What are rules on naming characters?

[goryllobumbum]

Is there any way i can add 'the' at the beginning on my character name? I tried it with all my chararacters names really and all seems to be 'invalid'.

[PorsaLindahl]

Wow. Necro'd again.

 

Is there any way i can add 'the' at the beginning on my character name? I tried it with all my chararacters names really and all seems to be 'invalid'.

 

If it says it's invalid, then it's invalid. You can try using alt-code for something like "Thè." But using alt-code to bypass the filter could be considered a violation. But as long as the name isn't derogatory, or a copyright infringement, I doubt anyone will report it.

[SteveTheCynic]

Is there any way i can add 'the' at the beginning on my character name? I tried it with all my chararacters names really and all seems to be 'invalid'.

Yes, it is indeed invalid.

 

I wanted to create (it fits, but enough of that(1)) Havelock The'dane (named for the eponymous hero of the Middle English folk tale "Havelock The Dane"). That wasn't allowed, but Havelock Thedane was.

 

(1) BT3 male, because in the folk tale, Havelock was bigger than *everyone* else, even when he was only 15.

[JediAkemi]

Well that explains why it rejected "Sailor Korriban" (and Sailor Malachor, Sailor Ziost, Sailor Dromund-Kaas, Sailor Yavin)

[AllisonLightning]

Well that explains why it rejected "Sailor Korriban" (and Sailor Malachor, Sailor Ziost, Sailor Dromund-Kaas, Sailor Yavin)

 

Now I've got Sailor Moon's theme stuck in my head, although at least it's my beloved Japanese version . I'm guessing Sailor might be on the list as well as the planet names, although an obscure EU world may slip past with Sailor on a try.

[SteveTheCynic]

Now I've got Sailor Moon's theme stuck in my head, although at least it's my beloved Japanese version . I'm guessing Sailor might be on the list as well as the planet names, although an obscure EU world may slip past with Sailor on a try.

I have this sudden mad urge to see if I can call a character "Unspiek", although I don't think "Baron Bodissey" will fit after it...

 

That and a guild called Dirac Angestun Gesept...

 

(No, I'm not going to Google them for you.)

[Djake]

I was having troubles renaming a character after the new <space> was allowed. I put in a ticket basically asking the same thing. What I wanted were the naming protocols, not the policy, but the actual syntax rules of what was allowed or not.

 

The reply I received was not helpful, again quoting the policy from the EULA. BUT the customer service rep did suggest that I use ALT-codes if I could not get the name I wanted.

[lightSaberAddiCt]

Or you could just deal with it and let people have the names they want?

 

Or MAYBE, people can NOT name their toons Darth Marr, with accents, wearing his armor? Sorry, but if I see someone naming their toon after a in game character, I report them. It is lame.

[t-darko]

I am trying to make a new alt but everything I have tried seems to be 'invalid' Putting little ' and - doesn't seem to work either.

 

Is there a post somewhere about naming?

 

Naming Policy

When creating a character or guild name for Star Wars: The Old Republic, it is encouraged that you select a name that reflects the theme of the game. The guidelines listed below outline the types of names that you can NOT use, and apply to both player or character names, as well as guild names.

 

You may not use any names that violate the General Rules. This includes the use of names that are hateful, defamatory, racist, ethnically offensive, obscene, vulgar, sexually explicit, or any other language that is offensive in nature.

 

You may not use names that are harassing or defamatory to other players or employees of EA, BioWare or LucasArts, e.g. EASUX, Timsretarded, and Biowaresux.

 

You may not use names of any EA, BioWare, or LucasArts employee or service related to Star Wars: The Old Republic.

 

You may not use names of copyrighted or trademarked characters, materials or products, e.g. Coca-Cola or Dr. Pepper.

 

You may not use names from popular culture or media, e.g. Lady Gaga or George Lucas.

 

You may not use names that are religiously or historically significant, e.g. Jesus, Winston Churchill.

 

You may not use proper names of areas within Star Wars for character names. Guild names, however, MAY use the proper names of specific areas to help promote role-playing and realm pride, e.g. Defenders of Tython or Protectors of Hutta.

 

You may not use proper names of non-player characters within Star Wars: The Old Republic, e.g. Darth Malgus, Satele Shan, Yoda, Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker.

 

You may not use names containing titles or ranks within them, e.g. General Supertrooper, Captain Tim, Darth Timmy, Knight Wakey.

 

You may not use names that refer to drugs or that are drug related.

 

You may not use names that contain an inappropriate phrase, sentence or any fragment of a sentence or Leet speak, e.g. uberhaxer, xxspeederxx, lolface, rofl, Noobwhacker, TimmyF**k, kock, fuk.

 

You may not use misspellings or alternative spellings of names that violate any of the above rules, e.g. Hamsolo, Yooda, DorthVader.

 

You may not use gibberish names when creating character, e.g. ajsdu, rifndsw, qweszs.

 

If you violate any part of the above Naming Policy you will either be assigned a new name, or given the option of changing the name. In addition to this, your account could incur a penalty up to and including account closure.

[ThrakhathSpawn]

Wow, more than 60% of my legacy is probably invalid depending on how "historically significant" you consider my legacy theme's achievements.

 

Probably though, only one or two is important enough to warrant a rename. And if I ever got reported with those two, I wouldn't mind the break from the in-game abuse those two get.

[AllisonLightning]

Wow, more than 60% of my legacy is probably invalid depending on how "historically significant" you consider my legacy theme's achievements.

 

Probably though, only one or two is important enough to warrant a rename. And if I ever got reported with those two, I wouldn't mind the break from the in-game abuse those two get.

 

There are too many Kylo Rens and so on with alternate characters for them to get to you first. I recruited someone for my guild who was Boba Fett and I keep seeing people named after singers and so on- I don't ever report people though, I don't care what they call themselves as long as it's not disgusting.

[Djake]

Naming Policy

When creating a character or guild name for Star Wars: The Old Republic, it is encouraged that you select a name that reflects the theme of the game. The guidelines listed below outline the types of names that you can NOT use, and apply to both player or character names, as well as guild names.

 

You may not use any names that violate the General Rules. This includes the use of names that are hateful, defamatory, racist, ethnically offensive, obscene, vulgar, sexually explicit, or any other language that is offensive in nature.

 

You may not use names that are harassing or defamatory to other players or employees of EA, BioWare or LucasArts, e.g. EASUX, Timsretarded, and Biowaresux.

 

You may not use names of any EA, BioWare, or LucasArts employee or service related to Star Wars: The Old Republic.

 

You may not use names of copyrighted or trademarked characters, materials or products, e.g. Coca-Cola or Dr. Pepper.

 

You may not use names from popular culture or media, e.g. Lady Gaga or George Lucas.

 

You may not use names that are religiously or historically significant, e.g. Jesus, Winston Churchill.

 

You may not use proper names of areas within Star Wars for character names. Guild names, however, MAY use the proper names of specific areas to help promote role-playing and realm pride, e.g. Defenders of Tython or Protectors of Hutta.

 

You may not use proper names of non-player characters within Star Wars: The Old Republic, e.g. Darth Malgus, Satele Shan, Yoda, Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker.

 

You may not use names containing titles or ranks within them, e.g. General Supertrooper, Captain Tim, Darth Timmy, Knight Wakey.

 

You may not use names that refer to drugs or that are drug related.

 

You may not use names that contain an inappropriate phrase, sentence or any fragment of a sentence or Leet speak, e.g. uberhaxer, xxspeederxx, lolface, rofl, Noobwhacker, TimmyF**k, kock, fuk.

 

You may not use misspellings or alternative spellings of names that violate any of the above rules, e.g. Hamsolo, Yooda, DorthVader.

 

You may not use gibberish names when creating character, e.g. ajsdu, rifndsw, qweszs.

 

If you violate any part of the above Naming Policy you will either be assigned a new name, or given the option of changing the name. In addition to this, your account could incur a penalty up to and including account closure.

 

 

OH!, Thank you OH SO MUCH for that useless policy...AGAIN. We've had that policy trotted out to us many times.

 

What we want are the Naming PROTOCOLS. The Syntax of how the names must be structured. How many vowels or consonants can be in a row, where spaces, hyphens and apostrophes can be.

[Monumenta]

Or MAYBE, people can NOT name their toons Darth Marr, with accents, wearing his armor? Sorry, but if I see someone naming their toon after a in game character, I report them. It is lame.

 

There's nothing wrong with rping as in game characters, why do you think the armor exists? I would think Bioware would encourage people to play around with the current lore and characters.

 

As was said, you literally could just, you know, ignore it.

[RameiArashi]

You cant use gibberish names? Isn't that what the random name generator generates?

[Transcendent]

13. You may not use gibberish names when creating character, e.g. ajsdu, rifndsw, qweszs.

 

If you violate any part of the above Naming Policy you will either be assigned a new name, or given the option of changing the name. In addition to this, your account could incur a penalty up to and including account closure.

 

And yet we still get credit sellers with these names. If anything should be coming up as "invalid" it should be these names.

[Andryah]

OH!, Thank you OH SO MUCH for that useless policy...AGAIN. We've had that policy trotted out to us many times.

What we want are the Naming PROTOCOLS. The Syntax of how the names must be structured. How many vowels or consonants can be in a row, where spaces, hyphens and apostrophes can be.

 

A) The policy is very important as a starting guideline, and has not changed since launch. It covers most of what players need to know in terms of types of names to avoid. This is pretty standard in MMOs.

 

B) Naming protocols (syntax) are also well known. It's the Policy + Restrictions on Use of ', -, and <space> + a check against the every changing and dynamic Exclusion List. You may have one ' or one - or one <space> in your name and there must be at least three legal characters before/after. You may not start a name with anything other then an alphabetic character, and numbers are not allowed within a name (which I guess can suck if you are trying to role play a droid, but it is what it is). The first character in a name is automatically capitalized and capital letters are ignored beyond that (converted to lower case in game).

 

Honestly, syntax is well known since launch, and the only change made since then is they now allow a space in a name as long as there are a minimum of three characters before and after.

 

C) Given a player actually reads and complies with the Policy, the core challenge with most of these naming complaint threads here is the dynamic nature of their Exclusion List, which appears to be dynamically driven by players reporting specific names as Policy violations. Why is it dynamic? Well, they started with a list at launch AND anytime a character name is reported, the studio reviews it, and if needed, forces a change. Along with a forced change, they make an addition to their Exclusion List. This is why sometimes a name used in the past successfully is now on the Exclusion List when someone deletes a character and tries to reuse it.

 

While it would be nice if they published their Exclusion List, since it changes all the time and is very large I'm sure, there is no practical way to present it to characters (nor any need IMO), since the name check validation prevents a player from proceeding with an excluded name anyway. In other words, it's redundant, and I know of no MMO company that publishes their name Exclusion Lists.

Edited August 27, 2016 by Andryah

[Andryah]

You cant use gibberish names? Isn't that what the random name generator generates?

 

I read this as a catch-all in the policy so they can force name changes that are reported as gibberish (if the studio agrees). For Example: qwerty = gibberish, even though it is an ordered sequence of key strokes on your keyboard. For the SW universe, what is/is-not gibberish can be a bit more problematic for the studio to enforce then some other MMOs. So there will be "escapes" during naming, which later get reported and addressed.

 

I personally have never had a name generator name for SWTOR get blocked or reported. Probably because they at least follow semi-ordered linguistics rules.

Edited August 27, 2016 by Andryah

[VixenRawR]

I've had the name, Love, Hate, Cookie, Red...there are more, but they become invalid. Why? I mean remaking cookie and it's invalid? Is that offensive? I guess killing a village full of sand people is okay but watch out if you are named Love. =)

[AshlaBoga]

It seems to have moved but I found a cached version. But I'm not sure why they've changed the original notice which included these:-

 

Naming Policy

 

When creating a character or guild name for Star Wars: The Old Republic, it is encouraged that you select a name that reflects the theme of the game. The guidelines listed below outline the types of names that you can NOT use, and apply to both player or character names, as well as guild names.

 

5. You may not use names from popular culture or media, e.g. Lady Gaga or George Lucas.

 

If you violate any part of the above Naming Policy you will either be assigned a new name, or given the option of changing the name. In addition to this, your account could incur a penalty up to and including account closure.

 

I think the exception to #5 is if you are the person in question.

 

I know some celebs had to contact Blizzard so they could use their own names in-game.

[VixenRawR]

I think the exception to #5 is if you are the person in question.

 

I know some celebs had to contact Blizzard so they could use their own names in-game.

 

Know some celebs, or know of some celebs? >.>

[SFDebris]

I've had the name, Love, Hate, Cookie, Red...there are more, but they become invalid. Why? I mean remaking cookie and it's invalid? Is that offensive? I guess killing a village full of sand people is okay but watch out if you are named Love. =)

 

For DvL I was trying to make a Smuggler called "Platinum Jane" and it was rejected. After a few tries I figured out that "[anything] Jane" is ruled out, I'm guessing to avoid anyone tricking their way into making a drug reference. Still rather silly though.

[JediAkemi]

We can only have one ' ?

That can't possibly be right, as full Chiss names require two.

[LyraineAlei]

B) Naming protocols (syntax) are also well known. It's the Policy + Restrictions on Use of ', -, and <space> + a check against the every changing and dynamic Exclusion List. You may have one ' or one - or one <space> in your name and there must be at least three legal characters before/after. You may not start a name with anything other then an alphabetic character, and numbers are not allowed within a name (which I guess can suck if you are trying to role play a droid, but it is what it is). The first character in a name is automatically capitalized and capital letters are ignored beyond that (converted to lower case in game).

 

I have a Jatora Ch'mella, one space and a ' both in a name, so the ruling is more accurately not "or" but an "and/or". I've also had a Na'astsh'ya (Mando'a for "Very Destroyer" at a near-literal meaning, at the time I didn't know she was following Chiss naming as a Chiss, however so that may have been an exception or something). I've only been able to use one - however.

 

A capital letter after a space will display as a capital letter display in-game on the character label, but not in chat.

 

To OP- basically a name name that isn't gibberish. If it can be pronounced (somehow), and isn't on the excluded list, it can be used.

 

If you're meaning naming syntax for characters based on their species, you may have to look to Wookieepedia or something for those, since I can name a Chiss Bobbi Jane as easily as a Human or a Twi'lek.

 

Offhand I recall that Chiss have two sets of names, full names, and common names. Full names use a letters'letters'letters system, common names are often the middle segment, or a segment of letterslettersletters than can work out for a common name. So my Chiss Agent head-cannon raised by Mandalorians Na'astsh'ya could use Astsh or, maybe more reasonably, Naast.

 

Twi'leks combine personal names and clan names, but often separate them among outsiders. So in the books, Wedge Antilies would have been Wedge'Antilies, except that translated into something very foul in the Twi'lek language so he became WedgeAn'tilies or something (disregard my spelling, point stays the same)

 

Rattataki generally have short names that are harsh sounding and can be hard to pronounce (Kaliyo's is an alias according to her Codex entry).

 

Mirialans usually have friendly sounding and easier to pronounce names. Luminara Unduli, and Barass Offee are pronounced as they are spelled in English or so.

 

Cathar have strong-sounding names and can often be in fewer syllables. Aric Jorgan, for example.

 

Miraluka often have two-syllable names that can be "harsh" like Visas Marr.

 

PB Sith, from my memory don't have a general naming tradition...

 

Togruta names can be one to three syllables long...

 

Zabraks are often named for critters on their homeworlds have names that are often easily pronounced.

 

Human naming traditions are about the same, if not flat-out the same as on Earth.

 

Okay, I recall these off of a name generator's recommendations, so a lot of them are short...

[SFDebris]

If you're meaning naming syntax for characters based on their species, you may have to look to Wookieepedia or something for those, since I can name a Chiss Bobbi Jane as easily as a Human or a Twi'lek.

 

No no, I told you all, "[anything] Jane" is forbidden!

[VixenRawR]

No no, I told you all, "[anything] Jane" is forbidden!

 

Yup just like anything "Red' but the system is broken. I used to have the name Vader once for kicks cause it let me make it and I was testing the system. So one day I decided to delete and give to friend...invalid. 6 months later I see someone named Vader in chat talking and they said they had just made the char earlier that day (Some random on DK). It was the real deal no alt codes or whatever. Game makes no sense. =/