian succubus? If you're Mike Carey, you name him Felix ("lucky") and, for good measure, name the poor bastard with the chronic Demonic Possession Rafael.
• Lampshaded twice in The Fifth Season:
  • The story is set on "The Stillness", a continent rife with earthquakes, supervolcanoes, tsunamis, and other seismic phenomena that periodically turn the place into a Death World. The narration calls it "a land of quiet and bitter irony".
  • Graduates of the Fulcrum are given a rock-themed name as a nod to their Dishing Out Dirt powers. A man with extremely black skin turns out to be named Alabaster, which Syenite assumes to have been a joke on someone's part.
• Gods and Warriors: Hylas and Issi had a herding dog called Scram who's been killed at the beginning of the series. They liked to play with him by shouting "Scram! Scram!", causing him to come racing towards them instead of scramming.
• Pippin Galadriel Moonchild in Good Omens goes by Pepper, as she is a short scruffy tomboy with a temper.
• The Greater Good: Anyone who knows the word meaning would expect a planet named Fecundia to be a bountiful agri-world. Instead, it's a heavily polluted ^note to the point where tithe workers are advised to get life-support augmetics so they'll last longer Forge World.
• The Great Gatsby: The flower Myrtle Wilson is named after represents amongst other things, martial fidelity. Myrtle cheats on her husband as she has an affair with Tom Buchanan.
• Serena Joy from The Handmaid's Tale is especially ironic. Not only is she neither serene, nor joyful about being forced into a housewife role. Before Gilead came into being she preached the sanctity of the home and stated all women should give up work and focus on child rearing. She gets exactly what she wants and the irony clearly isn't lost on her.
  • Moira means 'fate' in Greek but she's an outright rebel who refuses to accept the situation the Aunts of Gilead try to put her in. Until she ends up at Jezebel's that is.
• In Harry Potter, Amycus Carrow is one of Voldemort's Death Eaters, but his name is similar to the Latin word amicus, which means friend. (This is, however, coincidental, as the name is derived from the Greek Amykos.)
• The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter features a character named John Singer. He's a deaf mute.
• Horatio Hornblower: Hornblower is tonedeaf and hates music. In addition to this, he habitually engages in Heroic Self-Deprecation, the opposite of “blowing one's own horn.”
• In Garry Kilworth's House of Tribes, every single member of the mouse tribe "Invisibles" has that kind of a name; Hearallthings (deaf), Goingdownfast (an excellent swimmer), Ferocious (the meekest one), etc.
• In the Jacob's Ladder Trilogy, the various AIs are named after angels. Samael, whose name means "Poison of God", holds the role of Angel of Life Support.
• Jeeves and Wooster:
  • "Wooster" is an old Scots word meaning "one who woos". Much of the story is about Bertie trying to find a gentlemanly way out of Accidental Proposals.
  • Charlotte Corday Rowbotham is a revolutionary who was named after Charlotte Corday by her father, who thought it was a good name for a revolutionary. Her father didn't do the research because Corday was trying to stop the French Revolution.
• In Jennifer Scales and the Messenger of Light, the twisted, monstrous villain with darkness-related powers is named Evangelos, which means "Messenger of Light".
• The Kitty Norville series is about a werewolf named Kitty. Whenever anyone comments on it, she says the name came first.
• The eponymous character of the Koziołek Matołek series has a name that means literally "silly billy-goat". However, he isn't really stupid, and the narrative even notes several times how smart and clever he is.
• In the foreword of Agatha Christie's The Labours of Hercules, the irony of Hercule Poirot's name (as he is a highly cerebral Armchair Detective named after an Anti-Heroic Boisterous Bruiser) is pointed out to him by a classicist, leading him to take a series of 12 cases with allusions to the classical labours of Hercules.
• Varsian the Immortal from Lacuna dies moments after introducing himself.
• Festina Ramos from The League of Peoples 'Verse: in Expendable, she bitterly notes in her narration that "Festina" means "The Happy One" and her typical state of mind is anything but happy.
• The Legend of the Condor Heroes: Zhang A'sheng (張阿生), the fifth brother of the Seven Freaks of the South, has the Chinese word for "life/birth" (生) in his name. He's the first of the Seven Freaks to die and doesn't even live past the first few chapters of the novel.
• In The Lord of the Rings, Samwise's name means roughly "half-smart", "simple", or "dumb." Though he does come from a common background and have less education than Frodo, throughout the adventure, Sam shows himself to be anything but stupid.
• The main character from the French series The Malaussène Saga is named Benjamin (which can be French slang for the youngest sibling in the family) and he's the eldest child of a very quirky household.
• In The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Biplab Dasgupta works for the Intelligence Bureau. Diplab means 'revolutionary' in his mother-tongue Bengali.
• The Moon and the Sun has the Count de Chrétien, who is an atheist. Several characters comment on the irony of his name.
• Nina Tanleven: Discussed in The Ghost Wore Gray - Nine notes in the narration that "Dieter" might seem like a funny name for a cook, but then adds that it isn't said like it looks (the actual pronunciation is Deeter).
• In Nocturne, it's actually lampshaded how poorly the flamboyant and melodramatic Modesty Brabazon's name fits her.
• Since An Observation Log of My Fiancée Who Calls Herself a Villainess involves an Hourglass Plot in relation to the Fictional Video Game which two young Japanese women transmigrated into, what's supposed to be Meaningful Names are turned to this:
  • Bertia's middle name is Ibil, which sounds like "evil". Bertia is perhaps the least evil person in existence.
  • Heronia's name is similar to "heroine". Despite being the main character of the otome game Bertia played in her past life, Heronia is merely an obstacle in Cecil's way, because she can't accept she isn't the heroine.
• The protagonist of Pięć Przygód Detektywa Konopki goes by diminutive form of his name (Pankracy), Pikuś. As a noun "pikuś" means something tiny and unlikely to cause a problem. Pikuś Konopka as a person is a Pint-Sized Powerhouse of a Great Detective and causes a great deal of problems to the bad guys.
• The Postman: The Holnists' call their domain "the Free Realm", with their military being the "American Liberation Army". They're a slave society and seek to conquer everyone else around them. No doubt they would not view this as ironic however-rather as the freedom of the strong to crush or rule the weak, without restraints.
• In one of the Queens Thief books, Attolia and Eddis have a wry conversation about their ill-fitting birth names. Irene and Helen, respectively—one means peace, one is the woman whose face launched a thousand ships, and they know they don't fit the bill.
• In the Robin Hood stories, Little John's Ironic Nickname directly derives from his given name, John Little.
• Robot Series: The "Spacers" are humans from the fifty interstellar colony worlds. While the Spacer name is used by both people from Earth and the Spacers themselves, the Spacer Worlds are so utopian in terms of wealth and standard of living, and the Spacers themselves Long-Lived and spoiled by luxury supported by armies of robot servants, that they have become chronically risk-averse, and the vast majority of them never actually leave the planets that they are born on to engage in space travel.
• In Ro.Te.O, Ryou's name means "cool" or "refreshing" (both relating to water because of kanji given by Word of God). Ryou has fire powers.
• In The Saddle Club, Carole has a cat named Snowball — a black cat named Snowball. Doubles as a Meaningful Name, since Carole intentionally gave the cat an ironic name to reflect his contrary nature.
• In The Seven Lady Godivas, one of Dr. Seuss' more obscure books, the obese Godiva sister is named Teenie.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • Two of the Freys have names that are ironic in terms of who they are named for. The severely mentally retarded Aegon (generally known as Jinglebell because his Jerkass grandfather makes him act as a jester) is named after a great military leader and ruler. Similarly, Rhaegar Frey, a slimy and totally mediocre man, is named after a Pretty Boy Knight in Shining Armor who was both a sensitive intellectual and a military genius.
  • "Big Walder" Frey is significantly smaller than his younger cousin "Little Walder" Frey.
  • In-universe, "Spotted Pate" is a folklore character who, while dim-witted, was Born Lucky and always succeeds/makes nobles look ridiculous (basically the equivalent to Jack, Hans, etc. in our folklore). As a result, it is a popular name for Westerosi peasants. However, (perhaps because they are peasants) most of the Pates in-story are singularly unlucky:
  • At one point, the outlaw Tom O'Sevens is listing his grievances against the Lannisters, and he names at least five Pates he knew whose deaths he blames on them, including his cousin Ser Pate who was killed in a tourney by Gregor Clegane.
  • Another Pate is the royal whipping boy and gets flogged for bad deeds by the Princes (or just when Cersei wants to teach her son a lesson).
  • Pate of Oldtown was murdered and had his identity stolen by a shape-shifting assassin.
  • The Brave Companions is a mercenary band of criminals, psychos and exiles from across the narrow sea. Despite their title, they aren't particularly renowned for bravery, being mostly cowards that sides for whoever is winning at the moment and are better at hurting innocents than fighting. They are better known for other nicknames such as "Bloody Mummers" or "Footman", but don't dare to call them that to their faces if you want to keep your limbs.
  • The Valyrian "Freehold" was the largest slave-dependent empire in the world, with territorial expansions being used as a pretext to acquire more slaves. Similarly, eight of the nine Free Cities in Essos practice slavery, with Braavos being the only exception because it was founded by runaway slaves.
  • The Good Masters of Astapor, the Wise Masters of Yunkai, and the Great Masters of Meereen are anything but. Their names are euphemisms for their roles as enforcers of the cities' network of slave trade.
• Each of John Steakley's novels features a character named Felix ("happy/lucky") who is Blessed with Suck.
• Stick Dog: One of the characters in the book is a dog named Stripes. The irony is that Stripes is a Dalmatian, a breed of dog known for being covered in spots.
• The Stormlight Archive: Ivory, an inkspren, is jet black but named after a material famous for its white color. He chose the name himself, as a symbol of defiance.
• In The Suitcase Kid, Zen is the exact opposite of calm and peaceful; he's loud-mouthed, never sits still, is occasionally violent and enrolled in karate classes to try and channel his energy into something less destructive.
• Survivor Dogs:
  • Sweet is not sweet. When Lucky meets her in the first book, she's a timid and easily frightened dog, but when they meet again in the second book she's the stern and serious beta of the Wild Pack. As an alpha, Sweet is a Reasonable Authority Figure but she's not to be reckoned with.
  • Lucky's name zigzags between being an ironic name and being a Meaningful Name depending on what's happening. Alpha even calls Lucky's name a "cruel joke" before kicking him out of the pack. Lucky always ends up okay in the end, but he's always attracted trouble and misfortune.
• Tales of Kaimere: Played with. The Silent Ones of Kiashel are named as their presence and great sense of hearing forces all life near or in the forest to be as quiet as possible. They, as the derived-tetrapods Moorkutlot, are actually quite noisy due to their echolocation, which they use to find their prey and sound like cackling fire.
• Togetherly Long: Oukii and Chiisai, whose names mean, "big" and, "small" respectively in Japanese, but who are actually small and big respectively.
• Another Agatha Christie example is one half of spy duo Tommy and Tuppence; Tuppence's real name is Prudence, but she is the more hot-headed and impetuous of the two, very rarely ever acting with any.
• The Traitor Son Cycle: The name "Gabriel" means "God is my strongman". Gabriel in the story believes that God hates him, and reciprocates the feeling.
• Warrior Cats:
  • The name Petal is usually for a soft-spoken and kind she-cat. But as for Petal from Dawn Of The Clans...as Thunder says: "Which cat named her 'Petal'? There's nothing soft about her!"
  • The character Quick Water hates water, much to the amusement of Turtle Tail.
• Gleeman Thom Merrilin from The Wheel of Time is only "merry" when he's performing or is trying to butter up a potential client. Otherwise, he's more of a Nice Character, Mean Actor cum Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
• In Wicked, the atheistic and Ambiguously Evil Wicked Witch of the West is named "Elphaba" after the Unionist saint Aelphaba of the Waterfall.
• Glory from Wings of Fire has a noble sounding name. She was disliked by the dragons who her named her due to being a RainWing and being a spare who was only taken in because they lost the right egg for The Prophecy.
  • Queen Scarlet's name is a synonym for "red". Her scales are orange.

Live-Action TV

• Once on 2 Broke Girls, Max Black runs into an old friend of hers, Becky White. Max is Caucasian and Becky is African-American.
• In The Assassination of Gianni Versace, Andrew's dad is a self-aggrandizing con artist who never tires of boasting about how he built himself up from nothing. His name? Modesto.
• Lucky in BattleBots seems to be an unintentional example. More often than not, something happens in Lucky's fights that causes it to break and stop working, whether that be the opponent's weapon managing to hit a 2-millimeter gap that disables its wheels or unexplained malfunctions that never came up during pre-match testing. As the unofficial blog puts it:
  BattleBots Update: Lucky is a robot that's anything but.
• In the miniseries The Bible: Nebuchadnezzar sees the humor in sacking and burning Jerusalem.
  Nebuchadnezzar: (to his charioteer) You know what "Jerusalem" means? "City of peace!" (both laugh)
• The Brittas Empire gives us Gordon Wellesley Brittas. Sir Arthur Wellesley (better known as The Duke of Wellington) was one of the greatest English generals of all time, and never lost a battle. This is in contrast to Brittas, who has a tendency to cause chaos and is a Pointy-Haired Boss.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • The show seems to love doing this. You'd think that characters with names like Angel, Faith, Harmony and Glory would be heroic characters, but they're all villains. While Angel does pull a Heel–Face Turn eventually, he's still a vampire and becomes more of an Anti-Hero than a shining example of heroism. Faith also does a Heel–Face Turn thanks to Angel. Harmony eventually becomes Angel's secretary. She's still evil, just not very good at it. Of the four, Glory is the only really purely evil one (and she's at least Faux Affably Evil).
  • It should be noted that Angel specifically picked his name to be ironic (his real name is Liam): he is the "vampire with the angelic face." His evil side, when it resurfaces, is referred to with the much more intimidating name of "Angelus".
• The Cape: Orwell, the alias of a hacker who uses surveillance cameras to track bad guys (quite the opposite from in Nineteen Eighty-Four).
• Chespirito does this with the nerdy unattractive neighbor in Los Chifladitos once her name is revealed to be Zoila Expectación del Macho (meaning I am the Male's Expectation).
• One episode of CHiPs revolved around a new communications system and a new dispatcher. However, said dispatcher suffers from speaking issues and has a grating voice. Getraer later reveals her name is Kathy Lark and comments on the irony.
• A later-season episode of CSI: NY has Flack and Jo interviewing two street thugs nicknamed "Black Mike" and "White Mike". Things got confusing when it's revealed that Black Mike, who is black, is really named Mike White, and White Mike, who is white, is really named Mike Black.
• Dead Like Me: Lampshaded when George wonders who on earth named her shrewish, perpetually aggravated mother "Joy". It becomes harsher when Joy gets more Character Focus and Flashbacks to show her struggling as a parent while their home life grows colder, and when Joy's Blithe Spirit mother (who, presumably, named her) visits and makes light of Joy's problems.
• The title character of Doctor Syn ("The Scarecrow"). An American fugitive who's sent to him for sanctuary is taken aback on being told that the local vicar is named Syn, but it is (as Walt Disney makes sure to point out in one intro) spelled with a y, not an i.
• Doctor Who: In "The Next Doctor", Miss Hartigan lampshades her first name during Reverend Fairchild's funeral:
  You've walked past me so many times, all you good men of charity, never once asking my name.
  [a minute later, after her Cybermen start killing the wealthy attendees of the funeral]
  It's funny, now I think of it, but in all these years not one of you has asked my first name. It's Mercy.
• Drop the Dead Donkey has Gus Hedges' sarcastic, cynical, caustic, occasionally violent PA, who scares most of her colleagues - including the ones who've reported from warzones. Her name; Joy Merryweather.
• The Dukes of Hazzard: Starting around season 3, Sheriff Rosco started a K-9 unit by acquiring Flash. Flash is a lazy Basset Hound who does nothing but loaf around, receive Rosco's affections, and occasionally bark at Boss Hogg.
• Mike Stoker, both the character on Emergency! and the Real Life firefighter who played him. Historically, stokers kept fires burning in places like metal foundries and steamships. Mike, however, put them out.
• The Expanse has the Rocinante, the legitimately salvaged Martian gunship that the heroes ride around in, often disguised as a freighter. While the name is meaningful given Holden's tendancy to tilt at windmills, the name literally means formerly a workhorse in Spanish.
• Jayne in Firefly probably counts. His name is an actual male name but rather rare, and is usually thought of as a female name, which River lampshades once. It contrasts a lot with Jayne's nature as a mercenary and Token Evil Teammate who's in it for himself and for the money.
• Meta-example: The Goldbergs were confirmed to be Jewish in season three. This includes Barry, who's played by Troy Gentile.
• A one-off villain in Have Gun – Will Travel is a gunslinger named Manfred. The irony of a hot-tempered killer being named "man of peace" in Old German is commented on by Paladin.
• Horatio Hornblower: Midshipman Clayton observes that there never has been a man more wrongly named than Captain Keene. He's an old and tired gentleman who keeps coughing and breathing heavily, barely managing to captain his ship. However, at least he can be an entertaining Deadpan Snarker, and surprisingly, he doesn't die of his illness and old age.
• On House of Anubis it seems that Joy's name will never fit her life, considering she was kidnapped, the boy she loved for a while rejected her constantly and rather harshly, her friends all seemed to like Nina more, and when she finally fell in love again it was ripped away from her at the end. No wonder her nickname is Joyless...
• Liv Moore in iZombie is a zombie named "Live More".
• Inside George Webley: Mr. Marigold from "A Lovesome Thing" is ironically a terrible gardener.
• Kamen Rider: "Ichi" in Japanese means "one", but Hayato Ichimonji is well-known for being the second Kamen Rider.
• Kenan & Kel: In "The Graduates", Kel's middle name is revealed to be Einstein Hypothalamus, although he does mention his parents are rich scientists and is sometimes shown to be Genius Ditz.
• The titular Legends of Tomorrow were recruited because they had little impact in history from the future where the recruiter was from.
• The Man from U.N.C.L.E.: Napoleon Solo was intended to have a Meaningful Name, but his chemistry with Breakout Character Illya Kuryakin was so strong that they became attached at the hip halfway through season one and stayed that way.
• The BBC show Merlin (2008) has a villain called Valiant, who was using underhanded tactics to cheat in a tournament.
• In the final episode of The Nanny, C.C. Babcock's full name was revealed to be Chastity Claire, a very delicate and feminine name that contrasted sharply with the abrasive Ice Queen C.C. When the name was revealed, everybody in the room (including a woman in the middle of delivering a baby) all looked at her completely shocked.
• Prudence from One Big Happy is a Manic Pixie Dream Girl who generally acts on impulse, likes to have fun and is not adverse to going around the house naked. In short, the complete opposite of what she's named after.
• Parks and Recreation: Leslie Knope would be a perfect name for an Obstructive Bureaucrat, but Leslie is the most helpful, enthusiastic bureaucrat imaginable.
• Person of Interest features two (originally one) artificial intelligences. One is called "The Machine" (a term often used for an uncaring system that treats people like interchangeable units of no worth), and the other, "Samaritan" (as in "Good Samaritan"). The former is the good one and the latter is the evil one.
• Richie Rich: As Richie Rich notes in the first episode, his name was ironic until one week ago. Unlike previous versions of the character, he wasn't born into wealth.
• Scorpion has Happy Quinn, a Deadpan Snarker Tsundere who could probably benefit from an anger management class.
• Charming in Sons of Anarchy. It's a small town with a large history of gang violence.
• Supernatural. Dean takes Castiel to a brothel to lose his virginity. As a Fallen Angel Castiel is extremely uncomfortable with this, and his guilt isn't helped when a prostitute saunters up to him and introduces herself as Chastity.
• That Mitchell and Webb Look has Professor Death, he who created a gigantic steampunk barcode reader and had no problem calling it the "Giant Death Ray" without thinking what people obviously assumed it was meant to do. The Running Gag within the sketches in which he appears is that all of the inventions he created are meant for peace (even if the names and appearances don't make them look that way), and he instantly smashes them in a screaming fury whenever someone else points out their potential applications as military weapons.
• The main villain of Tokumei Sentai Go Busters is called "Messiah". He is anything but.
• The Twilight Zone (1959): In "Mr. Garrity and the Graves", the recently renamed town of Happiness, Arizona has 128 people buried in its cemetery, making it the biggest cemetery west of Chicago. The townspeople are all keen to prevent the dead from returning to life as they fear the repercussions.
• In The Umbrella Academy (2019), Viktor ("champion") is The Team Normal with a massive inferiority complex who later goes on to destroy the world. Not even Adaptational Gender Identity could stop his name from being ironic.
• In Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Jacqueline notes her Sioux family was given the surname White by "a sarcastic census taker".
• In The Walking Dead (2010), Canon Foreigner Daryl Dixon has has a tendency to be a loner. His name means "Open".
• Warehouse 13: In "Merge with Caution", Artie and Claudia run across Mata Hari's stockings, a homewrecking artifact, at an insurance company named Truehart.
• Political adviser Frank Wiesel (often mispronounced "weasel") from Yes, Minister is actually the most morally upstanding and idealistic member of Jim Hacker's office. He's so incorruptible, in fact, that Hacker is forced to kick him upstairs at the end of the first season to keep him from blowing open a potential scandal that would've sunk Hacker's career.

Music

• Duane Elms: In some versions of "Dawson's Christian", the titular vessel becomes a Ghost Ship after its captain makes a Deal with the Devil.
• GG Allin's birth name was Jesus Christ Allin. He grew up to become the most profane, obscene, transgressive, offensive, and infamous punk rocker of his day.
• John Balance, co-founder of Coil, died after falling off of a balcony.
• One of the happiest, friendliest Youtubers/musicians of the new 10s was named Christina Grimmie. In fact, the only thing truly grim about her life was the end of it...
• The members of ZZ Top are famed for their beards. Well, except for their drummer, Frank Beard, who has a mustache instead.

Myths & Religion

• The Bible
  • In the Book of Ruth, Naomi (whose name means "pleasant") lampshades her ironic name when she returns to Israel, telling the women of her hometown to call her "Mara" ("bitter") because her life has been anything but pleasant up until that point.
  • Absalom's name combines the words for "father" and "peace." He rebelled against his father, King David, and caused a civil war.
  • "Abimelech" means "my father is king." One bearer was the son of Gideon, a hero who was Offered the Crown but refused it, although that didn't stop Abimelech from trying to take over the country himself.
  • There are plenty of Christian saints who bear the names of Pagan gods or goddesses. A biblical example is Mark the Evangelist, bearing the name of the Roman god Mars.
• The practice of popes taking a new name began in 533, when a man named Mercurius (the Latin version of Mercury) was elected. He felt it inapproropriate for the pope to be named after a pagan god, so he became Pope John II, in honor ofhis martyred predecessor.
• In Greek mythology, Hercules's name translates as "Glory of Hera" as a means of appeasing the Queen of Olympus. Needless to say, it did NOT go well.

Podcasts

• An episode of Mystery Show features a chef named Bob Bland. Starlee and her client agree that that's a terrible name for a chef and suspect that he used a pseudonym.
• Welcome to Night Vale: The Woman From Italy is not only not from Italy, but Huntokar reveals that she's actually the goddess of everywhere except Italy.

Pro Wrestling

• BLKOUT was a Power Stable that existed in several promotions at the same time. The Chikara branch in particular was almost entirely made up of white men.
• After Raven took advantage of CM Punk's reluctance to fight women by having Trinity beat him up, CM Punk introduced Ring of Honor to the newest member of the Second City Saints, Lucy, Lucy Furr.
• Dark matches make up the entirety of Sparkle.
• Lucha Internacional Femenil tends of feature a larger number of established native stars than its older counterpart, Lucha Libre Femenil, which was forced to use rookies and foreigners early on and embraced the identity it gained for doing so, even after booking superstars of lucha libre such as the Apaches and Hamadas.
• You'd expect Delilah Doom to be a cruel sadist or a resigned fatalist. Anything but an optimistic, extroverted fitness instructor. It's called Wrestling Doesn't Pay, but in this case fitness doesn't when you put DOOM on all your products!
• Layla El gained a new surname in "Young" when she was a 40-something during her marriage with Ricky Ortiz. Being a woman in her 40s, she can't be considered "young" anymore.

Radio

• In Bleak Expectations, Mr. Gently Benevolent is a scheming Dastardly Whiplash and Mr. Skinflint Parsimonious is an Uncle Pennybags.
• The Frantics: Mr. Canoehead's arch nemesis is the Evil Galactic Warlord...LARRY!
• On an episode of This American Life, Sarah Vowell goes to "Goth school" and has to pick her Goth name—something grim and depressing. She picks "Becky" (which, to her, has grim connotations of high school proms and homecoming dances). The teachers are very impressed.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons has a spell called "Friends". While casting the spell indeed causes the target to become friendly towards the caster, it also immediately causes the target to become hostile after its effect ends. If done to people who are friendly or neutral towards you, you're likely to get more enemies out of it.
• Several of the sample knights in the indie game Glaze of Blory have ironic titles, such as Ser Alice the Wise (Intelligence 1), Ser Unferth the Mighty (Strength 1) and Ser Marceline the Temperate (quirks: Hair-Trigger Temper).
• Man O War (a naval spinoff of Warhammer Fantasy) has the Bretonnian admiral Comte Gerard de Maldemer (literally Seasickness).
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: Ultimate Obedient Fiend will only attack if it is the only card you have, meaning it is not that obedient.
• Infinity has this applied to an entire planet, with Paradiso, which is a Death World.

Theatre

• The Enfant Terrible who spreads life ruining Malicious Slander about her teachers in The Children's Hour is named "Mary".
• The character who suffers the most abuse in Waiting for Godot is named Lucky.

Video Games

• Ace Attorney is better known for meaningful/punny names, but it's got a couple of these to round things out.
  • Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney has Manfred Von Karma, whose name means "man of peace" in German, but he is an Amoral Attorney who is willing to do anything to keep his perfect record and torment anyone who ruins it.
  • 'Adrian' means 'Dark One', but witness Adrian Andrews is innocent, something of a Broken Bird, and is important in catching the true culprit of case 2-4.
  • Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations has a restaurant called Tries Bien, which means "very good". The quality of the food and the coffee served there is anything BUT good, which is why the place is in so much debt. Godot, a heavy coffee drinker, says that the coffee served at the restaurant is good, if only for the experience.
  • 'Kristoph' is a variant of 'Christoph', or 'Christ-bearer', but Kristoph Gavin is often associated with demonic imagery and is called 'devil' a couple times (referring to a scar on his hand that looks like a demonic face when he clenches his fist).
  • In Spirit of Justice, Pees'lubin Ahndustandin is the first culprit, and later on Tahrust Inmee perjures himself.
  • The fan translation of Ace Attorney Investigations 2 has Sebastian Debeste, a prosecutor who isn't 'the best' by a long shot.
• Amateur Surgeon has the Gracefuls siblings, Tommy and Tammy. The former is a Blatant Burglar who first appears crammed full of glass shards after crashing through the window of the mostly empty warehouse Alan and Dr. Bleed work from, and the latter is an Adventurer Archaeologist parody who staggers up to Ophelia Payne immediately after getting impaled on multiple snake-covered wooden spikes after triggering the very first Booby Trap of a Temple of Doom.
• Animal Crossing
  • One of the villagers is named "Lucky". Lucky is completely covered in bandages.
  • Another is Peewee the big gray cranky gorilla.
• Bahamut Lagoon: One of the Divine Dragons, Hyperion is named of a Greek sun god. The dragon casts black clouds when summoned.
• In-game, the last name of Jon Irenicus in Baldur's Gate II means "The Shattered One"; not counting Bhaal, he's the last person you'd think of to act in a gentle manner. However, in Greek the name "Irene" means "peace"; in Christian theology, an irenicist is someone who advocates using reason and peaceful methods to win arguments (as opposed to a polemicist).
• Bayonetta: Many angels and some demons have names that do not fit how they act. Fortitudo, named after and representing the Cardinal Virtue of Courage, actively avoids fighting Bayonetta during the game's first few chapters until she flat-out provokes him. Iustitia/justice is the only one of the Virtues to attack without saying anything first, with no warning, and by far looks the most Lovecraftian of the four. The sequel introduces Sloth, who moves fast and is one of the most challenging demon enemies in the entire game.
• Best of Three: Discussed and justified when Helen mentions that her five-year-old twin brothers have a pet frog named Fuzzy.
  Grant: "Fuzzy"? Are they old enough for irony?
  Helen: Apparently they were under the impression that he got to be that color by getting moldy from being left out in the rain, and they always refer to bad fruit or cheese as ‘fuzzy’.
• Child of Light has Rubella, a Non-Ironic Clown named after an infectious disease whose specialty is healing magic.
• Code 7 has S.O.L.I. aka System For Organic Life Integration. Which is a malicious A.I. that wants to Kill All Humans.
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3: One of the new units of the Uprising expansion, the Pacifier. On the first campaign mission it becomes available, your intel officer warns you not to be misled by the name, as the Pacifier's artillery mode has tremendous firepower. It doesn't so much as pacify its target as completely obliterate it.
• Aku Aku from Crash Bandicoot's name translates in Japanese to "Evil Evil". He's the Big Good. The series also has "Tiny Tiger". who towers above the protagonists and even his colleagues.
• The Warriors of Hope from Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls are nothing other than staunch supporters and enforcers for the Ultimate Despair. Eventually Downplayed when four of the five members defect, and the last eventually loses interest in despair and abandons the cause.
• Darksiders: The four Horsemen of the Apocalypse didn't cause said Apocalypse to happen, they didn't want it to happen, and they eventually end up working against those who caused it. And individually, while War, Death, Fury, and Strife are certainly capable of living up to their names, their respective games feature them doing the opposite.
  • War strives to kill the Destroyer, essentially ending the war over Earth.
  • Death seeks to resurrect humanity and save his brother.
  • Fury is repeatedly humbled during the game, becoming more reasonable and learning to keep her temper in check.
  • Strife is the friendliest of the four, happilly working with his brother War and allying with the Makers to protect the remnants of humanity.
• In Dawn of War: Retribution, an ork battlewagon is fought at one point. Now a battlewagon is a blasphemy against the laws of physics and engineering, looks like the unholy offspring of a road train and a tank, has more guns than a Crazy Survivalist and more spikes than a Tin Tyrant. The name of this monstrosity? Daisy.
• In Dead Rising 3, Kenny Dermot is a psychopath who is envious of the hero. Dermot means "free of envy".
• The brother/sister duo of Max and Minnie in Diner Dash Adventures. The former is a buff guy who needs loads of table space but surprisingly orders very little food, while the latter is a tiny girl but is a Big Eater and always orders twice.
• Donkey Kong's Tiny Kong originally had a fitting name. She was the kid sister of Dixie Kong. Diddy Kong Racing DS however aged her up and now she's one of the tallest Kongs. She's much taller than her sister.
• Dota 2 has Tiny the Stone Giant. His gimmick is gradually growing from waist-height to a walking mountain, so no matter what point of the game you're in, some part of his name will be unfitting.
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim:
  • The largest, noisiest city is called Solitude. It's about as lonely a place as New York City.
  • Grelod the Kind is a rather cruel orphanage matron who ends up being assassinated at the request of one of the children she mistreated.
  • Jarl Laila Law-Giver, who rules over the setting's Wretched Hive which houses the headquarters of the Thieves' Guild. She doesn't seem to do a thing about them, likely due to her advisors keeping her in the dark.
• Far Cry 5: Cheeseburger the bear does not eat cheeseburgers. He got the name from when he was a small cub abandoned by his mother, and survived by scavenging in the dumpster behind the local burger joint. However, when the local wildlife centre got a hold of him it turned out the burger-based diet had given Cheeseburger "the diabeetus", so he was quickly weaned off cheeseburgers and put on a strict salmon diet to get his blood sugar under control.
• Final Fantasy:
  • A meta example with the name of the series. According to longtime composer Nobuo Uematsu, the game was called as such because Squaresoft was in financial trouble and the president decided to try throwing together one last game before he retired. The game was an unexpected Breakthrough Hit, and became a franchise spanning over a dozen games, not counting the many, many spin-offs.^note Hironobu Sakaguchi, the series' creator, maintained that the game was always going to be called FF, and it originally stood for "Fighting Fantasy" until trademark issues prevented them. Regarding Uematsu's claim, Sakaguchi's response basically boiled down to "that's one way of putting it."
  • In the Japanese version of Final Fantasy XII, the Diakon Entite (a holy elemental) has the name "Spirit Dökkálfr", while the Leamonde Entite (a dark elemental) has the name "Spirit Ljosalfr". Dökkálfr and Ljosalfr, respectively, are the dark and light elves in Norse Mythology.
• Fire Emblem:
  • In Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light, there are two Cavaliers named Cain and Abel. In Mystery of the Emblem, ABEL betrays the party halfway through the game and nearly gets Marth killed (although it is quickly discovered that his wife was being held hostage and he was blackmailed into doing it). Cain, on the other hand, is a staunchly loyal knight to the bitter end.
  • In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, the Ashen Wolves mage Hapi is the most melancholy of the bunch. Her friend Constance flip-flops between "haughty noblewoman" and "utter sad-sack" depending on the weather, going into the latter state when exposed to sunlight.
• The Fatui Harbingers from Genshin Impact are named after stock characters from the Commedia dell'Arte. However, many of the Harbingers' characterizations differ greatly from their namesakes:
  • Dottore actually lampshades this; he is given a codename after a practitioner of medicine who preserves life while he is anything but. Even the man himself couldn't help but burst into laughter when he was assigned the codename.
  • Capitano in the Commedia dell'Arte is a cowardly, sniveling braggart who makes up stories of himself to make him out as more powerful and confident than he actually is. Genshin's Capitano is said to be the most honorable of the group and genuinely powerful in his own right.
  • In the Commedia dell'Arte, Columbina is a heroic and clever woman, usually the Only Sane Man that sees the situation for what it actually is and works to resolve it. Genshin's Columbina, in contrast, is described as "oblivious" and it's suggested that there's something deeply unnerving about her.
  • Scaramouche means "little skirmisher", but while the Harbinger of the same codename has a very antagonistic attitude fitting his codename, it's made clear he prefers subterfuge and manipulation; he manipulated various martial arts families and schools in Inazuma into their destruction while making it seem like a natural decline, and he ensures the Fatui could supply Delusions to the parties involved in the Inazuman civil war all without lifting a finger himself. Even when taking things into his own hands, such as to kill the Traveler, he prefers tricking them into a trap and killing them while they are down, rather than skirmishes.
  • Signora fits most of the characterization associated with her codenamesake — being beautiful, well-dressed, using heavy make up, and being a calculating and proud person who likes to demean others — except for one; having a significant other she is married to, or at least someone she is immediately attracted to. Rosalyne lost her lover before she could marry him, meaning she can't actually qualify to be a Signora in the theatrical sense.
  • In the Commedia dell'Arte, Arlecchino is a clownish, happy-go lucky Guile Hero that is well-liked by the audience (enough to be THE mascot for the genre) and is often one of the characters that helps solve the plot's problem. In line with the other Harbingers, she is exactly the opposite: cold, serious and hiding a bat-shit insane personality beneath a cordial mask.
  • Tartaglia means "stutterer" and is characterized by his stutters and is generally one of the old characters in the theaters; Childe is eloquent with his words and is both the newest addition as well as the youngest Harbinger.
• Golden Sun:
  • Isaac's name means "he laughs" but he's a Heroic Mime in the first game and mostly grumpy in the sequels.
  • Piers doesn't have any peers because of his age issues.
  • In Golden Sun: The Lost Age, there's a master blacksmith who's too depressed to work (until you bring him a project that gets his interest). His name? Sunshine.
  • Matthew: Considering Isaac and Jenna's unpleasant history with the local God equivalent, why would they name their son "a gift from God"?
  • The legacy of the late Princess Veriti (Truth) turns out to be entirely false.
• Protagonist Sol Badguy from Guilty Gear. He may be a lazy, rough-around-the-edges Anti-Hero, but he can be counted on to do the right thing when it comes down to it. Admittedly, his name is an alias inspired by his past actions getting him in trouble with the authorities, who gave this mysterious fugitive the codename "Badguy."
• Gordon Freeman from the Half-Life series. Despite his last name, "The Freeman" is anything but free, as he's a Cosmic Plaything subtly directed and railroaded through the game by the otherworldly G-Man, only to be unceremoniously dumped into stasis when he's completed his mission until he's needed again. That doesn't stop him from being revered as "The Free Man," though.
• A bit of a Running Gag with the Prophets/San'Shyuum of Halo:
  • The Prophet of Truth's entire base of power stems from a lie which could break the Covenant apart and has caused billions of deaths, alien and human. He himself was well-aware of this, and named himself Truth after his ascension to remind himself of all the lies he would have to tell to keep the Covenant and his own power together.
  • The Prophet of Mercy is frequently the loudest, angriest voice calling for divine punishment and slaughter of anyone he considers an enemy, never showing even a shred of mercy towards anyone, whether human or one of the Covenant species.
  • The Prophet of Regret is far too self-serving and bloodthirsty to regret anything. His former title, Vice Minister of Tranquility, completely contrasts that he's about as confrontational as the Elites/Sangheili he pals around with, to a level unique among San'Shyuum.
  • The Prophet of Inner Conviction from Halo: Broken Circle, one of the few morally outstanding Prophets given focus, holds doubts regarding his religion from studying "sacred" relics, i.e. advanced electronics and technology.
• In Heavenly Sword, Nariko is a Japanese name that means "Gentle Child". She's anything but.
• Hero Bank: The Money Ghost's true name, Sumimori Adachi, is written with the kanji for "peace", "pure", and "to protect". He corrupts Nagare early in the original game and his ultimate goal is to destroy the status quo.
• The Temperance boss in House of the Dead 4 is (according to Word of God, no less), the opposite of temperance: a giant, morbidly-obese frog-man.
• In I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, Cal's full name is Recalcitrance, meaning "obstinately uncooperative towards authority or discipline", but he is as friendly and expressive a child as anyone could ask for.
• Inazuma Eleven lampshades this with one of its managers, whose last name is Otonashi. Otonashi means "quiet"—the character is the opposite.
• In Katawa Shoujo, Lilly's seeing-eye dog was named Niji, Japanese for "rainbow", which she can't sense in any way.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • The Heartless are actually people's hearts that have been extracted and corrupted by darkness. The Nobodies are actually people's bodies left over when their hearts are extracted.
  • The Illuminator Heartless shrouds the field in darkness.
  • Xion's name is pronounced "shion". The shion flower represents "remembrance" and is used as a gift to say "I won't forget you." She suffered a Ret-Gone. However, Sora and the others gradually start remembering her again and she's brought back in Kingdom Hearts III when Roxas finally remembers her.
• Live A Live: Cube the robot from the Distant Future chapter is a robot with... a round body. Kato actually wanted to name them "Roundy" to fit their appearance before deciding that an ironic name would sound cooler.
• Lonely Wolf Treat: Salt is outgoing and playful, while Pepper is grumpy and negative. In other words, Salt is peppy and Pepper is salty.
• Madagascar: "The Perfectly Safe Path" appearing in the Save the Lemurs level is anything but, because it is in fact fossa-infested.
• The first boss in Madworld is a large hulking brute named Little Eddie. The commentators even lampshade the irony.
• In the Mass Effect series, the geth platform that makes (relatively) peaceful contact with Shepard in 2 has no name for utself/himself/themselves because there are 1,183 separate geth programs running alongside each other — EDI pipes up by quoting Mark 5:9: "My name is Legion, for we are many," which is acknowledged as an appropriate metaphor and Legion is adopted as its name. A character named after a host of demons can become a Messianic Archetype for the geth as a whole in 3 if the geth are not destroyed and Legion disseminates its programming to all geth platforms, allowing them to realize true individuality and achieve full sentience at the cost of its own existence.
• Modern Warfare:
  • The first name of the terrorist you spend most of the game fighting (Vladimir Makarov) means "ruler of peace".
  • Shepherd is usually the nickname of someone who takes care of a group of people under his watch as best as he can, as well as protecting them from danger. General Shepherd, on the other hand, is rather notorious for disregarding "danger-close", and ends up betraying (and killing) members of his Task Force 141 once they outlive their usefulness. Though this may be somewhat subverted, considering his actions were primarily influenced from losing 30,000 of his men in the previous installment.
• In Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, the character whose real name is "Light" is blind, and thus lives in permanent darkness. His codename, "Snake", is more accurate, as he chose it based on rolling "snake eyes" on a pair of dice, and a snake's eyesight is about as terrible as his own. He also wasn't born blind, so his real name wasn't always so ironic either.
• OMORI: The protagonist of the real-world chapters is an outright suicidally depressed shut-in named Sunny. The part of the game where he is introduced takes place at 3 AM and is played entirely for horror.
• The Outfoxies: Bernard White is the only African-American in the cast.
• Persona:
  • Persona 4
    • Mitsuo Kubo. Mitsuo means "Beautiful wave man," aside that he is an unlikeable Gonk.
    • Yukiko Amagi's given name means "snow girl," but her Persona uses fire magic and is weak against ice. She even says that she dislikes her name.
  • Persona 5:
    • Ichiryusai Madarame's first name means "top-notch". While Madarame was indeed top-notch as an artist at one point, he's now resorted to copying his pupils' work, and claiming it as his own.
    • Masayoshi, as a given name, means "shining goodness" or "to govern righteously" - though he does work in government, Mr. Shido is NOT righteous or good whatsoever. However, he puts up this kind of facade in order to ensnare the masses, and it works to his favor.
    • The Royal expansion adds Sumire Yoshizawa, whose given name means "violet flowers" in Japanese, in turn representing "honesty" in flower language. Instead, after her sister Kasumi died of a car crash trying to prevent her from becoming roadkill by a jealousy-induced fit, she asked Takuto Maruki to turn her into Kasumi to cope with her Survivor Guilt and to artificially inflate her non-existent confidence. This basically goes right against what she told Akechi about when asked about the Phantom Thieves in the protagonist's chat with the two, in which she states that people should solve their own problems instead of relying on others, effectively making her anything but honest.
  • Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth has Hikari, whose name literally means "light" in Japanese...aside that she's a severely depressed and withdrawn empty husk of a person who had all of her childhood innocence torn away from her by a Trauma Conga Line. She starts living up to her name once the Persona-users save her.
• Pokémon Diamond and Pearl:
  • Cynthia's Japanese name Shirona (white) doesn't reflect her Champion room or her default outfit color at all.
  • Cyrus's Japanese name Akagi means "red (tree/castle/future)". Cyrus's most prominent color, as well as his personality, is blue.
• Rain World has the Iterator known as No Significant Harassment, which is doubly ironic. On the one hand, he's a bit of a troll, saying things to get a rise out of his fellow Iterators for fun, so there's plenty of harassment. On the other hand, he turns out to be responsible for the Iterators' use of slugcats as couriers and accidentally inspired his colleague Seven Red Suns to dispatch Spearmaster with information about the Rot to Five Pebbles, inadvertently kicking off the tragic events of the game, meaning that although he is never interacted with directly, he is much more significant to the lore than he seems.
• One of the "signature hero" NPCs in RuneScape is named Xenia, which refers to the Greek tradition of Sacred Hospitality. The character Xenia is a duplicitous Trickster Mentor who deliberately throws strangers into peril just to see what they do. All the behemoth monsters in Daemonheim have a stomping attack... except the one actually named "Stomp".
• Skies of Arcadia: The town of Esperanza, whose name means hope, doesn't really live up to its name. This might have been true in the past, when the city was first established, however, by the time your party gets there, it's anything but. Somber music plays in the background, the entire city is run down and rusting away, and its inhabitants are a jaded, despair-filled bunch. If the irony isn't glaringly obvious, one of the tavern patrons spells it out for you.
• Penelope in Sly Cooper. The name comes from The Odyssey, where Odysseus's wife Penelope remained faithful to him for 20 years and resisted 108 suitors. In the games, Penelope is a sociopath who's not at all loyal to Bentley, and is a total sellout who exploits people for selfish gain.
• Stardew Valley gives us the purple-haired Love Interest Abigail, whose name means "father's joy". Certain conversations with her family members will come just short of explicitly stating that she's the byproduct of her mother Caroline having a dalliance with the town's resident wizard (who also has purple hair), while revealing that her relationship with her alleged father Pierre is somewhat strained.
• Downplayed with Ken Masters of Street Fighter fame. Sure, he's an excellent martial artist in his own right... but he's Always Second Best to Ryu, saddled with an extremely incompetent disciple, once got hit in the family jewels by his own son, and eventually became a fugitive after being accused of a crime he did not commit.
• The Stretchers has the bridge operator twins Eastwood and Westwood Bridger, who both maintain the two major bridges on the Greenhorne Islands. However, they oversee the bridges in the opposite cardinal directions of what their given names would suggest; hence, Eastwood maintains the west bridge and vice versa.
• Sunless Sea, as usual for Failbetter Games' writing, tends not to use names for anyone and calls everyone by a nickname. And while usually the nickname is truthful, being given in-universe and letting everyone keep track of who it refers to, the Delightful Adventuress is clearly meant to be ironic, as the woman in question is a jackass putting up a facade of intrepid adventure who tries to screw everyone over when they're not looking and whose actual interests in a mission that is most certainly going to have actual casualties are stupidly petty, essentially doing it all for the sake of insulting a rival.
• Super Mario RPG features Culex, a ferocious Superboss who is easily the most difficult enemy in the game. His name means "mosquito" in Latin.
• Raine in Tales of Symphonia is afraid of water.
• The title characters of Tiny and Big are named in this manner; Tiny's of average height, while Big is a pipsqueak.
• The Trader of Stories: Myosotis' name means "forget-me-not". Fitting for a girl with a severe case of Laser-Guided Amnesia.
• Warframe
  • Fortuna is an underground colony on Venus whose citizens... are anything but fortunate, having tons of debts that just pile up with anything they do (even trying to pay these debts off!), and getting "brain-shelved" if they don't meet their quotas, with debts passed onto their dependents. Only Nef Anyo wouldn't find this name ironic, somehow making profit from what is basically slavery in all but name.
  • The dwarf planet Ceres, named after the Roman goddess of agriculture, has become an industrial centre for the Grineer empire, dotted with factories that belch out tons of smoke and puke countless puddles of toxic sludge.
• Siegfried is one of the most ruthless villains in Wild ARMs. He's named after a hero in Norse Mythology.
• World of Warcraft has the high elves, or quel'dorei, which means "children of noble birth", the remnant of a larger race that primarily rebranded themselves blood elves and sided with the Horde, while those that still called themselves high elves stayed with the Alliance. While both of their names would suggest that they keep their bloodline pure and live in luxury, the few of them left are exiles from their own homeland who breed with humans and live in human cities and elven hunting lodges. Meanwhile, the blood elves retain their racial purity and still live in their ancestral home of Quel'Thalas, ironically making them closer to classical depictions of high elves than the ones who still call themselves such. Pointed out by one of the Arc Villains of the Suramar storyline in Legion:
  Grand Magistrix Elisande: Quel'dorei? You are peasants playing at nobility, all too willing to mingle with lesser races that dilute your bloodline. You are unworthy of the name high elves.
• Yakuza 4: Masayoshi, as a given name, means "shining goodness" or "to govern righteously", or as a noun, "Justice". Absolutely none of these are applicable to Masayoshi Tanimura, who is a Dirty Cop of the first water, to the point where people call him "the Parasite of Kamurocho" to his face.
• Yo-kai Watch:
  • For somebody named Whisper, he's far from somebody who speaks quietly.
  • Faux Kappa basically means "false kappa", which is not true for the character, who is a real one and his behaviour is closer to that of a real kappa compared to Walkappa, as his Trademark Favourite Food are cucumbers, while Walkappa prefers to eat pizza and sushi. In fact, in the anime Nate seeks out for Faux Kappa to help him on a school report about kappas, since Walkappa was basically useless.

Web Animation

• AstroLOLogy: Taurus' name in the 2016 shorts was Tiny, contrasting with his large size compared to the other characters.
• Battle for Dream Island:
  • DEATH P.A.C.T. 'Nuff said. It's even a video example.
  • One character may be called Loser, but instead of being treated like crap, he's treated nicely.
• The eponymous B. Happy from the Web Premiere Toons series of the same name is a rather surly and cynical Bluebird of Happiness.
• One of the co-hosts of DEATH BATTLE! is a Mad Scientist named Wizard.
• There is a giant named "Tiny" in Ever After High.
• Sparkles in The Grossery Gang webseries. She's a soda can that used to be sweet and kind. Now, she's sour and sarcastic.
• Happy Tree Friends:
  • Cuddles has a cute-looking appearance to cope with his name, but he's actually a daredevil who's quite fond of risky hobbies, and being naturally mischievous to boot.
  • Handy is a combination of this and Meaningful Name. The ironic part is that he doesn't actually have hands, instead having bandaged nubs in their place. The meaningful part is that despite this, he's a perfectly capable repairman and construction worker... as long as the actual fixing or building takes place off-screen.
• Hazbin Hotel has Angel Dust as the name of an immoral Jerkass demon in Hell. This is actually somewhat meaningful at the same time, due to "angel dust" being a common slang term for PCP, and the character is quite fond of drugs. It goes right back around to a bit ironic though, because he died of a PCP overdose.
  • In the spin-off Helluva Boss, one of the side succubi is named Josh. "Joshua" is the English translation of "Yeshua". That's the name of a certain man in his original tongue.
• Strong Sad from Homestar Runner. He is sad, but absolutely nothing makes him strong.
• In RWBY: Leonardo Lionheart is the headmaster of Haven Academy, which means he should be one of the greatest Huntsmen, and therefore warrior heroes, alive. His name effectively means "lion-hearted lion", compounding the bravery of a lion twice over in two different names. However, he is inspired by the Cowardly Lion and is a timid man who collapses to the ground in shock when he opens his door to find a group of armed heroes about to knock his door in. His role in the story is defined by his fear of what the Big Bad is capable of and the possibility that there is nothing the Big Good can do about it. While Raven tries to dismiss his guilt as it being common sense and good survival instincts to give in to his fears, he is all too aware of his own cowardice and the depths to which he has sunk because of it.
• RWBY Chibi: Neptune Vasillias has a name that means 'King Neptune', as in the Roman god of freshwater and the sea. However, Neptune is absolutely terrified of water. While it's played for laughs in the main show, the link to his name is never made. However, in Chibi, this link is directly referenced. When the students decide to go on holiday to the beacon, Ren has to drag Neptune across the floor, complaining that he cannot believe someone with Neptune's name could be so scared of the water. One of the spinoff novels eventually reveals why Neptune is afraid of the water: when he first manifested his water-controlling Semblance, he accidentally trapped first himself and then his brother in a ball of water with no room to breathe.
• Supermarioglitchy4's Super Mario 64 Bloopers: The name "Karen" has become a way to describe self-important women who make life impossible for retail workers and whose biggest arsenal weapon is demanding to see the manager. Karen from SMG4 is a humanoid cat who is a Struggling Single Mother working various retail jobs and who has a permanent bored expression on her face, the kind of people your typical Karen hates! For added irony, she's the manager at at least one of them.

Web Comics

• Achewood has Nice Pete, a sociopathic murderer.
  Ray: I ain't goin' there alone, because I don't want to, and you're tight with that Nice Pete creep he keeps around.
  Téodor: No one's tight with Nice Pete. He'd murder dead things if science would let him.
• Beyond the End: Asphodel - a plant connected to the dead and the underworld - and Scheol - the still darkness after death. Asphodel and Scheol are the comic relief of the cast.
• Bianca in But I'm a Cat Person, whose name means "white" in Italian, is black and proud of it.
• El Goonish Shive: Tiffany Susan Pompoms always goes by her middle name, because she considers her actual first and last names to be too "perky and upbeat" for her cynical, sardonic personality. (Ironically, it's been made quite clear that if it wasn't for various events in her childhood, she would've wound up fitting her name just perfectly.)
• Brawler in Finding Your Roots is much more of a pacifist than his name would imply.
• Officer Getskilled from Girly never dies during the course of the comic. Instead, he ends up becoming immortal during the final arc.
• Apollo in The Guide to a Healthy Relationship may be named for the sun god, but he's really not all that bright. Nevermind that the god Apollo is something of a Jack of all trades, associations including moderation and health, while the protagonist of the comic has yet to show up with any promising talents, really, besides excessive drinking.
• Homestuck has Rose and Jade. Rose's outlook is quite jaded, while Jade's outlook is initially quite rosy. Their color schemes (pink and green, respectively) match their names, though.
• In Lapse, the main character's last name is "Fortune," however, the situation she finds herself in is less than fortunate.
• The titular character in The Little Trashmaid is Tidy, the mermaid who interacts with trash and filth in the ocean.
• Magellan has Charisma, who, while attractive, lacks personal charisma.
• Mob Psycho 100: Shimazaki Ryou's given name means "clarity". He's blind.
• The Order of the Stick prequel book, Start of Darkness, gives us demon lord "Xyklon the Consequential". He is of no consequence.
• Rain (2010):
  • The titular protagonist isn't fond of rainy days at all.
  • Liriel Flaherty has one though its unclear if its intentional or not. "Liriel" in the Latin origin means "Perfection of a woman". This is ironic because it turns out Liriel is a trans man.
• Steamgear Inc: Alexandra Arcenast is named for the word "arsonist"... despite wielding a weapon that reverses fire damage.
• Princess Yuri from Tower of God: Not to say this is the intent of the name, but it's Korean for "glass", a notoriously fragile substance, whereas as a High Ranker Princess of Jahad from the Ha family, the character is one of the most ridiculously Nigh-Invulnerable characters in the series, able to No-Sell even attacks by other High Rankers.

Web Original

• Off the Page and into Life:
  • Terrence's name means "a thoughtful and good natured friend". He spends a pretty good chunk of his screentime attempting to sabotage his best friend's happiness so they can spend more time together.
  • Henry means "home". Henry is an orphan who's spent most of his life being shifted from foster home to foster home.
• Serina: Eve is named after the Biblical first woman. She's (seemingly) the last member of her species.

Web Videos

• In the Noob franchise, the poster-boy for Hair-Trigger Temper goes by the Online Alias of Master Zen.
• Secret Life SMP: On Day 7, Gem's assigned task involves unleashing a Zombie Apocalypse across the server. At the end, one of the only uninfected players ends up being the person literally named ZombieCleo, which multiple people comment on. She puts on her "Human Cleo" skin the following day to showcase that.
• Stampy's Lovely World: In Episode 42, "Unexpected Drama", Stampy brings Lucky into battle with him because "Lucky's lucky", but Lucky is the only dog to perish in the battle that day.
• Lampshaded in Sword Art Online Abridged (as seen in the page quote), with Yui calling out Yulier's partner Thinker for being trapped in a high level dungeon for a supposed "peace talk", without bringing any warp crystals that could teleport him home.

Western Animation

• The Amazing World of Gumball:
  • Mr. Robinson's first name, Gaylord, means "joyful" or "lively" even though he's a grumpy old man.
  • Mr. Small is one of the tallest teachers at Elmore Junior High (he was actually the tallest until Coach Russo came along), and towers over the majority of the students and even some adults (here, he's over twice the height of Gumball and Darwin).
• As Told by Ginger:
  • Dodie's name sounds like "doting". She is possibly the least doting person in existence.
  • Dodie's father has the middle name "Charles". "Charles" means warrior, and he's a very passive man.
  • "Miranda" is derived from the Latin "Mirandus" meaning "wonderful and admirable". Miranda Killgallen is the exact opposite of a wonderful, admirable person.
• Avatar:
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender:
    • Mai, whose name means "Smile." She's played as a Goth who finds everything boring.
    • There's also Toph Beifong, whose name translates to "fragile lotus". She's anything but. It makes sense in context, though, as her parents certainly thought that she was fragile.
  • The Legend of Korra:
    • Korra's father is a huge man who towers over his wife, Senna. His name is Tonraq, which is an Inuit name meaning "tiny man".
    • At least three Spin-Offspring characters; Opal Beifong, who's an airbender (although she plays with the trope in that the gemstone for which she's named is sometimes associated with the element of air); her brother Huan (meaning: "cheery"), who's a goth; and Fire Lord Izumi (meaning: wellspring).
• Bob's Burgers: Mr. Frond mentions a foot doctor named "Corn Sander", but then admits he was just joking, and the foot doctor's real name is "Dr. Hands", ironically.
• BoJack Horseman: BoJack's father is named Butterscotch Horseman. The name conjures up images of someone sweet and golden-brown, but not only does Butterscotch have grey fur, he's also a perpetually grumpy Jerkass and a terrible dad. There's also Joseph Sugarman, BoJack's maternal grandfather; while he runs a sugar company, he is anything but sugary in the way he treats his wife and daughter.
• The Brothers Flub: Guapo, the fat one, has a name that's Spanish for "handsome".
• Camp Lazlo: Samson shares his name with the biblical Samson, well known for being super strong and masculine, but he's a nerd and a wimp.
• Mr. Sunshine from CatDog is anything but... well, sunshine.
• Codename: Kids Next Door: Numbuh Three's mother is an uptight, no-nonsense woman, yet her name is Genki.
• Courage the Cowardly Dog is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. It's about a dog named Courage who is a Cowardly Lion. Despite his fears though he always ends up saving his family in the end. Fridge Brilliance kicks in when you realize the actual meaning of the word "courage": the ability to confront something painful or difficult or dangerous despite any fear. The word describes Courage perfectly; despite the fact that all of his encounters with murderers, ghosts, zombies, and other malevolent entities and Eldritch Abominations terrify him to no end, he refuses to let his fear get in his way and always rescues Muriel (and sometimes Eustace). The ironic part is actually calling him "cowardly", as he always puts himself at risk trying to save her (and sometimes Eustace).
• In one episode of The Critic, Jay rescues a puppy he finds in an alley and names him Tiny. The dog ends up growing to be so big, that at one point, he manages to eat a burglar that tries to break into Jay's apartment! Or at least it's implied that he did since there was a ski mask and grappling hook in his food dish, and he coughs up a flashlight.
• DuckTales (2017): Lena, as a short form of Helena, means "Torch" or "Light." She starts off the series working for a dark sorceress, as well as secretly being a Living Shadow. That said, it becomes a Meaningful Name in season 3 when she gets a light themed Super Mode.
• Family Guy: Connie's last name is D'Amico, which is derived from the Italian word “amico”, which means “friend”. She is one of the biggest Jerkasses on a show already filled with jerks.
• A minor character in Gravity Falls episode "The Stanchurian Candidate" is a random Gravity Falls citizen named Tad Strange who, as noted by Soos, is ridiculously plain and boring and not even a tad strange in the Cloudcuckooland that is Gravity Falls. Bonus points: when Alex Hirsch first mentioned him long before his premiere, he simply noted that the guy was "a real square", which caused many fans to assume he had a connection to Bill Cipher, the show's main antagonist (who looks like a triangle with arms and legs). Turns out he wasn't speaking literally.
  Tad Strange: Hi guys. Tad's the name and being normal is my game.
  Mabel: Lovin' you, Tad!
  Tad: And I love bread.
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy:
  • Mandy's name is a short form of "Amanda" which means "adorable" or "lovable", but Mandy is anything but that.
  • Hoss Delgado's last name is Spanish for "skinny", but he has a muscular build. His surname fit him in the past, as flashbacks showed him to be comically thin.
• In Heathcliff & the Catillac Cats, Riff Raff has a cousin named Lucky, a black cat that's anything but lucky.
• In Hero Elementary, Lucita Sky is afraid of heights even though she can fly.
• Hey Arnold! has Eugene, whose name means "born lucky." He...really wasn't. In fact he was apparently born on Friday the 13th.
• Inspector Gadget: Dr. Claw doesn't have a claw, instead sporting gloved hands. The live-action film rectified this by having Claw's left hand be smashed by a bowling ball and replaced with a mechanical pincer.
• Jem:
  • Riot's real name is Rory, which means "red-haired king". Riot has blond hair.
  • Rapture's real name, Phoebe, means "bright and pure". Rapture is more-or-less "shady" personified.
• Johnny Test has Mr. Black and Mr. White, the former being caucasian and the latter being African-American.
• Kaeloo: In one episode, it is revealed that Mr. Cat, a sadistic psychopath with a Hair-Trigger Temper whose favorite hobby is to torture people with weapons, gave his bazooka a name. Its name is "Patience".
• Kid Cosmic: You'd think that someone named "Rosa" would be associated with pink/red, but she is associated with the color blue. Her dress and her Stone of Power are both blue.
• The Legend of Vox Machina: Adventuring parties or bands of mercenaries in Emon seems to have terrible tastes in names. It's mentioned that the Torian Butchers were butchered, the Murder Hobos were murdered, and the Death Dealers were dead.
• Similar to the Johnny Test example above, in Littlest Pet Shop (2012) the Bisket twins are named Whittany and Brittany, the former being black-haired and the latter being white-haired.
• Looney Tunes: The big, lumbering red monster who sometimes menaces Bugs is called Gossamer, which is usually used to refer to thin, fragile or transparent material. Chuck Jones explicitly named him as such "because he's the opposite looking of gossamer. He's a big, hairy thing."
• The Loud House:
  • The family consisting of a married gay male couple and their son has the rather ironic last name of McBride.
  • Lucy, a Goth, has a name that means "light".
• Matt's Monsters: The protagonist is named Matt Average. His life is anything but.
• Miraculous Ladybug
  • The main character's love interest is named Adrien Agreste. "Agreste" means "rustic," which doesn't describe Adrien's wealthy upbringing in a Gilded Cage at all. His father Gabriel, by extension, also qualifies. However, Gabriel is actually a subversion; "agreste" is also the French name for the grayling butterfly, and Gabriel is secretly the butterfly-themed Big Bad, Hawk Moth, on top of having a Rags to Riches backstory.
  • Nathalie Sancoeur, whose surname is a play on "sans coeur" ("without a heart"), seems to be a straightforward Meaningful Name at first, due to her aloof personality and the fact that she's The Dragon to Hawk Moth. However, it's later shown that Nathalie is primarily motivated by her unrequited love for Gabriel, and furthermore genuinely cares for Adrien, making her surname quite ironic.
• Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (2023): "Run the Rink" introduced Instantanegirl (AKA Speedy Girl), a villain with Super-Speed. Her real name is Sophie Slugfoot.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Fluttershy has a pet bunny rabbit named Angel. His behavior, however, is far from angelic, hovering somewhere between Jerkass and Jerk with a Heart of Gold Depending on the Writer.
  • Fancy Pants is definitely fancy (as one of the richest and most influential unicorns in Canterlot), but like most ponies he doesn't wear pants.
  • Zesty Gourmand from "Spice Up Your Life!" is an influential food critic who's forced every restaurant in Canterlot's Restaurant Row to serve what she considers to be ideal cuisine: bland and almost flavorless (not at all "zesty") and in tiny portions (not at all what a "gourmand" would want to eat).
• PAW Patrol: Captain Blackfur's portrait portrays him with cream and bronze fur (mainly due to him being near identical to Rubble).
• Pet Alien: Melba Manners is a Spoiled Brat who is ill-mannered and often treats everyone around her like dirt.
• Phineas and Ferb:
  • In "The Inator Method", the boys construct a giant solar system and host a race called the Galaxy 5000, but it's a 50-lap race. Phineas states it was going to be called the Galaxy 50, but changed 50 to 5000 to make it sound cooler.
  • In one episode where Candace has a Wizard of Oz-esque dream, she and her team fall onto the "Sea of Razor-Sharp Rock Spires", which is just a flat blanket. Phineas notes it was inappropriately named.
• Ruby Gloom, from the eponymous show: her last name is "Gloom", but she is anything but gloomy.
• Angelica from Rugrats. Although she acts angelic when she's around adults so they seldom catch on to her true bratty nature.
• The Simpsons' black cat, Snowball II. It seems the original Snowball was a white cat and they just named her successor after her without regard for appearance.
• In the South Park episode "The List", one of the ugly kids is named Jamal, which is Arabic for "beauty."
• In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "A Pal for Gary", SpongeBob names the pet "Puffy Fluffy", but he is anything but that.
• In Star Trek: Lower Decks, we're introduced to Vice Admiral Les Buenamigo in season 3, "buenamigo" basically being "good friend" in Spanish. He's actually an Insane Admiral behind Rutherford's change in personality and memory loss, and he then threatens the Cerritos in order to push his vanity project, escalating to outright trying to destroy the Cerritos and murder everyone aboard.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars:
  • The leader of the Death Watch, Pre Vizsla. Vizslas are a breed of Hungarian pointer hounds known for being gentle mannered, very loyal and caring towards their owners, and quite compatible with children. Pre Vizsla is a Proud Warrior Race Guy who betrayed his monarch, loathes Jedi, leads a terrorist organisation, and burns down villages for fun.
  • Clone trooper Fives, who was named after his identification number (CT-5555), is one of the most rebellious and independent clones in the show, and highly insistent of being seen as a person and an individual, instead of "just another number". Gets lampshaded in "Conspiracy".
    AZ-3: But five is a number.
    Fives: No, not five. Fives.
    AZ-3: Ohh... The difference is minimal.
    Fives: Not to me.
• Star Wars Rebels: The Greek Goddess Hera was Zeus's wife and patron of marriage, but she's also known for her vengeful nature, hunting Zeus's illegitimate children, and being an Abusive Parent for Hephaestus. Considering this, it's quite ironic that Hera Syndulla, the caring Team Mom of this series, is named after her.
• Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures: The character Raxlo is named via an anagram of "Lorax". However, instead of being an environmentalist that protects trees, Raxlo's far more in-tune with the Once-ler of the book, harming trees for quick financial gain.
• Steven Universe:
  • Real life Lapis Lazulis dissolves in water, compared to the character herself.
  • Peridot's name is for a gemstone often associated with good luck, peace, and success. However, Peridot seems to have bad luck, failure, and violence with the Crystal Gems. It became less ironic later on when joining the Crystal Gems.
  • Amethyst, the gemstone, literally means "Avoiding drunkness," and represents stability, sobriety, and balance. The character itself is a hedonist who is all about enjoying the earthly pleasures for the kicks, likes physical fighting, and is the most prone to mischief.
  • Jasper as a stone is notable for being nurturing, protecting, caring, and providing mental stability. The character is none of those, and goes crazy after losing to Steven and Amethyst.
  • Sugilite stones are said to serve as protection from anger and negative feelings. The fusion Sugilite is more or less the psychotic Token Evil Teammate.
  • Opal would sometimes forget what she's doing. Real life Opal's are meant to prevent forgetfulness.
  • Malachite is associated with successful practical relationships, while Malachite's parts ends up at each other's throats.
  • Diamonds are seen as symbols of innocence and the integrity of moral values. The Great Diamond Authority, however, is far from anything Diamonds represent.
    • Yellow Diamond, however, deserves a mention. She is are the birthstone for Virgo, and Virgos are associated with order, intelligence, and cold calculation. When she finally appears in the show proper, she does fit the bill at first, but as her talk with Peridot goes on, it becomes readily apparent that for however much a being of logic she might be, she's clearly also a vengeful and spiteful being who would gladly destroy the Earth for payback against the rebellion.
    • Then there's White Diamond. White diamonds symbolize purity and clarity, but White Diamond embodies madness and corruption. White Diamond is known for her terrifying anger, comes across to viewers as decidedly off, and participated in a corruption blast that mutated countless gems. White diamonds also symbolize love, given that they are traditional components of women's wedding rings. White Diamond implies herself to be devoid of love or empathy.
  • A Pearl is one of the birthstones for Gemini, which represents a free mind. The Pearls in Homeworld are all a slave race, and are treated like an object instead of a actual person.
  • Rubies are associated with nobility, and are actually rarer than a Diamond, while the ones in this show are a expandable soldier caste.
    • Also, they are considered to be gems that sharpen the human's mind. Rubies are expected to be dumb and forgettable in Homeworld's society.
  • In the Off-Colors:
    • Rhodonite of the off-color gems is said to decrease anxiety, and she's a Nervous Wreck.
    • Padparadscha sapphires are one of the rarest gems in the world - mostly found in Sri Lanka - and are among the most valuable varieties of sapphires. The first one we meet in the show is considered an undesirable in Homeworld's system, though it might just be this one specifically. Because padparadschas are rare in the real world, buyers often have to settle for less desirable "cloudy" padparadschas, which may be why this one has "cloudy" vision.
  • Emeralds are meant to represent love, peace, and luck, something which the character Emerald doesn't have in her debut apperance.
  • Connie's mother is named Priyanka, which comes from the Sanskrit word for "amiable" or "agreeable". Given how stone-faced and strict she is, especially in early appearances, it doesn't really suit her.
• The scarecrow in Rankin/Bass Productions's Tales of the Wizard of Oz is named Socrates, but because he doesn't have a brain, he's a Cloud Cuckoolander.
• Toonsylvania: Fred Deadman from the Night of the Living Fred segments has a deceased dog named Frisky who he carried around and treated as if he were still alive. The word "frisky" means being full of energy, which makes it very ironic that it is being used as the name of an immobile corpse.
• Total Drama:
  • Team Victory, one of the three teams of World Tour, and by far the least successful.
  • Team Chris is Really, Really, Really, Really Hot, another of the three teams in the aforementioned season, also qualifies. While the team was dominated by males (with Izzy being the team's only girl), everyone dislikes Chris McLean by the end of the show. The only reason the team is called like that is because of Sierra, but she's only part of the team for one episode before swapping teams with Izzy.
  • Sugar, one of the third generation campers, has a very mean-spirited personality.
  • Another one of the third generation campers, Amy, whose name means "beloved" in French, is a Hate Sink because she is a Big Sister Bully to her twin sister Samey.
• The Transformers:
  • Unlike what the name would suggest, Inferno transforms into a firetruck and puts out fires instead of starting them.
  • Happens momentarily with Cliffjumper, the hot-headed Leeroy Jenkins of the Autobots who would gladly leap off a cliff to engage the Decepticons. Amusingly, the one time that the Autobots are called on to jump up a cliff, he's the only one who can't make the jump.
• T.U.F.F. Puppy: One of the recurring villains is an intellectual avian known as Bird Brain, which is ironic because the term "birdbrain" is typically used as an insult towards people who are not intelligent.
• Tuttle Twins: The eponymous characters have a fellow summer camp attendee named Copernicus who is rather unintelligent and builds a model of the solar system with a Flat Earth at the center.
• The villain Peking Duck from The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat. His name is taken from a Beijing duck recipe. Also counts as a Punny Name.
• Wacky Races (2017): Tiny Gruesome is a big Frankenstein Monster and Bella is a short, not particularly attractive monster. Their names were actually more fitting in the original series, where they were respectively called Big and Little.
• Xiaolin Showdown: Raimundo's surname, Pedrosa, derives from the Portuguese word for "stone" (pedra), in direct contrast with his title of Dragon of the Wind.
• Xiaolin Chronicles has a manipulative, infamous criminal named Salvador, whose name is Spanish for "saviour".

Real Life

• An elephant born at Chester Zoo in January 2017 was named Aayu, which means "long life" in Hindi. In October 2018, when he was less than two years old, Aayu became one of seven young elephants at Chester to die from the deadly elephant herpes virus. Elephants normally live for around sixty years, with some surviving into their seventies or even eighties.
• Acclaim was a video game publisher with a fairly long history, but the vast majority of the games they published were low-budget licensed affairs—Metacritic lists more than two-thirds of their games as having mixed or negative reception. They became infamous in the early 2000s for their disastrous marketing efforts, for which they went bankrupt. This is funny for a company whose name means "enthusiastic praise." Reportedly, the founders chose the name so the company would appear first in the Yellow Pages.
• Æthelred II, King of the English (966 – 23 April 1016). His name means "noble counselled" but his reign was so marked by bad advice from his advisors that he was nicknamed "unræd" (ill-counselled), which has been mistranslated as "unready" (or rather, "unready" has drifted in meaning to mean "unprepared" now as well).
• Neither Alliterative Name nor Alliterative Title exemplifies the trope it describes.
• A Gratuitous German example would be Governor Altgeld (De. old money) of Illinois, who kick-started the U.S. Progressive Era.
• The lowest feminine singing voice, alto, comes from a word that means high in Italian and Spanish.
• In July of 1839, a group of kidnapped, enslaved Africans took control of their kidnappers' vessel. They were later captured off the coast of Long Island, and court proceedings were undertaken to determine their fate (either prosecuted for murder, returned to slavery, or allowed back to Africa). Thanks to a Supreme Court ruling, the Africans were allowed to return home. The name of the slave ship? La Amistad, which means "Friendship" in Spanish.
• Andrea. Despite it sounding like a name for women, the original meaning comes from the Greek root of "man". Doubles as Cross-Cultural Kerfluffle if a female with that name travels to Greece, Italy, or Albania, as it will provoke only laughter.
• Lance Armstrong, a former champion cyclist in a sport most people associate with leg strength (although like any sport that's only part of the equation).
• Israeli actor Lior Ashkenazi is actually Sephardi, not Ashkenazi.
• Romulus Augustulus, the last Western Roman Emperor, had the names of the legendary founder of Rome and the first Roman Emperor. Actually named Romulus Augustus, the -ulus was added as a disparaging nickname, making the name "Little Augustus".
• The U.S. state of Nevada is mostly desert. "Nevada" means "snowy" in Spanish.
• David Dewitt Bailey, Jr. spent 16 seasons playing Major League Baseball. His nickname, Homer, is ironic because he was a pitcher, who generally do not want to give up homers — he himself never hit any as a batter in the majors. He was nicknamed Homer after his great-grandfather before he took up baseball.
• There's a British police officer named Rob Banks.
• Don Black ... is a white supremacist. Not entirely out of place as his surname also means "evil".
• Here's a positive example. You would expect a guy named "Consul-General Archer Blood" to be a psychopath, especially one involved in the atrocities of the Bangladesh Liberation War. You would be wrong: Blood was a diplomat who was strongly against the actions of US-allied Pakistan, even sheltering Bengali refugees in defiance of orders. In fact, the main reason for his historical notoriety is that he beseeched Henry Kissinger to stop supporting Pakistan considering its government's genocidal behavior, for which the American government fired him.
• John Blunt, one of the engineers of the South Sea Company Bubble, was famous for two things: having a very sharp (if unscrupulous) mind and running the Hollow Sword Blade Company.
• People may have laughed at Frank Brickowski during his NBA playing career for his name, which contains a slang term for a missed shot (a "brick"). He didn't throw a lot of bricks, though; while he didn't have the shooting ability of Stephen Curry or Reggie Miller, his field goal percentage (~52%) and free throw percentage (~74%) were well around the average for his position (Power Forward).
• Canada isn't in the native range of Cirsium arvense, a perennial flowering thistle called "Canada thistle" in much of the United States. Most English speakers call it "creeping thistle" in common parlance, though there are many more (and at least one of them, "California thistle", is another example of this trope).
• Comedian Adam Hills cites a real-life example in his shows: he goes on a rant about irony and how many people don't understand it. After one such show, a woman comes up to him and informs him that she has diabetes. Her name is Candy.
• Anybody named Christopher, which means "Christ-bearer", who is not Christian has one. A sterling example is the noted atheist (or, to use the Insistent Terminology he helped popularize, "anti-theist") Christopher Hitchens.
• An American destroyer captain led the destroyer charge that scored several torpedo hits at Surigao Strait during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. His name was Coward.
• John Coward was the first officer of British Airways Flight 38 and was in control of the plane when it lost power. Together with the other pilots he managed to get it down without any casualties. Afterwards, one newspaper had the headline "Coward in name only."
• Wes Craven ("craven" meaning "cowardly") was most famous for directing horror movies like The Hills Have Eyes (1977) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).
• The symbol of Christianity is the cross. David Cross, on the other hand, is an atheist who was born Jewish.
• French judo champion David Douillet. His surname, in French, can mean "soft" or "oversensitive to pain". As his long string of Olympic medals and world champion's titles attest, he's anything but.
• The flower of Selenicereus undatus (better known as "dragon fruit") is called 量天尺 in Chinese, literally "ruler to measure the heavens", which brings to mind a hard, tall, and straight plant. It is a creeping vine.
• Michael Ende, whose surname is of course German for "end", wrote The Neverending Story.
• Most footballers whose names have the "inho" suffix are relatively small (as demonstrated by Philippe Coutinho, Jairzinho, and Ronaldinho), befitting the suffix's Portuguese meaning ("inho" is a diminutive that indicates that something is small). One exception to that rule is Monaco midfielder Fabinho; with a height of 6'2", he is a bit taller than the average footballer.
• James M. Fail was a successful businessman from Alabama. Despite his extensive philanthropy, he was reluctant to put his name on anything, until he got the opportunity to name the visitors' locker room inside the University of Alabama's Bryant-Denny Stadium.
• David Frost, a British politician who claimed rising temperatures is good, was appointed to the UK climate change committee.
• The Google Chrome browser is named after what it's trying to have as little of as possible: the GUI part of the browser (tabs, address bar, title bar, etc.) which takes up screen real estate.
• People with Graves' Disease have much discomfort as well as bulging eyes. (Marty Feldman was a notable sufferer.) Despite the name, it's not normally fatal.
• Bruce Grobbelaar was Liverpool's goalkeeper throughout the 1980s, the most successful period in their history, and as such is one of the most successful goalkeepers in English football. "Grobbelaar" is Afrikaans for "clumsy".
• John Wesley Hardin was named after John Wesley, an English cleric and early Methodist leader. However, Hardin himself was a notorious outlaw and gunslinger who bragged about killing of forty men. Contemporary historians don't place his kill count above twenty, though, and many of the people he shot were not armed at the time of their deaths.
• Iceland is green, while Greenland is covered in ice.
• Ciro Immobile, noteworthy Italian football forward, has scored 165 goals in club play and twenty-nine goals in international play as of 2023. He therefore takes the role of the Unstoppable Force.
• Thirteen popes (and one antipope) have had the name "Innocent". Of these, many were far from innocent:^note Though many of these actions were perfectly fine in the eyes of the Christians of their time.
  • Innocent III sanctioned the Albigensian Crusade, in which 20,000 people died; the Fourth Crusade, which ended up sacking Constantinople (though he was personally opposed to the crusaders' actions); and presided over the Fourth Lateran Council, which decreed laws discriminating against Jews and Muslims, forcing them to wear different clothing from Christians.
  • Innocent VIII permitted the slave trade and accepted 100 slaves as a gift from the king of Aragon. He was also pope during The Spanish Inquisition and confirmed the infamous Torquemada as Grand Inquisitor.
• Battlecruiser HMS Invincible, which exploded into smithereens in the Battle of Jutland due to a lucky hit to propellant magazine. Doubles with Tempting Fate as well as Harsher in Hindsight.
• Kiwi International Airlines did not fly to New Zealand despite sharing its name with that country's national bird.
• One of the officers (and prime scapegoat) responsible for the Rodney King beating is named Stacey Koon (for the blissfully unaware, 'Coon' is a highly derogatory term for a black person, and the Rodney King beating was probably racially motivated).
  Bill Hicks: So this guy, officer Koon... Is life too fucking weird, or what?
  • Similarly, the last racist anthropologist who boasted academic cachet had the name Carleton Coon.
• Freakonomics contains the examples of Winner Lane, whose most noted achievement was his criminal record and subsequent prison time, and Loser Lane, his brother, who ended up becoming much more successful (and now goes by "Lou").
• Some dude named Legalov kept using the scientific illustrations of a butterfly researcher without asking for permission. But revenge is sweet.
• One of the most prolific horror writers was called H. P. Lovecraft. Made even less appropriate by him being racist, unaffectionate, and divorced.
• Fourth-century bishop Saint Lucifer of Cagliari (his day: 20 May).
• Andrew Luck is a former NFL quarterback who was picked #1 in the 2012 draft. He had it all: physical abilities, leadership skills, strong mechanics, great studious habits, and all the other tools a quarterback needs. However, he was also an injury magnet (largely due to the fact that his offensive lines were horrible, which led to him getting hit far more frequently than your average quarterback, but he also got some particularly nasty — and not especially common — injuries including a lacerated kidney), eventually leading him to retire at the age of thirty.
• The city of Lynchburg, Virginia, sounds like a place to avoid, given that "lynching" is a term for Vigilante Execution conducted by groups, which is heavily associated in the United States with the murders of black people by mobs of white supremacists common in the post-Reconstruction era. It was founded by John Lynch, an abolitionist who freed the slaves he'd inherited. It's been joked among the residents that the city's full name is "Lynchburg, founded by John Lynch, the abolitionist."
• The CEO of US-based charity Food for the Poor between 2000 and 2020 was named "Robin Mahfood".^note "Robbin' my food." Wikipedia has him listed on their list of aptronyms and inaptronyms.
• In 2014, the only female driver in the Indianapolis 500 was Pippa Mann.
• Master (brand) locks are notorious in the lockpicking community for being some of the most easily breached locks on the market. Even though the company has taken pains to make their high-end locks stronger, very durable and relatively cut-resistant, many of them can still be either easily shimmed open at the shackle, or picked open in seconds using either raking or torque-and-set methods, since they keep recycling and rarely improving their shackle and tumbler designs. Their No. 3 padlock is especially known for this; although the shackle has been recently redesigned, its lock tumbler hasn't had a major design change since its introduction over 70 years ago. A person could pop open many older warded Master designs with a paper clip or strong solid wire bent at a right angle near one end. As for their combination locks, the military also noted that one could smash them open with nothing more than a sharp downward blow from a rifle butt. (Their design has improved, but as the Lock Picking Lawyer demonstrates, one can still easily breach them.) In all, the opposite of what their name would imply.
• French marshal Georges Mouton, count of Lobau (1770–1838), considered one of Napoleon's bravest generals. Mouton is French for "sheep", but as Napoleon said after a battle in 1809: "Mon Mouton est un lion" — "My Sheep is a lion".
• On June 2, 1967, police shot and killed German student Benno Ohnesorg during a protest rally in West Berlin. The incident was the sole instigator of the 1968 student movement in West Germany. Benno's surname, Ohnesorg, translates as "no worries".
• Basketball player Shaquille O'Neal; Shaquille means "little warrior". Shaq stands 7'1" and weighed around 280 lbs. in his prime and up to 320 at times.
• The Pacific Ocean. "Pacific" means "Peaceful". Now consider how many naval battles took place in the ocean during World War II, including several contenders for largest naval battle in history. Also consider that the Ring of Fire, and earthquake and volcanic hotspot, encircles this ocean.
• From the NFL, retired New England Patriot Patrick Pass may very well have had the best name for a quarterback in history. Too bad he was a running back. That said, his role was to try to pass by defensive players on other teams while staying on the ground himself.
• There was this robber and murderer named Charles Peace.
• German theatre actors Lukas Perman and Marjan Shaki have two daughters named Liv Su and Ivy Su (spelled exactly like that). Which makes their full name Liv Su Perman and Ivy Su Perman.
• The urban legend/conspiracy theory of the Polybius arcade cabinet takes its name from Polybius, a historian from Ancient Greece. Polybius the historian believed that the most trustworthy form of history was that which the historian could personally verify, preferably through firsthand knowledge. Polybius the legend is infamous for having essentially no firsthand knowledge or verification that it actually existed (the first claims of it surfaced over a decade after it was supposedly active).
• The Prussian carp, related to goldfish, is one of the most prolific invasive fish species outside its native range. From the name, you'd think it was native to Germany. In fact, it is native to Siberia.
• One of the foremost ideologues of the Nazi Party was a man named Alfred Rosenberg. Yes, a prominent Nazi carried a Jewish-sounding surname.
• American criminal law professor, Dr. Joanne Savage.
• In 2020, the city of Philadelphia appointed a new police commissioner, the first black woman to hold the post: Danielle Outlaw (née Bowman). Previously, she had been the first black female police chief of Portland as well. As hilariously ironic as that may sound, the name actually dates to medieval England. Several families with the Outlaw surname settled in the southern US and the more prominent ones owned plantations; Danielle's husband likely descended from one of those families and/or their slaves.
• Jaime Sin was a Filipino Cardinal and was as such addressed as Cardinal Sin, a pretty ironic name for a holy man who helped topple the oppressive Marcos regime.^note It didn't help that "Cardinal Sin" is also synonymous with the Seven Deadly Sins either. The cardinal was noted for having a pretty good sense of humor, taking his unfortunate name in stride, and would invite guests to his home by "Welcoming them to the House of Sin".
• Manchester United centre-half Chris Smalling is far from small: at 6'4", he towers over most footballers.
• John Snow, a 19th-century doctor who pioneered epidemiology, lent his name to a pub in London. He was The Teetotaler. Doubling as a Meaningful Name, though, the pub is near the site of a water pump that Doctor Snow identified as being the source of the 1854 cholera outbreak.
• The Spirit of Safety I was a Goodyear Blimp used for publicity by Goodyear Tire and Rubber to promote the safety of its products. On 12 June 2011, it crashed in flames in Germany, after the pilot made a Heroic Sacrifice by sacrificing his chance to escape so that the three passengers can jump off the blimp unharmed.
• Batman bin Suparman (Batman, son of Suparman) is a Singaporean criminal. We should note, though, that "Suparman" is a semi-common Javanese name, though "Batman" is not.
• Tacitus, the famously outspoken Roman orator and historian, has a name that means "silent" (the origin of "tacit").
• Kurt Tank was a German engineer responsible for the creation of several important aircraft for the German Luftwaffe later pressed into service at the advent of World War II. These aircraft included the famed Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighter and Ta 190 interceptor, both which would become Cool Planes for the war.
• The University of Houston football team plays its home games in TDECU Stadium, named after a Texas-based credit union (the initials originally stood for Texas Dow Employees Credit Union, since employees of Dow Chemical started it). However, one of UH's rival schools in the American Athletic Conference is East Carolina University, so the literal name of Houston's stadium sounds like a call for ECU to score a touchdown, which, if they do when they play a game there, gives the initials a different meaning. Not only that, ECU's football head coach, as of 2019, is Mike Houston.
• Cylindropuntia bigelovii, the teddy bear cholla, is a cholla cactus than is anything but a cuddly teddy bear.
• Tillikum is the name of the killer whale who killed three humans, two of them at SeaWorld's Florida park (Blackfish is partly about him). In Chinook, his name means "friend."
• Tu Youyou, winner of the Nobel Prize for medicine and the first Chinese woman to win a Nobel Prize, has the surname Tú (屠), meaning "butcher" or "massacre" in Chinese.
• The Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia did not represent the mainstream American right, but rather fringe white supremacist groups. The fallout from the rally and subsequent terrorist attack only served to create huge fissures in the nation's right wing, dividing it between Donald Trump's nationalist wing and the more mainstream neo-conservative GOP. In the end, after nine slow months for the anti-Trump left wing, the attack reunited and re-energized that faction, which rapidly organized vigils, protests, and anti-white supremacy campaigns in response. As Joe Curtatone, the mayor of Somerville, Massachusetts, put it: "Their goal was to unite the right. Instead they have united the left."
• Gene Victor never coached a single victory in Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference play in 15 years as the head coach of the men's basketball team at Caltech (his final record was 0–178 in conference, 56–261 overall).
• Jaleel White, the African American actor whom most would recognize and remember for his portrayal of Steve Urkel.
• Michael Jai White. His surname is also White, yet he's African American.
• The American blogger and pundit Matthew Yglesias considers himself Jewish, and particularly Ashkenazi, and you can't blame him; three of his four grandparents were Jews from vaguely around what is now southern Poland and western Ukraine.^note The region historically known as Galicia. Interestingly, his Cuban ancestors also had roots in Galicia—the one in northwestern Spain. But the fourth was his paternal grandfather, a Cuban American who was raised Catholic, which is why his (very Jewish) grandson has this name that's archaic Spanish for "Churches".
• President Trump's former Oklahoma campaign chair and convicted sex offender Ralph Shortey stands tall at 6'6.

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