"Goldie Gold, the world's richest girl."
— Narrator, Goldie Gold and Action Jack
Characters with a lot of money have a tendency to be given names based on how wealthy they are. Obvious examples will contain words like "rich", "money", "cash", "gold,"note "bucks", etc., while more subtle examples will have other terms related to money, wealth, business, luxury items, or a lavish lifestyle incorporated inda their name. This immediately indicates that the character is loaded and isn't hiding it. This may be an Invoked Trope in families who want to flaunt their wealth (such as the Nouveau Riche who change their names upon obtaining a fortune).
This also applies to poor characters, where words like "poor," "broke," or "penny" in their names reflects their lack of wealth.
A Sub-Trope of Meaningful Name. An example is just as likely to be a Punny Name.
A Sister Trope to Preppy Name (another way to indicate a character's affluence).
Compare Rock Theme Naming (in the case of precious metals and gemstones), Name McAdjective, Awesome McCoolname.
See also Uncle Pennybags (who may still have a money pun in his name).
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- Ace Attorney (2016) has the anime-exclusive character Avery Richman, who is indeed a very rich man.
- Binbou Shimai Monogatari has the Echigoya sisters. Kinko and Ginko are written to mean 'gold child' and 'silver child' respectively, indicating that they come from a rich family.
- The Cash family that appears in the 9th Dragon Ball film, Dragon Ball Z: Bojack Unbound. The father is named X.S (excess cash), his wife is named Lotta (lot of cash), and their son is Monty (sounds like money). The Japanese version is more blatant, where their family is named "Money" of all things, and Monty's given name is dollar (Dollar Money is his actual name).
- Pokémon:
- Pokémon: The Original Series has a recurring Snubbull who belongs to "Madam Muchmoney", a wealthy socialite who lives in an 86-room mansion.
- Pokémon Adventures:
- The Dex holders' names are in accordance with the main-series game titles (so they're all named after colors and/or rocks), but the characters who come from notably wealthy families are Gold and Platinum.
- Invoked by Sun, who is not wealthy but aims to earn a large amount of money for unexplained reasons. His Pokemon's nicknames all have to do with money, such as "Dollar", "(Y)en", and "Baht."
- The US dub version of Tokyo Mew Mew gave Minto the name Corrina Bucksworth because she's The Ojou. "Mint" can also double as a pun in the original.
- Similarly, the dub of Yu-Gi-Oh!, which was also done by 4Kids Entertainment, has Maximillion Pegasus (originally Pegasus J. Crawford), the wealthy creator of the Duel Monsters card game who stages a tournament on his own private island. Notably, the name is usually spelled Maximilian in English, but this particular spelling emphasizes the Punny Name.
Comic Books
- Archie Comics liked to play with this by taking an already-famous name and making it into this trope. Examples: Hetty Greenstuff (a play on Hetty Green, the richest woman in America around the turn of the century), and Mr. Vanderbuck (play on Vanderbilt). They also played it straight at least once, with the "Van Gelt" family ("gelt" being the Yiddish word for money).
- An inverted-then-straight example happened with Michael Jon Carter, more known as Booster Gold. In the future, he hadn't enough money so he traveled to the 20th century looking for fame and fortune, which he eventually gained by becoming a famous superhero (the "Gold" in his nickname was In Name Only when he started). He later created Goldstar, Inc. (later Booster Gold International) as a holding company.
- The British comic book Cor! had the strip "Ivor Lott and Tony Broke" about a rich snob Ivor Lott (I've a lot) and his penniless rival Tony Broke (a play on the slang term 'stony broke' meaning having no money at all). The strip moved to Buster when the two comics merged in 1974. A near-identical strip featuring female protagonists called "Milly O'Naire and Penny Less" (millionaire and penniless) ran in Jackpot. When Jackpot and Buster merged in 1982, the two strips were rolled into one, with Milly becoming Ivor's girlfriend, and Penny Tony's.
- Disney Ducks Comic Universe:
- Scrooge McDuck's name plays on the character of Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, i.e. a rich miser.
- One of Scrooge's recurring nemeses is Flintheart Glomgold, a greedy miser. Gold, of course, is a precious metal, and "glom" is a slang term for "hoard" or "seize."
- No less than four separate other business rivals of Scrooge are called "Gotrocks" note .
- There's also Glittering Goldie O'Gilt, Scrooge's scheming Love Interest.
- Richie Rich, the richest boy in the world, might possibly be the Trope Maker. He has a dog named Dollar, a snobby cousin named Reggie van Dough (as in slang for cash), and a Rich Bitch friend named Mayda Munny ("made of money").
- Little Orphan Annie: Annie is adopted by the self-made millionaire Oliver Warbucks.
Films — Live-Action
- A Stealth Pun in Annie (2014): rich businessman Warbucks gets an Adaptation Name Change to William Stacks — Bill Stacks.
- Count DeMonet (pronounced "de monay") from History of the World Part I was so well off that the Running Gag was to poke his annoyance button by pronouncing his name "count da money".
- While not necessarily wealthy, Mr. Banks from Mary Poppins is definitely well-off, as a junior officer in a prestigious bank.
- Adam Banks from The Mighty Ducks is rich. It keeps him separate to some degree from the rest of the Ducks, who are largely from working-class backgrounds around Minneapolis-St. Paul while he lives in the well-off suburb of Edina — Jesse Hall nicknames him "Cake-Eater".
- Tex Richman, the Corrupt Corporate Executive Big Bad of The Muppets (2011).
- Cassius "Cash" Green from Sorry to Bother You. Zig-Zagged because he starts out poor before getting promoted to a much more lucrative position after becoming a Sell-Out to his fellow striking workers. Thus, his name refers less to his income and more to his greed.
Literature
- The children's book Art Fraud Detective has a throwaway joke in the fake museum brochure included with the book saying that the museum was founded by wealthy art collector "Meg A. Bucks".
- A Christmas Carol: Ebenezer Scrooge is an inversion of this trope; he was such a renowned rich miser that his name passed into popular usage as a term meaning "rich miser".
- The Golden Demon: The Tomiyama family are rich bankers, with the last name meaning "wealth mountain". The Big Bad Tadatsugu Tomiyama's name, in East Asian order, sounds like "the only thing he does is inheriting a mountain of wealth".
- The villainous Auric Goldfinger from the James Bond book Goldfinger and the film of the same name has, unsurprisingly, a substantial hoard of gold. Goldfinger's Evil Plan aims to irradiate the gold in Fort Knox with a nuclear bomb, rendering the US gold reserve inutile, and causing his own stash to dectuple in value. The first two letters of his first name are the chemical symbol for gold.
- The Hunger Games: Characters from District One have names that evoke their district's industry of glamour and luxury goods: Glimmer, Gloss, Cashmere, Marvel, Velvereen, Facet.
- In Making Money, the Lavish family are majority shareholders in the Bank of Ankh-Morpork.
Live-Action TV
- Siblings Fiona and Declan Coyne from Degrassi: The Next Generation. Their last name, Coyne, is a play on the word "coin," which is likely a nod to the family's wealth.
- The characters on Dinosaurs all had last names based on oil companies, and the finances-obsessed boss B.P. Richfield was given two (BP stands for British Petroleum, and Richfield for the last name), which indicate his status among the dinosaurs.
- The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air: Will, a poor kid from West Philadelphia, moves to the titular town to live with his rich uncle's family, who have the last name Banks.
- Played with in Good Times with Penny, whose name was a pun on her full name, "Millicent". She was poor, as were all the families in that series, but she considered herself wealthy once adopted by Willona.
- On The Muppet Show, Scooter's rich uncle who owns the theater is named J.P. Grosse (as in "gross earnings" or similar).
- Once Upon a Time has a double-meaning example with Mr. Gold, a wealthy pawnbroker in Storybrooke. His real identity is the fairy tale character Rumpelstiltskin, who famously spun straw into gold.
Music
- The Amsterdam rapper MC Rich
invokes this as his name. He even has one of his singles called "Because I'm Rich".
Mythology and Religion
- Older Than Feudalism: Plutus, the Greek god of wealth, whose name means...well, guess.note
Tabletop Games
- The millionaire mascot of Monopoly is named "Uncle Pennybags".
Theater
Video Games
- Mega Man Star Force: The Shirogane family, of which local Tsundere Luna is a member, appear to be wealthy industrialists. "Shirogane" is the Japanese word for platinum. In the localization, they're called the Platz family.
- Mystery Case Files: Millionheir features the world's most filthy rich man as a central character. His name? Phil T. Rich.
- Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door has Goldbob, a richissime Bob-Omb made out of gold. Gombella's tattle indicates that he is the CEO of a very big company called Goldbobbington's and has buckets of ducats.
- Pokémon Black and White had a rich family called The Riches.
- Pokémon Scarlet and Violet have a couple of Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense minor NPCs named Billy and O'Nare.
- Mr Verich from Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness is a very rich man who goes everywhere accompanied by bodyguards. He's later revealed to be Greevil, the leader of Cipher, which is also a pun as he's greedy and evil.
- The Ratchet & Clank game Secret Agent Clank has wealth countess Ivana Lottabolts, with bolts being the local currency.
- Many of the pre-made families in The Sims games have Meaningful Names and/or Punny Names, and this trope is no exception:
- The Landgraab family, who show up throughout the series. Their wealth is implied to come from property and real estate, or, to put it more succinctly, grabbing land.
- On the other end of the scale, the second and third games the Broke family, comprised of Lower Class Louts who start out with less than a thousand simoleons to their name, the main breadwinner having left them, and their only source of income being the teenage son's minimum-wage job.
- In the third game, the Barnacle Bay DLC neighborhood had its richest family be the Goldbeards. Given that Barnacle Bay is a pirate-themed neighborhood, it can be inferred that their wealth came from a pirate ancestor.
- The third game's Roaring Heights DLC neighborhood has the Harbucks family, comprised of expies of Daddy Warbucks and Little Orphan Annie.
- The Racket family in the third game's Ambitions DLC are a Mafia version of this trope.
- On the handheld version of Bustin' Out, we have Daddy Bigbucks (the "richest Sim around" who is said to own half of SimValley) and Lottie Cash (the daughter of a late oil tycoon).
- In the high-end district of Diamond Heights of The Urbz lives a man named Cash Monet.
- Spyro the Dragon: Downplayed with Moneybags. It isn't clear whether he's rich or not, but he does carry a bag of money (or diamond) around and works as a Cash Gate.
- In the Streetpass Mii Plaza game "Market Crashers", the goal is to become richer than the world's richest man, whose name is William "Billy" O'Naire.
- Terranigma has a British nobleman named Sir Rich.
- Assassin's Creed Syndicate: Subverted. The Templars' money-man is a banker named Philip Twopenny.
- King Misedor from Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny. He's filthy rich and keep it that way, and he is a bit of a miser when it comes to handing out money.
- Shir Gold of Phantasy Star II is a well-off young woman who turned to a life of crime purely for the thrill of it.
Visual Novels
- Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth has the businessman Ernest Amano ("earns money").note
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney:
- The second game has a spoiled rich kid "looking for the right college" named Richard Wellington.
- Inverted in the case of Penny Nichols (pronounced "nickels"), who, true to her name, works for minimum wage (or possibly less).
- The Great Ace Attorney has Magnus McGilded, who tosses around guineas like candy and is said to be rich enough to buy the entirety of London several times.
Webcomics
- Cirque Royale: The richest family in the Clown Kingdom (who control the bank) are the Cashworthys. It comes from Leo and Diana's mom Gemma and not their father Aries, who Took the Wife's Name.
- Paranatural: Richard (Rich) Spender is a public school teacher- but he drives an expensive sports car, which makes Max question where he got the money. Further evidence that Spender is hiding something. It's later revealed he comes from a rich family but fled his controlling father with as much as he could (supernaturally) carry.
- Unwinder's Tall Comics has Spondulio Wealthmonger, who's obscenely wealthy but also "the world's most generous man"—though he insists he has ulterior motives for all his charity work.
Web Video
- During his review of Richie Rich, The Nostalgia Critic snarks at how different the titular character's life would be if he was named "Poor E. Broke". This immediately gets the attention of Chester A. Bum, claiming that that's his legally-born name.
Western Animation
- Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers has had two different aristocratic women named Mrs. Clutchcoin.
- DuckTales (1987) series not only lifted Scrooge and Glomgold from the comics (see "Comic Books") but added female gold-digger Millionara Vanderbucks.
- The Fairly OddParents! has the snobby rich kid and Timmy's rival Remy Buxaplenty ("bucks a plenty"). However, the other rich kids in the show tend more toward Preppy Name (eg. Trixie Tang, Star, Brad, and Chad).
- In an episode of The Flintstones, there was a rich tycoon named J.L. Gotrocks, a parody of tycoons like J.P. Morgan, J.D. Rockerfeller, etc. ("Mr. Gotrocks" is common American slang for someone who has a lot of money and goes around flaunting it; a "rock" being an old slang term for a large diamond.)
- Goldie Gold and Action Jack: Goldie Gold is appropriately the world's richest girl. She didn't need to work but ran around adventuring anyway because she could afford to.
- James Bond Jr. features a girl named Lotta Dinaro ("lotta dinars") who is kidnapped by Goldfinger. The show also featured Goldfinger's daughter Goldie.
- The ultra-wealthy J. P. Gotrockets took The Jetsons to court over ownership of the dog Astro / Tralfaz. Gotrockets, besides being a pun on "gotrocks" (old American slang for a rich person), suggests a shipping magnate, as rockets would be indispensable for interplanetary commerce.
- A subversion is Jem: whose name evokes precious gemstones and who runs around in "glitter 'n gold", but who is in Perpetual Poverty because all the money the band makes goes to the upkeep of Starlight House or back into keeping the band solvent.
- Miraculous Ladybug has Chloe Bourgeois, whose surname colloquially refers to the apathy and arrogance of the wealthy middle class. Fittingly, she's a wealthy Alpha Bitch hotel heiress.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- The school bully Diamond Tiara's name references both her wealth ("Diamond") and her tendency to boss and order other people around (tiaras being a kind of crown, which conveys authority). It is also an offshoot of her wealthy family's theme naming: her father is named Filthy Rich, her mother is Spoiled Rich, and her great-grandfather — who created the family fortune — was Stinkin' Rich. Their family apparently made their fortune selling Applejack's family's jam, and were wealthy and influential enough to directly have a hand in founding Ponyville. When Fluttershy poses as a relative of the family invented as part of a con, she's given the name Impossibly Rich, which everyone buys.
- There's also Diamond Tiara's friend and fellow Alpha Bitch Silver Spoon, whose name is derived from how people born into wealth and advantage are said to have been born with a silver spoon in their mouth.
- There are ponies from Canterlot that count too. Jet Set and Upper Crust are references to being rich and high society. Hoity Toity and Fancy Pants probably count as well.
- OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes has the villain Billy Milly, whose full name is Billiam Milliam (sounds like "Billion Million"), who's a wealthy villain who has shiny golden skin and hair.
- The Powerpuff Girls has Princess Morbucks ("more bucks") a spoiled rich girl who uses her father's excessive wealth to fund her career as a supervillain.
- Sheep in the Big City had a character named Lady Richington, a wealthy woman who often attacked Sheep unprovoked whenever he got too close to her pet poodle (and Sheep's love interest) Swanky because of her hatred of sheep.
- The Simpsons has a recurring background character who is a stereotypical Texan oil tycoon named Richard "Rich" Texan, usually just called the Rich Texan.
- SpongeBob SquarePants: The episode "Artist Unknown" has the one-off character, Monty P. Moneybags: a rich and eccentric art collector.
- Played with in South Park by Token Black, whose name both signifies his wealth (like a "token" one exchanges for money) and that he's the Token Minority of his class. Later subverted with the reveal that his name is "Tolkein".
Real Life
- Richard Rich (no really), a historical figure who appears in A Man for All Seasons and Wolf Hall, was enormously wealthy, due to a combination of coming from a well-to-do merchant family, profiting from the "Dissolution of the Monasteries", and (it's rumored) engaging in lots of shady and treacherous financial and political dealings.
- Marcus Goldman, co-founder of the investment bank Goldman Sachs.
