Who Names Their Kid Dude / Discworld

• After telling the hero her name, Adora Belle Dearheart from Going Postal adds that as a result, "I have no sense of humour whatsoever." (Her childhood nickname was "Killer".) Some jokes are also made about the main character's first name: Moist. Who names their kid Moist? Apparently "doting if unwise parents." "He was not going to embarrass the name, insofar as that was still possible..."
• The siblings from Hogfather, Twyla and Gawain. Death himself remarked that the latter name if chosen because it sounded like a good name for a fighter, was most likely a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.
• The "Guards" series of books have a character named "Carrot." According to his adoptive dwarf parents (he's a human), he was named for his shape, not the color of his hair, which happens to be red. Carrot's dwarf name translates as "Head Banger". He's six feet tall and grew up in a dwarf-scale mine.
• Also in the "Guards" series is a dwarf named "Cheery Littlebottom." This is made worse by the fact that male and female dwarfs look exactly alike, so in theory, this was meant to be a gender-neutral name (Cheery happens to be female). The character is also acutely aware of how ridiculous her name is. Vimes, upon being introduced, remarks that Cheery's parents must have been "traditionalists", so apparently naming your children after emotional states (e.g. Happy, Bashful, Grumpy...) is traditional there.
  • In the same scene, Cheery mentions that her father's name is Jolly, so presumably it runs in the family.
  • Another dwarf character who appears later is named Bashful Bashfulsson.
• And then there's Corporal Nobby Nobbs, whose full name is 'Cecil Wormsborough St. John Nobbs'. A name made all the more astonishing given that Nobby's family are as working class as it gets, and lived in a particularly rough part of the city. (It becomes more understandable if you know that his great-grandfather was possibly the illegitimate son of an Earl.)
• The book where we find out about both the above also reveals that Sam Vimes had a very famous ancestor (basically an expy of Oliver Cromwell) whose name was "Suffer-Not-Injustice Vimes". Small wonder he ended up nicknamed "Old Stoneface".
• And then there's Constable Visit, whose full name is 'Visit-the-Infidel-with-Explanatory-Pamphlets'. His fellow Omnians have a tendency towards similarly lengthy and religious names. This is based on traditional Puritan naming. In former days when the Omnians were rather more robust in their methods of propagating their religion, the equivalent name was something more like "Visit-the-infidel-with-fire-and-sword". The name of Constable Smite-the-unbeliever-with-cunning-arguments appears to have undergone a similar evolution.
  • According to Lords and Ladies, the Carter family of Lancre was under the delusion that, if you name daughters after virtues (Charity, Temperance, and so forth), you name sons after vices. Ironically, both the sons and the daughters are the exact opposite of their names—Chastity Carter is a "lady of negotiable affection" and Bestiality Carter is very kind to animals.
• Magrat Garlick is called that due to an unfortunate christening ceremony. Her attempt to avoid this with her own daughter in Carpe Jugulum results in said daughter being named Princess Esmerelda Margaret Note Spelling of Lancre. The same book also mentions the unfortunate cases of James What-The-Hell's-That-Cow-Doing-In-Here Poorchick (his friends call him "Moocow") and King My God He's Heavy the First. A footnote explains that these people got off lightly. Lancre folk, being uncomplicated as they are, tend to name their kids with whatever sounds good to them, leading to one poor unfortunate sod named "Total Biscuit", and a recounting of one kid just narrowly missing being called Chlamydia because her mother didn't know how to spell it.
• All the Lancre examples involve the local custom that your name is whatever the priest performing the naming ceremony says when they get to the part where they're supposed to say the child's name, and there's no shifting it afterwards (unless you leave Lancre and don't come back, as many do).
• There's also One Man Bucket from Reaper Man, short for "One Man Pouring a Bucket of Water Over Two Dogs", named according to his culture's custom of naming children after the first thing the mother sees after giving birth. He has an older twin brother whose name is... well, let's just say "he would have given his right arm to be called Two Dogs Fighting."
• Night Watch has a minor character named Legitimate First ("Leggy" to his friends). Fred Colon's only word of explanation for the name: "Can't blame a mother for being proud, Nobby."
• From Thud!, Mr. A. E. Pessimal. Who wasn't named at birth, he was initialed.
• In The Wee Free Men, there's a boy named Punctuality Riddle (his parents had heard about naming children after virtues, and decided this was the virtue they most wanted their child to have). And an old woman named Miss Female Infant Robinson, whose mother saw the midwife note the delivery of "female infant" and assumed that was the child's name.
• In Soul Music, Susan Sto Helit briefly regards her name as an example after learning who her grandfather is. Susan is a very ordinary name, and not really appropriate for someone who is the granddaughter of Death. She should have a name with lots of xs and zs in it.
• One rural couple names their son Denephew, as they were expecting a daughter and wanted to call her Denise.