I recently created characters on both Cho and Ari, and I was very surprised, when I was allowed to create the name "Ender" on Cho. I must confess I gave the naming policy the most cursory of glances in my excitement to get started.
In retrospect, and upon actually reading the policy, it is obviously a name which contravenes the naming standards. I may not have ran into the jungle slaying Kitins screaming in /r about the damn "buggers", but I can appreciate how using a fairly well-known fantasy name might be distracting and inimmersive to other players. At the same time, I had many conversations with people who recognized the name and loved the books as much as I did. Actually had great discussions of the series with a few people.
On Arispotle, the server I ended up continuing the play on, my name is "Varelse". Fans of Mr. Card's will recognize this as well, although it's not a name, but a word borrowed from Swedish and made into a conceptual term in the "Enderverse". Although the name is borrowed from another fantasy universe, I don't consider it to be in violation of the naming policy and shouldn't be disrupting to the immersion of others. I'm curious to read other people's take on it. I like the name because it still gives a hint toward my personal interests and things I might be interested in chatting about ooc.
Any thoughts? I'd like to hear some opinions before I make my recommendation, which would be that if you want to pay homage or convey some of your interest, try and do it with a little subtlety by not using place and people names, but perhaps concepts or other less "namey" words.
Of course, now I get a lot of people wanting to know if I'm Swedish.
