What's in a name?

Here's Aretus, my Dark Templar, now at a Mighty-Thewed level 14! When I created him, I went for a thick black beard, short hair and sunken eyes. He now looks like Leonidas' junkie brother.

I'm gonna talk a little about my RP naming conventions. I usually tend towards RP servers on MMOs, usually since that's where my friends are. As a result, I have never had the joy of naming one of my toons "Bubblelol", "Retnub" or any of the other names I see doing the rounds whenever I step into a cross-realm battleground. I tend to go with one of two tricks when trying to come up with a new name in a Fantasy or Sci-Fi background:

1. The "George Lucas" approach. I pick two or three syllables I like the sound of and string them together. Examples would be an old Star Wars character of mine called Gann Tharr or indeed Ulushnar.

2. The "linguistic butchery" approach. I'm something of a linguaphile, I like languages and I like learning how other cultures say things. I can't actually speak many languages with any fluency, but I like to collect words and phrases. My Retribution twink experiment on Moonglade Rachskind is an example of this. His name is a very loose german translation of "Revenge Child", which serves as a dual placeholder for "Retribution Nub" and "Wrathchild".

With Aretus, I took the second approach. His name comes from "Arete", the greek word for "Excellence", although it can also mean "goodness" or "virtue". I thought it'd be a good name for someone who draws his power from whatever demon or god will answer his call.