Taming named mobs

[Cozzene]

So, for you hunters who tame Jadefang and name her Jadefang, or King Mosh and name him Mosh, why do you not give the mob an entirely new name? I see some people doing this and am genuinely interested as to why. I rename all named mobs to personify them more, make them seem more "mine". Otherwise I feel like "Ocrap it's <mob>, maybe if I keep throwing food at it it'll help me out!" instead of "Aw, <mob> wants to be buddies!"

Edit; But Mosh makes me think of mosh pits and that makes him seem kinda bada**.

[Zangor]

sometimes i name them after the actual NPC to laugh at people that freakout over it
i once named my core hound magmadar and a level 60 in SW thought magmadar was actually attacking the city.

but mostly its because i enjoy the name and respect the actual NPC

[Cozzene]

i once named my core hound magmadar and a level 60 in SW thought magmadar was actually attacking the city.

I approve x100.

[Gimlion]

I do it on certain pets that I feel deserve to keep the name. Case in point: Humar, I have him tamed on Gim, and he is such an iconic, mystic creature of WoW, that I can't think of the black lion w/o thinking of Humar. That, and I love the name.

[Acherontia]

I've learned that even after I name a pet, if it was originally a well-known and/or much sought-after mob, I think about it like that anyway. I don't say "I'm bringing Banshee to tank," I'll say "I'm bringing my Gezzarak to tank." Same with creatures like the spirit beasts, Krush etc. So that might also be a reason to do it!

[Azunara]

I change them but do keep their ties. My Krush is actually the son of the King. So instead of him being King Krush, he's Prince Bayne. (This is because a guildie who helped me look for him jokingly asked why he was so small. And that was my reason.)

My Humar on my hunter I had for a bit also got a name and gender change, and she was the daughter of the Pride Lord.

[Jäysee]

I rename all my pets, they are "reborn" and are not that "named" mob anymore once tamed.(to me) Who wants to see 10 Jadefang's named "Jadefang"?! I asked one hunter why he named them the same proper name and he told me so people will envy him. That to me is just self centered. I would respect you more if you said to honor the beast, but to make other hunters envious.....lame. Why not rename your character every time you got a new epic piece to that new epic piece name then? pfft lol

[Lupis]

I always rename my pets, even the rares. I just like my own names, it seems to give them a great personality of their own. Giving them the old name seems bland. :-/

[Lisaara]

I usually rename them but sometimes I like to keep them. :3

[Kurasu]

For me, I name them as the mob generally so people will recognize the mob. Me, myself, I would never name a 'lookalike' as the real thing. I named The Razza as 'Razza', because I wanted people to realize that yes, I had tamed The Razza. Likewise with Timber. It's homage, that others will notice and recognize. And even if they don't, in my mind, they now *can*.

In addition, I will name the pet as the mob name because it is a memory for me, and an important one. The Razza, I could never tame as a 'fake Razza', because it was *that* specific pet and *that* specific tame for me that I wanted to recognize. Now that The razza will be a different color skin I don't need to acknowledge it as that name, but even now his new name, Codebreaker, recognizes the memories behind that important tame.

As a third reason, the name may personify the mob. Humar is *Humar*. Even if there was only one black lion, my mind's eye may always see him as Humar. Naming Sambas as Sambas is the same thing: there's only one Sambas who looks like that, but that's his name and thus naming it doesn't seem too bad.

And finally, it's a name I would use because I just plain love it. Let's face it: some of the 'named mobs' have badass names.

[ummeiko]

Kurasu hit a lot of my points.

I don't name everything the same, but occasionally I will.

And in addition to what Kurasu said, sometimes the name just fits. I mean, I'm not a fan of the name Gondria, so I renamed her, but I think Skoll is a particularly good name, and Jadefang probably even better. Blizzard has gotten pretty decent at names lately, in my opinion anyway.

I could also see it in people that tame a named that has a rather common look. Say Takk. I had a Takk for awhile and named him Leaper. I also feel like Dart is a good name for a raptor, and though I'm not a particular fan of that red color, if I did tame him, I'd probably keep the name. It's a bit of a homage and it lets anyone who knows or cares that yeah, I tamed Takk instead of a random Deviate Stalker. It's a similar situation to Kurasu and Razza.

And honestly, sometimes I suck at names. So if Blizzard has provided me a perfectly good and identifiable name, then why not?

At the end of the day, you're not going to find a situation where everyone agrees. Some people like the original names, some people like pop-culture names or references, some people go fantasy (I honestly can't find many fantasy pet names that I actually like and don't find overly cheesy, but that's just me), some people want to name their dog "Cat" (which we've had pages and pages about already...) While I have my pet peeves for sure, my overall view on it is "to each his/her own"... chances are, if I don't particularly care for whatever RandomAFKinOrgrimmarHunter has named their pet, I'm probably not going to see it often enough to really bother me anyway, if ever again.

[Lisaara]

Kurasu hit a lot of my points.

I don't name everything the same, but occasionally I will.

And in addition to what Kurasu said, sometimes the name just fits. I mean, I'm not a fan of the name Gondria, so I renamed her, but I think Skoll is a particularly good name, and Jadefang probably even better. Blizzard has gotten pretty decent at names lately, in my opinion anyway.

I could also see it in people that tame a named that has a rather common look. Say Takk. I had a Takk for awhile and named him Leaper. I also feel like Dart is a good name for a raptor, and though I'm not a particular fan of that red color, if I did tame him, I'd probably keep the name. It's a bit of a homage and it lets anyone who knows or cares that yeah, I tamed Takk instead of a random Deviate Stalker. It's a similar situation to Kurasu and Razza.

And honestly, sometimes I suck at names. So if Blizzard has provided me a perfectly good and identifiable name, then why not?

At the end of the day, you're not going to find a situation where everyone agrees. Some people like the original names, some people like pop-culture names or references, some people go fantasy (I honestly can't find many fantasy pet names that I actually like and don't find overly cheesy, but that's just me), some people want to name their dog "Cat" (which we've had pages and pages about already...) While I have my pet peeves for sure, my overall view on it is "to each his/her own"... chances are, if I don't particularly care for whatever RandomAFKinOrgrimmarHunter has named their pet, I'm probably not going to see it often enough to really bother me anyway, if ever again.

Haha. Thats what i named my takk(Leaper) cause it fit so much better.

[Novikova]

Some of the NPC names aren't bad. I just like to give them names myself. It also helps if I run around and accidentally set off someone's macro/NPCscan. >>

[Carnifex]

I almost always retain named mobs' names after taming them because I think of that as the animal's "canon" name. I think of specially named beasts as being pointed out by Blizzard as specific characters in the game world, and when my hunter tames one, my hunter has that individual animal for a pet.

For example, let's say that my hunter tames Humar. To me, that would be different from taming another lion in the same area, or even from taming a seperate but visually identical black lion. Because those Savannah Highmanes in the Barrens are background elements, basically. They aren't individualized--the same way that generic townspeople in an RPG aren't, or generic random encounter enemies. Their function is just to fill out the game; they don't have many or any distinguishing traits to tell one from another. They're just there.

Humar, however, is distinguished as not just any lion, but a particular lion. A character. He many not have a deep developed personality or anything, but I think he stands out from the crowd at least as much as Auctioneer Dave does from the Orgrimmar Grunts. So when my hunter tames Humar, I feel that she is taming a specific lion named Humar.

I did rename my hunter's Strider Clutchmother, though. In that case I figured "Strider Clutchmother" wasn't really an individual name, but just a description of her role (like "Savannah Highmane" is). So I felt fine about choosing my own name for her.

Going back to RPGs, I'm also one of those people who, in video games that let you enter custom names for your main characters, chooses the default canon names anyway. It's the same principle. If I'm playing Chrono Trigger, Chrono is Chrono to me even though I have the option to nickname him whatever I want, you know?

[Pent]

It takes me forever to think of a single name for any of my pets, so I usually don't.

Which means my Terrorpene is running around as "Turtle", and my Spirit Beasts are all still named "Spirit Beast".

Something funny happened the other day though... I had just got done doing my Elder dungeon runs with Sambas (still named "Cat") and I normally dismiss my pet(s) when I am in town so I can head straight over to Uldum to semi-camp Madexx some more...

Well a warrior saw my "Cat" and proceeded to gripe me out in /tells saying how I should name him because he was an awesome pet and every awesome pet should have a name... after me telling him that I have at least 20 pets without names he started to griping me out MORE. So, of course, I did what any cool person would do... I pulled out my unnamed Terrorpene which just set him OFF... I told him that if I could think of an original name that wasn't BOWSER then maybe I would name him.

Later he messaged me asking if I wanted to go help him camp Sambas on his hunter because with me having all of the "cool pets" I had to be lucky in some way. (I didn't go.)


I am actually thinking about naming one or two of the Cataclysm rares that I have their original names, but who knows... I think it would be cool to have Ghostcrawler named "Ghost Crawler" (with the space, because I am cool like that... it can be done unless Blizzard has changed a little known naming fact....) (no... I will not say... it is a secret, but has been mentioned on these boards within th elast week or so)

[Lupis]

My pets went unnamed for long periods of time before I started just thinking up random names.
Terrorpene was hard to name, though. He was "Turtle" for a long time after I had my other pets named.
Finally ended up naming him Pyrros though...
I dunno, I just can't get attached to a pet without its own unique name.

[Nemera]

is it bad i caught myself from naming my green scorpion Jadefang thinking of a jade green scorpion O.O
dawned on me i might really confuse some poor hunter

[TygerDarkstorm]

I don't see what's wrong with naming named mobs with their given names. If you've come up with a name that fits better with the mob, I'm happy for you. I may have renamed my Skoll and Loque, but I never refer to them by the names I gave them; I always call them Skoll and Loque.

Sometimes the name of the mob fits with them so well, or is something that I feel clicks so well that I don't want them to have anything but their given name. For example, this topic was popping up some weeks ago, I went to tame Bayne on my troll huntress because I think he's cute. I stood their on my troll for like 10 minutes after taming the poor guy trying to come up with a name other than Bayne that I really liked because so many people on the forums were so hostile about giving rares their given names. In the end, I knew that Bayne was the only name I wanted him to be known by, and so he kept his name.

If you must take issue with what a hunter names their pet, take it up with the people who give their pets offensive names like "PhukYou" (actually reported a worgen hunter named HarryBalls with that for a pet name, for his name and his pet's name).

[seclipse]

a few of my pets kept there NPC names, like Chromaggus, i mean really, it would be almost a crime against nature to rename him.

[Novikova]

The only time it gets annoying is when someone sits out with it near spawn points and/or sits flagged. >< I shoulda killed that troll... that said, I AM really disappointed I can't use Jade for a pet name.