I’m not going to lie to you…like most boys my age I was a video game junkie through the 1980s and early 1990s. During this time, I play a lot of games, but hands down my favorite games were the RPGs for Nintendo (Dragon Warrior and the original Final Fantasy). One of the reasons I liked these games was the fact that you could name the characters. Where in Super Mario Bros. you were Mario, and in Zelda you were Link, in the games like Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior, you could give the characters any persona you wanted. The first time I played these games the characters were named after my friends and I (or the Ninja Turtles), but later on (middle school) the names become insane; either lewd or totally bizarre.
Middle school humor at its finest.
And for this reason my favorite part of teaching is when I get to give English names to new students. The only thing is, none of this kids want really awesome names. They all want to be “Tony” or “Andy” or “Dkembi.” None want truly innovative names like the ones depicted bellow, and this makes me sad.
Why can’t my students pick names like this? A pox upon “John!”
