Inanimate Object Names

[RyanW]

I've considered having a character name his weapons. His sword would be Stabby. His knife, Stabby Jr.

[lwcamp]

One of my gaming buddies had a rapier she named Wit.

Luke

[Fred Brackin]

I've had thoughts about a magic sword named "Strong Right Hand" that had multipe useful properties realted to forcefulness and faithfulness but the quirk of not working in the left hand.

Then I thought "What's that in Latin?" and the English-Latin tranlator came back quite neatly with "Fortis Dextera" instead of the more common sort of mess. I think I may have backtracked to the phrase's original language.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by lwcamp

One of my gaming buddies had a rapier she named Wit.

Luke

Up there with naming a mace, Kindness.

[Varyon]

Simply using an adjective (optionally in a foreign language) and twisting it in some way can give a good sword name. Durandal (Roland’s sword) gets its name from “durable” (and possibly some other bits), and was said to be indestructible. Cortana (Tristan’s sword) gets its name from Latin curtus, or short, a reference to the tip having been broken off (originally leaving a jagged point, but the current reproduction has had this flattened out, leaving a blunt tip and apparently being part of why it’s now sometimes called the “sword of mercy”). Joyeuse (Charlemagne’s sword) simply means “joyous,” likely in reference to its owner’s many victories. You can combine words as well, although that can get messy. Two I’ve come up with are the Lancordyth (a weapon with an extending handle attached to a curved blade that could swivel; the name is pronounced lane-core-dith, and is from running together the words lance, sword, and scythe) and Qualmentarucil (“double sword of painful death,” from running together the elven words for painful death, double, and sword).

[thastygliax]

My Pathfinder Society dwarf paladin has an evil outsider bane waraxe that he named Zakrukrul, "The Axe My Foes Fear. " (I constructed the name using an article on Old Dwarvish from an ancient issue of Dragon Magazine.)

In the Earthdawn game, all things with any magical power have Names, from members of the Namegiver races to their enchanted items. Learning an item's Name is the first step in unlocking its power. Sometimes a previously mundane item will spontaneously gain a Name when it's used to accomplish some legendary deed. In one campaign I played in, a windling PC (a small winged fairy-like race) used a human's fork like a trident to one-shot an enemy, thanks to some very lucky exploding dice--and thus "The Windling Battle Fork" was Named.

[Agemegos]

There was a very important quest objective in one of my fantasy games called "The Sword with No Name". A couple of campaigns later a player worked out that it obtained its remarkable properties from a powerful naming magician having experimentally removed its individual true name from it, leaving it with only the generic true name "sword".