Widget shows character name statistics
by Allison Robert 
Sep 6th 2008 at 1:00PM
The project is still in the testing stage, and it's a bit finicky about how you enter character names. Make sure you're always hitting the submit button and not using your enter key, as otherwise the widget will keep searching for the last name you looked for instead of your new query. Its creator, Emilis, also wrote to warn that it uses live information from both armories and will occasionally be slow as a result. I imagine it might also be inaccurate if either Armory is having problems.
The widget is tremendously fun to play with and has yielded some rather interesting results even with the completely random names I keep trying. "John" and "Mary," as you might expect, are overwhelmingly Human toons, whereas the greater share of people playing a "Sergei" and "Yekaterina" are Draenei. 3 people with a "Brutus" are actually playing female characters, and 1 person with a "Laura" is playing a male character (Emilis notes that gender-bending names are surprisingly common, although from what I can tell so far this seems to be a lot more true of male names for female toons than the other way around). Most people with a "Killer" are playing a Hunter, Rogue, or Warrior. Characters named "Bank" are mostly Human Warriors, but "Banktoon(s)" are mostly Orcs. And, yes, most of the people playing a toon named Legolas are Night Elf Hunters. Are you really that surprised?
Thanks to Emilis for writing in!
Filed under: Horde, Odds and ends, Virtual selves, Analysis / Opinion, Warrior, Rogue, Hunter, Orcs, Night Elves, Human, Alliance, Draenei
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Shina Sep 6th 2008 1:15PM
W00T!
HUNTER RULES
:D
Dinnerbone Sep 6th 2008 1:12PM
There's more horde called "Imalliance" than alliance o.0
RogueJedi86 Sep 6th 2008 2:49PM
I'm going to take a guess and say every character with some variation on the name "Gimli" will be a dwarf. Usually Hunter, even though I'd say the character was a warrior(not sure the spec).
And I'm surprised most "Legolas" these days aren't Blood elf hunters, since they can actually pull off the blond-haired prettyboy look.
vey_kos Sep 6th 2008 3:00PM
There are more Narutos than Legolases? WTF!
Redbowl Sep 6th 2008 5:12PM
Something about my name Redbowl, must appeal to druids. Only 10 across US and Europe, and 8 of them are druids.
Kassu Sep 6th 2008 5:46PM
There are twice as many hunters called "Tard" than any other class.
A scientific fact.
Hoggersbud Sep 6th 2008 6:54PM
Gankster dominated by rogues. Deadmeat primarily Undead Warriors, though there's a number of Tauren too. Lilhottie all female with gnomes in first over humans and blood elves. Very few LOTR names, I suspect they're mostly blocked or changed.
GreatLich Sep 6th 2008 9:03PM
The armory doesn't show characters below 10. I suspect most LOTR names are taken by lvl 1's in the starting areas.
(same applies probably to 300 and whatever other movie)
Hoggersbud Sep 6th 2008 10:32PM
That may be some of it, but when results for Frodo, Gandolf, Legolas and Aragorn come up goose-eggs versus 50+ for Samwise, Meriadoc and Peregrin, I begin to suspect something deliberate.
OTOH, Stupidity seems to be widely spread.
jurandr Sep 6th 2008 7:29PM
By golly! I came across the daedalus project nearly 6 months ago, but wasn't able to refind the link (much less remember the name.) I've been looking for this website for a long time. thanks for posting it!
Spellweave Sep 6th 2008 9:16PM
Pretty cool I guess
Enaress Sep 6th 2008 10:26PM
Lol I checked "noob" and "gank" and the results are mostly the same. Male Horde Undead Rogues.
vlad Sep 6th 2008 11:38PM
heh, talk about creative. none of my characters names are in use except by me :)
Thallid Sep 7th 2008 2:06AM
I was quite surprised to see how my name (Thallid) was heavily leaned towards male characters, Alliance (Humans in general), and mages. I wouldn't have expected this from a group of fungi from Magic: The Gathering. (Then again, perhaps this being an MtG reference may entice people to play as males, mages, or Humans.)
Namus Sep 7th 2008 4:27AM
Yeap, that's what I get for googling "paladin names", 99% of my homonyms are pallys :S
Nuts Sep 7th 2008 8:21AM
Ive tried creating chars with names that no one else has already. This also means that some of my names are really weird, while some others are funny.
My banker is a Gnome btw.
Zakk Sep 7th 2008 1:30PM
My first 70 was a Draenei Hunter named Traa. I remember I looked it up on the armory and there were only like two other people with the name. Now there are 66 Draenei named Traa xD
Tjurig Sep 8th 2008 7:13AM
Of the chars named Nerfus on EU realms 31,25% are warlocks
Juliah Sep 8th 2008 5:08PM
The widget doesn't seem to be working in Firefox for me.
Farseer Lolotea Sep 29th 2008 3:45PM
There are only two other characters with my draenei shaman's name. One is another draenei (a paladin), the other is a human rogue.
A majority of characters with my draenei paladin's name are also paladins. All but two characters (both blood elves) with that name are Alliance; humans and draenei are an overwhelming majority. It seems to be considered an exclusively female name.
Only one character with my (female) draenei priest's name is male, and there are only two male characters with my (female) troll priest's name. However, there are five male characters with my (female) troll mage's name, and a surprising 57 with the same name as my (female) draenei hunter. And the names of my troll rogue and night elf druid (both female) seem to be primarily regarded as masculine.
My tauren druid, draenei warrior, night elf rogue, blood elf paladin, and troll hunter seem to have completely unique names, as does a draenei paladin I've played on the test realm. There is only one other character with my draenei mage's name.
The name of a guildie's draenei priest (a slight re-working of a Biblical name) is surprisingly popular...but mainly among blood elf paladins!
As an off-note, I seriously want to /facepalm at people who give draenei Russian names. The accent sounds Romanian to me, and most of the NPCs' names in-game sound Greek or Arabic.