Familiar Names
Every time an adventurer puts a familiar hatchling into his or her Familiar-Gro™ Terrarium, and it becomes their very own familiar, it is given a default name. The game tells you the selected default name by displaying the following message:
- You decide to name <him> <familiar name>.
The familiar's name will appear in its action messages; for example, this message could appear during a battle:
- Gobert attempts to hit <him>, but misses.
- In this case, the <familiar name> is Gobert.
Of course, an adventurer can rename his or her familiar to whatever name they want to by clicking Manage Familiar Names, which is located on the Manage your Familiar page.
Default Familiar Names
Most new familiar names are put together randomly with the help of the following recipe. Male familiars use one set of suffixes, female familiar another.
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B Fr G Gr H St T Tr W |
a o u |
male suffix or female suffix | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
![]() |
generic familiar name |
- Male suffixes (most familiars)
- bastian, bediah, bert, ddeus, derick, dolph, fferson, fflesby, garth, ginald, llace, lliam, nald, nathan, ncent, nderson, njamin, nklin, raham, sevelt, tchell
- Female suffixes (all the gravy fairies, Black Cat, Cheshire Bat, Coffee Pixie, Comma Chameleon, Feather Boa Constrictor, Grouper Groupie, Happy Medium, Hippo Ballerina, Jill-of-All-Trades, Jill-O-Lantern, Jitterbug, Piranha Plant, Sugar Fruit Fairy, Uniclops)
- berta, brina, chelle, gdalena, landa, linda, ndrea, nnifer, phelia, redith, rgaret, rgarita, rlotte, ronica, sabella, sadora, semary, xanne
Special Familiar Names
A number of familiars do not use the default name generator, instead using their own name custom generators.
Familiar | Name Formula | Example Name (reload page for more) |
---|---|---|
Adorable Space Buddy | A random string consisting of the letters C, T, H, U, L, and apostrophes. | Tuh'htc'cuc |
Adventurous Spelunker | State + Last Name (eg. Indiana Jones) | Colorado Raymond |
Antique Nutcracker | Male name | Christopher |
Artistic Goth Kid | Nickname + 'Goth Name' + Compound Last Name of two gothy items | Benny "Alastair" Blackstein. |
Baby Bugged Bugbear | snɔɐʇɹɐdS. | snɔɐʇɹɐdS |
BRICKO chick | Random four-digit number | 8475 |
Burly Bodyguard | Either Betty or Kevin Costner | Betty |
Cat Burglar | Burgling-related adjective + Cat breed | Midnight Donskoy |
Chocolate Lab | Stereotypical dog name + candy brand name | Rex Twix |
Clockwork Grapefruit | 6655321 | 6655321 |
Cookbookbat | Type of cook + zero or more ancients + book/b\at/beetle | |
Doll Moll | Female first name + (Irish? / gangster?) last name | "Miley O'Dean" |
Fancypants Scarecrow | Format first name + either a hyphenated last name or longer last name + optional Roman numeral | Leopold Grosvenor IX |
Flaming Face | Pairing of a heat-related attribute and a name | Boiling John |
Galloping Grill | Female Name + Occupation | Rhody Judge |
Garbage Fire | Burning adjective + Last Name of a Republican US Senator | Flaming Heller |
Gelatinous Cubeling | Squishy-sounding name | Shluuuuuurk |
God Lobster | Compound of two "click"-like sounds | ClickCluck |
Golden Monkey | Adjective ending with "ous" + Incan deity | Wondrous Urquchillay |
Grey Goose | "Nanite Configuration" + random seven-digit number | Nanite Configuration 8585076 |
Grim Brother | German First Name + Von (sometimes) + German Last Name or German Concept | Konrad Von Krankenschwester |
Grimstone Golem | Mineral + Grim adjective or Grim adjective + Mineral | Bleak Obsidian |
Helix Fossil | 10 characters, with repetition following specific formats | llllllll(v |
Hobo in Sheep's Clothing | ||
Homemade Robot | "<ADJECTIVE>bot N000" | Handsomebot 1000 |
Mechanical Songbird | Three sound effects, separated by hyphens | Chirp-Tweet-Tweet |
Mini-Adventurer | "Little <PlayerName>" | "Little <PlayerName>" |
Mini-Crimbot | Crimbo-y word + Bot, Droid or Unit, prefixed or suffixed by some roboty set of letters and numbers | M-61 Frosty Bot |
Mini-Hipster | Randomly Hobo first name | Johnny |
Mini-Trainbot | Crimbo word + train word + numbers | NOEL-CABOOSE-26 |
Miniature Sword & Martini Guy | Old + Random Hobo first name | Old Alistair |
Mini Kiwi | ||
Nosy Nose | Adjective + Nose Synonym | Big Schnoz |
Optimistic Candle | Burning adjective + "D" name | Brilliant Dale |
Party Mouse | Partying adjective + Male First Name | Party Master Joey |
Plastic Pirate Skull | Red Roger | Red Roger |
Puck Man and Ms. Puck Man | Three capital letters, as in an arcade's high score screen | QRQ |
Quantum Entangler | One of "Craig", "Helmholtz", "Lenard", "Mayer", or "Plank" | Craig |
Reagnimated Gnome | Random First Name + "enstein" | Fredenstein |
Robortender | Robo' + O-lastname | Robo'Leary |
Rockin' Robin | Boppin'/Dancin'/Rockin'/Tweetin' + Random Girl First Name | Tweetin' Ashleigh |
Software Bug | two-word error message+" in line "+number | invalid dump in line 125 |
Sludgepuppy | Dog name | Bongo |
Smiling Rat | ||
Squamous Gibberer | Follows the default naming system, but always begins with Cth- | Cthgadolph |
Steam-Powered Cheerleader | Has a small number of female names | Madyson |
Tickle-Me Emilio | Emilio | Emilio |
Twitching Space Critter | A compound "alien" word | Blipjirt |
Vampire Vintner | French/Romanian Name + French/Romanian Name | Dumitru Leblanc |
Yule Hound | Crimbo-related word + Popular dog name | Sleighbells Beau |
Additionally, some familiars have restrictions on what you can call them.
Blood-Faced Volleyball | Cannot be named Wilson, in order to spur creativity. Voit and Spaulding, however, are allowed as names. |
Exotic Parrot | Cannot be named Polly. If you try to do so, it will be named Unoriginality instead. |
Ragamuffin Imp | Cannot be named the word that is used to summon it. Instead, it will be named Spoiler. |
Notes
- During Bad Moon, if an adventurer places a familiar that he or she had obtained in a previous ascension into his or her terrarium, then the following message will appear:
- As you place the <hatchling> in your Familiar-Gro™ Terrarium, you feel a brief sense of deja-vu. You decide to name this familiar <previous familiar name>.
- If you go to your Manage Your Familiar page and leave your active familiar's name field blank, then the familiar is renamed using the default naming system for that familiar.
- This does not work from the Manage Familiar Names page; leaving a name blank there results in the default name of No Name McGee.
- Trying to name a familiar with ten or more of the same character or digit gives the following error message:
- I reckon you tried too many repeating characters, mmhmm.
- Attempting to give your familiar a choice or swear word as its name will cause it to be named [profanity] instead.
- Placing brackets ([ ] or { }) in a familiar name will cause the brackets to show up everywhere (in your side frame, terrarium, character sheet, etc.), except during combat. If you are engaged in combat, the familiar's name will be displayed without the brackets (for example, [x] or {x} would show up as just x during combat). If you only place brackets in a familiar name, then the name will be displayed as a blank spot during combat.
- Some accented characters can be used in familiar names. However, familiar names must be in ISO-8859-1. Attempting to use names in other charsets (many web browsers use UTF-8) will result in the bits being interpreted as if they were in ISO-8859-1, thus leading to buggy results.
- As a deliberate joke, the default name for the Baby Bugged Bugbear is not in ISO-8859-1, and it will be corrupted if you use the Manage Familiar Names page.
History
- Prior to the trivial update on August 1st, 2009, no message about what familiar name was chosen would appear when you used a hatchling.
- Prior to the trivial update on June 6th, 2014, leaving the name field blank would result in No Name McGee. Also prior to this update, including a < character would result in the above, and any & characters were replaced with n.
- Prior to the trivial update on August 4th, 2014, default familiar names had a simpler generator.
References
- The Clockwork Grapefruit is a reference to the book and movie A Clockwork Orange. Its default name (6655321) refers to the main character's serial number while he is in prison (in the movie, the number is shortened to 655321).
- Wilson is the name of the blood-faced volleyball in the movie Cast Away.
- The BRICKO chick follows the LEGO tradition of numbering each basic building set that is developed.