Doll Names : Orginality vs Characters

I have the best of both worlds, myself :d I'm getting dolls based on how much they look like a myriad of anime characters. HOWEVER, each has an original name & character because I've made a story about a group of cosplayers. This gives me LOTS of wiggle room - I'm making costumes for a bunch of characters, but then, each doll has his original name & character to fall back on.
I like versatility. & cosplay!

 

I dont own a doll yet, however, i enjoy completely coming up with my own buddy with his or her own name, personality, quirks. I do however like to cosplay dolls as other people. I dont know, i know it sounds crazy but i like keeping my dollies as real as possible. However, i see nothing wrong with making a character from a show or movie, ect. As for the question of "stealing" names, my name is Kathy, and there are a billion other Kathy's out there. I dont feel its stolen. So yeah if you had a Celeste or a Zephyr, yes they are interesting and unique but chances are other people like it too. Though Lord ScruffingtonVonButenburg, i could see. that's an exaggeration, but if you have a name that unique i guess i can understand an irritation. Just remember, if you had the idea, chances are its not a hundred percent original

 

So far all of mine are original say for one who's a pseudo-character doll. He's based off a prexisting thing (a pokemon) but is still his own character with a name that sounds like what he's based off of. For my originals, they just have names that suit them (and ironically all start with the letter "A", something that was NOT done on purpose). If someone else uses thos names? Feh who cares, how many dollie Lucifer do we have on here? Everyone seems to want the most fantastical most unique name for their doll, but in doing so making some of those names as common as John or Mary. So I'm not going to throw a fit if there's another Anju around. I might look at ya funny if you've got yourself an Aceras Aetherwyn though, especially if she's a fairy... One or the other is fine but both together might make me raise an eyebrow. The last name I'll give you, I got it off of one of those fancy naming sites, but the first name... That took a lot of time and research to find and isn't exactly a normal fantasy name. But other than that I don't care. It's not like I could force anyone to change the name of their doll anyway even if I wanted them to.

I AM getting a character doll, an actual licensed character doll from the company to be exact, and I should be seeing her around April or so depending. In this case, she will keep her character name and look. I don't see anything wrong with such dolls, though I bet it gets confusing between owners of the same character doll as to which one is being talked about.

 

Hmmm, I find those beginning questions to be quite interesting. For example, one day I will have an Iplehouse JID Asa. The name I want for her? Asami. It's a pretty name and its very translations are explicitly expressive of that idea. Her character? I don't know yet, but I imagine that it will have as wide a range as anything... But that could just be me. Originality, to me, is not such a big deal... But that's just me.

I have the confidence to make my Asami mine, but that's not to say that I wouldn't use the same name as an anime character. If I think it's a pretty name and I like the meaning and it sticks, then it works... But lately, not many of the anime-based names can do that for me.

 

I have both character and original dolls. I love both but I find more freedom in original dolls. As for names, I think most of mine are up for grabs really. I'm pretty sure all of them are common names in some area of the world. I have two "tribal" littlefee who have Swahili names: Azizi and Nuru. Granted they aren't very common names around here, I wouldn't get upset if someone else had dolls with those names because they are actual names. Same for my dolls Jakodi and Naphtali. I love their names and they're pretty original (I've yet to meet someone else who had dolls with those names) but they're also normal names. Jakodi is Gaelic and Naphtali is Biblical -- both names can be found if you're looking so meh.

 

Well, I can honestly say my Edward doll is going to be promptly transformed into a book character of mine that I've been adventuring with for many, many years now. When I first laid eyes on Edward, he instantly reminded me of my old friend. This pleased me on so many levels because for years, I've been trying to make him visible. My meager drawing skills did him absolutely no justice and I couldn't properly bring him to life in my writing. But when I closed my eyes, I could see the golden strands of his hair, the powerful, predatorial crimson gaze..oh, but when I saw Edward, he fits him so perfectly! And I finally found the right wig and eyes. >< I'm just writhing around in my skin just thinking about it- his name will be Philippe. As for if I care if someone uses it without permission, not really. No one could bring Philippe to life and fully do him justice like I can. : 3 It's simply not possible. Now, of course, Philippe will cosplay as characters- for metrocon, I'm torn between Eddie/Zato-1 and Testament from Guilty Gear for Metrocon. Somewhere down the road, I wanna get a girl doll- which I already know the one I have in mind- and fashion her after another creation of mine named Bane. I'm just so excited...><

Edit: Don't mind me- I'm a hopeless romantic. Lol.

 

On the one hand you have character-based dolls. Now I'm not talking about originals, I'm talking about dolls that are purposely modeled and named after anime/manga, movies, books, comic books, tv shows, bands, models, etc you get the point.

To owners of these dolls: Why do you enjoy character based dolls? Have you also had a character based doll that ended up turning into an original?

Well I think that depends on what u call character-based. I mean I have several dolls that have middle or first or last names of Japanese artists that I like but it was more that they had the names first I just figured out that the reason I liked those names were because I already knew them or some variation of the name in the first place. So I guess by this definition I don't have a character based doll. Though I do have two dolls that are named Alice and Jasper and every thinks they are because of twilight and I always have to tell them no...no I had these character names picked out way before twilight was even on the map...

Also we have dolls that are completely original, either based on people's original RP characters or just put together however they want and named as they see fit.

To owners of these dolls: Why do you enjoy original dolls? Do you find it distressing or upsetting when people emulate your original doll or copy his/her name without asking? Or do you feel names are just names and are up for grabs.

I find original characters a lot of fun...I mean who cares if someone else has the name I mean its real life. People have the same name different spellings all the time so I don't see why that would be different in the doll world or in other worlds. I think if the name is the same who cares as long as the premise of the doll is different. I find it no more distressing than finding another person with my name..heck I'm sure there are even dolls with my name as I am sure there are of other peoples names too...its not what defines us its who we are so I suppose that goes for dolls too.

I like having lots of differing ideas most of my dolls names and ideas, and stories are taken from the things I like to read and write about so that means the vampires, werewolves, shapeshifters, humans, elves, witches...mostly anything from stephen king, Lord of the Rings, Narnia, LJ Smith, or Anita Blake novels, pictures I've seen and liked Japanese rock, rock stars etc...yup so I guess what i'm saying is that I'm a both depending on how u define it.

 

For me, this controversial issue.
Some of my dolls - it's personally my characters, but some - the embodiment of the heroes of books, songs or anime.
For example Kalendulae - was invented by me, Edan - character songs, Schuldig - a character from the anime "Weiss Kreuz")

 

My little girl and my new doll-to-be both have very set characters, and their names were chosen to correspond with that. Soraya means Princess in Persian. And Soraya is, well, A princess of her kingdom.
My soon to be doll is Ezekiel Vita which means 'May god strengthen life'. She happens to be a banshee and I thought the meaning was fitting. xD

I have come across a few other character's that share the names and I'm fine with that. After all, the names I find are from Babynames.com

However, I have a few non-doll characters that have unique names such as Estrieve, Estrielle, Irasious, Shinzey, Zeisc and Triun. If I saw others with those names and had the same character too, I would probably get pretty upset.

 

I used to do unoriginal characters--actually, band members and whatnot. But recently I've picked up on my own OCs/whatever comes to mind.

I have Murmur and Nija, twins that I hadn't actually planned out. And I have Azazel. 'Murmur' and 'Azazel' are actually demon names--I had another doll named Cassiel, an angel name. Nija I believe is also a demon name...I just like the latin names a lot. I've had 'Eli' and whatnot before as well, but I just name them whatever seems to match nowadays.

I dont mind other dolls with the same names, but if they are the same dolls and look extremely similar...example, clothes, eyes, faceup[not factory] and wig, then I get a little concerned. But I wont throw a hissy over it.

Names are names. It could mean one thing to one person and something completely different to another. :3 Like I like the name 'Samael'...but to another person it could translate out to 'Satan'.

 

I like both honestly. But what tends to happen is I have an intended character doll that turns into an original version of the character it was meant to be. So it will have the name and style of the established character, but with some twists on origin, occupation, ect. Like fanfiction gone awry.

I like this because its often just the character's personality that I fell in love with, so then my doll will be similar to that what I liked, but then I can add whatever I want to that and change it to fit something completely new.

On the other hand I have completely original dolls which are also great, but the same as with the others I tend to change whatever I had planned originally for even dolls whos character is all made up by me.

Both are cool, having dolls 100% character like a dollfie dream character doll just shows how much you love whatever character or series it is.

 

My AOD Chi's name (Shard) came to me randomly while I was trying to figure out his personality. He evolved into an original character that fits into the story of some of my other characters. (Who are all either off-topic dolls or not dolls at all.)

I do have character dolls based on both pre-existing (other people's) characters and my own original characters.

I also sometimes just pick random words that I like for dolls who aren't character-based (examples: Scythe, Viscera, Sclera, Scapula, Gear, Nova, etc.) or random normal-human names...

 

All of me dolls are original characters and are named accordingly and to keep with the story.

There are clean references to things when it comes to some, however. The Angel brothers all have names of actual angels (Ramiel, Ophan, Penemue, Israfel, Hellel, etcetera) the Devil's sons are also named with different variations of their father's name (Shaitan, Mephistophelles, Lucifer, Bellial < although Bellial is a different demon), the god of nature (and creator of all) is named Selvans Green (where Selvans in the real world is a woodland god of Etruscan mythology) and so on so forth.

C's last name, Landolt, is also a reference to the Landolt C (or Landolt Ring).

Of course I've also made entirelly original names that don't even exist in any normal language that I would feel a little sad if someone copied, but there's nothing one hundred percent original in this world either, so there's no point feeling bad about it.

 

Just putting my $0.02 in here. I love both types of dolls, character and original. I currently have three dolls, two of which are originals. Youko is an old RP character of mine from WAY back. Nozomi is based on an OC of mine from an RP that ate my life as well as my friend Lii's. Then I have Linneus, who is based on the character of the same name from the Teahouse online comic.

I can't help it, I guess I love variety. I'm also in the (hopefully) process of getting a fourth doll, who perfectly fits another OC of mine from the same RP that Nozomi came from.

 

I enjoy original characters since it's nice to see a character in your head come to "life" in the form of something I love. I have a lot of characters (and do plan to make them all eventually xD) so I think it'd be pretty incredible to look at them all together and just think that all of that was in my head and there's nothing identical to it anywhere.

As to whether it bothers me when other people give their dolls the same names as my characters, I differentiate between whether it was intentional or not and whether they took other aspects too. If they just thought "oh that's a nice name, I think I'll borrow it" and applied it to a totally different character then I see no problem after all there are a lot of people with the same name in the world and my parents actually liked the sound of my IRL name in a song and borrowed it. But if the person looked at a character bio or something and then took the same traits of the character along with the name then I would have a problem, I worked on these characters and I've grown rather attached to them, I'd be rather hurt if someone ripped all that off.

TL;DR
I like originals since I like to see "real" versions of my characters, borrowing names doesn't bother me as long as the person doesn't steal personality/habits along with it.

 

I don't think there's nothing 100% original, something is always an inspiration of something. Even I sometimes think I'm creating "original" names because they just came instantaneously to my mind without realizing that I must have heard or seen that name or something similar before.

I don't have character based dolls simply because they never work out in the end (dolls want to have their own persona!) but I don't see nothing wrong with that, actually, I would love to have my favorite characters as dolls but like I said, it never works out :{

However, I do 'steal' names from my favorite characters from books (2 of my dolls were named like that) but style and personalities are different.

Like OutofFocus said: it's all for fun!

 

I am definitely not a "character doll" person. It's not that I don't like dolls based on characters from TV, books, anime, films or whatever, but that I don't personally want any as part of my collection. To me, the BJD hobby is all about creativity and how each owner expresses it. If someone wants to recreate a character or make a doll based on a real person, that's how they choose to express their creativity. I choose to express mine with original characters of my own.

As for names, most of my dolls are human characters and have pretty common names. There's nothing all that unique or spectacular about naming a doll "Michael" or "Tyler" and I suspect there are dozens of resin boys named Michael out there. That doesn't really bother me at all. I choose a name that I feel best fits the character and his or her backstory.

 

I very like based character, but.. when arrival my first boy from LaTi~ I do not know his name. But the guy helped me "remember" it.
My second doll - girl. I found it especially for character from the anime "Angelic Layer". But, when she came to us, her origin story changed a bit.

In truth all of the names occur spontaneously. Something different, and something associations...

 

I like to see dolls cosplay, and I want my dolls to cosplay in the future, but a doll being solely off someone else's creation seems sort of wrong since part of the fun of this hobby is having unique dolls and having the dolls personality and character grow with you. That saying I don't mind interpretations of characters or real people, especially ones really out there. All of my dolls names I pre-chose before meeting them. I have a character base already for them and when I ordered them I decided if the characters name fit, and if not I would find a name that still suited the character but also the doll.

So far I have Valyntein, Evalin, Edgar, and Allister.

 

I would have to say I am a character doll kinda guy. My first doll, a DD, I styled after Power Girl, a comic book character. My second girl looked like Alice in Wonderland on her ebay listing so I intended her to look like her and be named Alice. When she arrived with turquoise hair though that kind of changed lol. She kept the name Alice though. My newest member, RS Mei, named Lyria is named after my first Dragon Age Origins character. I intend to keep the same red hair color but I haven't decided if she'll be in rogue armor or something else entirely. My last girl whom I'm still waiting for, RS Ju in Deep Grey is named after a character from R.A. Salvatore's War Of The Spider Queen series. She'll be a Drow (dark elf) named Danifae.

I intend to make a DDH-06 or 07 into X-23 so there's another character girl.