Gavin's progress

[berelinde]

Everybody has a name that was used by someone before. My own surname belonged to an author who wrote books about the history of food and the history of sex. My cousin and I had a giggle about that one.

 

I'm not worried about coincidental refference, or obscure ones.

 

Unless there is a well-known actor who routinely plays idiots named Muir, it is final.

[Miloch]

Everybody has a name that was used by someone before.

Not in fiction necessarily. For instance there's no one with a surname of "MacUlgoth."

 

What's wrong with Gavin Fife? There's no one notable with that name... if you google it on advanced with exact phrase, the only posts are your own from G3 and maybe a couple of little league baseball coaches. The fact there is a fictional character from a TV series that aired decades ago (and he doesn't even have the same *name* just the same surname, which is a fairly common one at that) is, as you put it, obscure at best. Gavin Muir on the other hand was perhaps well-known, in his day at least. Would you really want someone noticing your NPC is named after the actor who played the Nazi major from Hitler's Children?

 

Since you seem to be going for something Scottish sounding (Fife, Muir, MacWhatever) there's any number of names you could use, including the Gaelic for Fife (Fiamh, pronounced similarly) or any number of places in Fife or elsewhere.

 

Remove the # from this URL - it was blocked by G3's spam filter:

http://www.fife.50me#gs.com/scottish-place...-placenames.htm

[Domi]

Well, Muir sounds a bit like Russian cats purring (Russian cats say mur-mur, not purr-purr....)

 

(giggle) Just being annoying I dunno, I've never heard of any comic characters, but Fife sounds pretty funny to my foreign, non-anglophone ear. Something like a cross between a Football association (http://www.fifa.com/en/index.html) and a momma-boy.

[berelinde]

I guess I'll leave it alone then, despite the fact that Domi thinks it's funny. I kind of liked it. Unpretentious, but not a patronymic surname. It also happens to be the name of a musical instrument, as in "Fife and Drum Corps." And a county in Scottland. I'm not going to spell if Fiamh. No one is going to be able to pronounce it.

 

Gaelic is funny that way. The name pronounces Sh-vawn is actually spelled Siobhan.

 

Hell, who would have thought naming an NPC would be such a chore. I didn't have this much trouble deciding what call my pets. But then, who cares what my cat's name is? No one is ever going to meet him.

 

At least the first name was easy. Don't know anyone with that name, just wrote down a bunch of candidates on slips of paper and pulled the one with Gavin on it out of a paper bag.

 

It does seem like I've been gravitating toward Scottish or Gaelic sounding names, probably because everybody in my family has them, and I've lived in an area where they are fairly common, so it sounds right to my ear.

 

MacUlgoth? Not!

[Domi]

A funny name didn't hurt any NPC yet. *Minsc*, lol.

[Miloch]

A funny name didn't hurt any NPC yet. *Minsc*, lol.

What's so funny about the capital of Belarus?

 

Another thing is folks didn't necessarily have surnames "back then" (though I know this is fantasy). In medieval times, people went by their first names, or if they had to distinguish themselves from others of the same name, added where they were from, their profession (Smith, Cooper, Fletcher etc.), their title (if they were noble), their parent's name or just something like "the Younger" or "the Elder."

 

When I realised Miloch was a fairly common surname (I made it up for a character ages ago, but then noticed it was already taken on several forums) I just made up another name from scratch (Tervadh) that came back with "no hits" in google. It's not as impossible as it sounds. This has an added bonus that if I do any searches now with that name, I know their mine or someone's copying or quoting me.

 

But there's nothing wrong with Gavin Fife. I'll just refer to him as Barney during beta testing.

[berelinde]

If there are bugs, you'll probably call him worse.

 

But if anybody calls him Barney, I will put the super-sneaky jinx on said unfortunate person, and he or she will be inflicted with the compulsion to wear underwear on his or her head. Unless he or she already does, in which case I'm not worried about what they call Gavin.

 

Edit: spelling and punctuation are optional after spending an afternoon recording with a buddy who prefers to be paid in Stella Artois.

[Miloch]

If there are bugs, you'll probably call him worse.

Bugs? Oh but there won't be any of those now, will there?

Edit: spelling and punctuation are optional after spending an afternoon recording with a buddy who prefers to be paid in Stella Artois.

Ah... Stella. The Budweiser of Belgium. I worked with a fellow whose regular lunch was 3 or 4 pints of the stuff (no food included). VP of Sales as I recall. I haven't swilled that swill in ages... still, if you're going for quantity over quality, it's not bad. But if you're going for the opposite (or both), a good Orval or lambic can't be beat.

[berelinde]

He did me a favor, so he got to pick the beer.

 

Despite that, got a lot done.

[BigRob]

Plus, by the end, I bet it makes the drunk banters sound a lot more realistic.

[berelinde]

Might make the dialog easier, but it would have made the coding hell.

 

But we had a full afternoon with the microphone, and weren't exactly chugging it, anyway.

 

Gavin is now as voiced as he is going to be for Tutu. He has one custom sound set. My buddy said he'd do some first-lines-of-dialogs another day, but I'm happy with what we got accomplished. Now I'm going back and filling in all the sound references.

[Domi]

What's so funny about the capital of Belarus?

 

Because it sounds horribly silly to have someone with the same name as a city! It's good thing you are not supposed to take Minsc seriously....

[Menelanna]

What's so funny about the capital of Belarus?

 

Because it sounds horribly silly to have someone with the same name as a city! It's good thing you are not supposed to take Minsc seriously....

 

And what exactly is wrong with have the same last name as a city name? There is a little city in Italy that is my last name. I have even been there.

[Miloch]

And what exactly is wrong with have the same last name as a city name? There is a little city in Italy that is my last name.

Well that's a surname... totally different. A lot of surnames were place names originally. While Dmitri (of) Minsk or Joey Chicago or Jack London are acceptable (I guess), Minsc by itself is like calling someone Boston or Venice.

[Minarvia]

I like Muir just fine. I have been planning on playing Gavin when he's available, but I'm one of those people who grew up with Mayberry and I never could get past Gavin's last name being Fife. It wouldn't bother me so much that I wouldn't play him (as I like Don Knotts) but that image would always be in my head. I had actually thought of using a portrait of Knotts as Gavin's portrait. But then a romance with him would be out of the question for me!

But I think most of the people here are much younger than me and wouldn't know a Fife from any other name.