Practical Superheroism #1: What's in a Name?

First, the disclaimer.  I should ask Briane Pagel to write this for me so it sounds all legal and stuff.
  
Anyway, these columns are only meant for entertainment purposes.  You absolutely should not attempt to do any of this yourself because you will end up getting your ass kicked if not outright killed and I don't want you or your relatives suing me because you were so dumb that you took this "advice" seriously.  Got it?  Good.

So let's say you're tired of superheroes being relegated to comic books, movies, and TV and you want to go out there and be a real masked avenger.  How would you go about it?  Well lucky for you I've got it all figured out.

Scarlet Knight: much better than Pink Bunny

First, what you need is a name.  A good name that can inspire fear in your enemies.  A crummy hero name will make it tough for people to take you seriously.  Say you beat up a purse-snatcher in an alley and then hiss, "I'm the Pink Bunny" how ridiculous you'd sound.  The criminals would probably laugh you right off the street.  I remember reading a book where one of the superheroes was called "The Science Pirate" and I thought, "That's just a terrible name."  It doesn't really strike fear into me, nor I'm sure anyone else.  The pirate part is OK, but science doesn't really strike fear into the hearts of people except the GOP.  And as much as I love Watchmen, most of the heroic names in that are pretty lame.

So find yourself a good name.  Of course in the comics and such the name isn't always the first thing that comes along.  Some heroes like Superman don't really name themselves.  Some like Green Lantern or the Scarlet Knight get theirs by becoming part of a secret society.  Others like Spider-Man take their name from their special powers.

But unless you've been bitten by a radioactive spider recently, chances are you don't have any actual superpowers.  Which would make you like Batman.  When Bruce Wayne decided he wanted to fight crime, he realized he needed a name.  Not just any old name, but something that would inspire fear and terror in his enemies.  Then conveniently a bat flew into the room and the rest is history.

Fear the Grumpy Bulldog

So first you might want to look around and see if there are any scary animals in the immediate vicinity.  Probably not.  Most of the cool animals have already been taken in any case.  Though you could always go by The Grumpy Bulldog.  That has a certain ring to it.

If you don't have any scary animals handy, then look at the sports page.  You'll see a lot of animals but also other things like Warriors, Trojans, and of course Knights.  You might even notice that Rutgers is home of the Scarlet Knights, something that played zero part in my character's name.  (I didn't even know Rutgers was a school until I did a Web search of my potential character name.)  There are also a lot of animals:  Lions, Tigers, and Bears, oh my!  Including wimpy animals like Jayhawks or Cardinals.  And some really dumb ones like Boilermakers, Bluejackets, Cornhuskers, or Chemics.  (My high school's team name was the Chemics and my college's team name the Cardinals, so I didn't get very lucky there.)

If that doesn't spark anything, you might want to check out some articles on mythology on Wikipedia.  Look up some ancient heroes, demigods, and gods.  Or goddesses if you're a woman.  (It's probably important to note if you are a woman you shouldn't name yourself after a man or it might be kind of confusing to people.)  You can start with the Greek/Roman or Norse ones and then maybe move on to other cultures and see if any of them have a good ring to it.  Try to find one that isn't too long though.

As a last resort, get out your thesaurus (or find one online) and look up heroic words like "hero" or "warrior" or "avenger" and maybe you can find something.

If you still don't have anything, don't feel bad.  Maybe you just need to figure out your skill set first.  If you do have an awesome name then before you go any farther, check it out online and make sure no one else is using it.  After all, you don't want to get sued, right?