I wanted to name my wizard 'Burning Sensation' but burning was taken. :-(

Went with Panfalcon Wyvernjack. Random name generators FTW.

Also reflects the Classic/Kunark/etc experience...unless you were among the first on the server you would have to try a bunch of different names before getting one you wanted.

People with decent names no doubt were playing early beta since 1986 etc ;)

That IS early! Most of you were a glimmer in mama's eye (or daddy's).

Personally, I reserved my name in 1961 during the Eisenhower administration. The problem back then wasn't the slow internet, it was those damn female operators flirting with me because of my sexy Bell 103 modem that I got during early beta.

Xaxian

Halfelf Bard.

Yeah.

Let's look at four-lettered permutations, or possible names. There are 26 letters in the alphabet, and each slot can be filled with one letter.

____ _____ _____ _____

If we assume letters can be repeated (like the name Fizz, one of my favorite wizards), then there are 26 choices for each slot.

__26__ __26__ __26__ __26__

Multiplying these together (multiplication axiom of choice), we get 26^4.

Some of those are inappropriate, so a bit less than that, but more importantly most are plain gibberish, like Xcdg, Oaii, and Txjq. For five-lettered names, the are 26^5 choices, and so on.

The question becomes how many possible names are there in total? For us to answer that, we have to know the restriction on the longest name, which should be 2^4-1, or 15 letters. So we have to sum up:

26
26^2
26^3
26^4
....
26^14
26^15

It's a geometric sequence, of which the series sums to 26(1-26^15)/(1-26).

This is 1,744,349,715,977,154,962,390 names. If 100,000 or so are taken, that still leaves quite a bit of room to name your character.

Xaxian

young calculus teacher

Although I appreciate giving everyone hope - there are just a few 4-letter names left! :D

Frodo and Bilbo are taken! No halfling for me.

Pretty basic algebra concepts taught to 7th graders here where I live. Calculus requires a bit more abstraction, don't you think? Related rate problems elude even the brightest 10-year old.

I typically agree with you, but I think what you mean is 4-letter names that make sense???

It's funny to think that most names are taken.

The first part of your question, sure - 26^4 is the number of possible 4-letter names. And i'm sure the concept is taught - but a question that doesn't lead the student on how to answer such as "how many possible names" would stump most 7th graders and plenty of highschoolers - just because they have a rote knowledge of basic math concepts, but don't know how to pull them out and use them on the fly.

Working in higher education myself, I'm pretty confident of that. That kind of math isn't easy to simply pop out and apply to real-life circumstances when you haven't been challenged to do that before.

Yeah, my post was a poor attempt at making a non-offensive joke about people who think all the good names are taken :)

Somebody already has the name Raptor so I had to settle for Raptyr as my Iksar Monk.

He'll eventually be Raptyr Jesus.