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May-26-2005 05:26
(sticky post)

Some of us have interesting reasons to pick a detective name. What is yours?

jstkdn which some people don't realize right away stands for JuST KiDding! It is something I tend to say a lot in real life after a lot of sentences. A good friend of mine in the US had jstkdn as a license plate of her car, so I wasn't that inventive myself.

My previous other agent was PM, which stands for Project/Program Manager, my profession in real life.

My only detective that I currently play with is freelancermountaineer. Only because Freelancer was taken. Sidney Bristow in the Alias series uses two call signs freelancer and mountaineer.

Aug-16-2006 13:05

I'm afraid I'm not at all creative, at least not in terms of my detective's name. I tried harder with the bio, though!

Hamilton Drew is a very obscure fictional character, who appeared in the Starman series of comics by James Robinson. A Holmes-style Sleuth and the idol of Ralph Dibny, otherwise known as the ductile detective Elongated Man.

See, I stole the name! How shameful...

Aug-16-2006 13:45

Like Hamilton, I "borrowed" this name from a fictional character, not as obscure as his though.

Nero Wolfe is the unconventional detective created by Rex Stout. Im not sure when his works came out, I believe they're relatively old, around the 40's or something. Stout's Wolfe was a middle-aged, 500-lb detective who was more of a Sherlock Holmes type of character; by all means he was a professional investigator who charged a fee from his clients, unlike Holmes who seemingly did it for the exercise. He had an operative named Archie Goodwin who was the brawns to his brains. Eventually, Stout made Mr. Case more intelligent but in a street-smart way, rather than Mr. Wolfe's philosopher style. Anyway, I haven't had the pleasure of reading Stout's books, but was fortunate enough to come across one TV adaptation which starred Maury Chaykin as Nero Wolfe.

Whew. That kinda went out of hand, won't you say? Anyway, Nero Wolfe Ramos is not a middle-aged, 500-lb detective. He's a wiry guy who immigrated from the Philippines who was too much of a boy scout to swallow the underhanded 'operating procedures' of the justice system, like the string-pulling and bribery practiced by those in power, so he became a private eye. Ok, this is getting kinda long too, so, peace out.

"Compose yourself, Archie. Why taunt me? Why upbraid me? I am merely a genius, not a god." - Nero Wolfe

Aug-16-2006 21:28

I like the show Bones, and it was playing on my telly when I chose my first detective (temperance_b), then this one was just a revival of my old one.

Aug-16-2006 22:48

Well my name is no big mystery. First name Justin, last name Roepel. But I just created my evil alter ego. lol Ok well not evil, but this time around I get to play a toughie and I named him Bernard Samson after the famous cold war spy in the Len Deighton novels. A smart toughie if there ever was one. :0)

Aug-17-2006 05:55

well, LED told me that i should post on this thread, so here we go, its rather boring really, Summer is my favorite character from the TV show The O. C. and Frost is the last name of the character of a detective series of books by Wingfield, that are absolutelly awesome, they are ¨A touch of Frost¨,¨Night Frost¨,¨Winter Frost¨,¨Hard Frost¨and so it goes, i really recomend to everyone to read it.....

Aug-17-2006 06:14

my friend said it and it sounded cool. easy and simple.

Aug-17-2006 08:38

Thanks Summer and everyone who posted, it's fun reading why people are who they are.

As Lady Emerald Devon is my other detective (for whom I posted about a long time ago), I wanted something similar.
I also like Rubies as gems and Caplan comes from a name of a famous Ruby.

Aug-17-2006 08:59

I'm a film student so I didn't have to look far for names. Apparently I'm not the only movie fan thogh seein as i had to try out quite a few before I found one that hadn't already been taken - sigh..
Anyway.. Freddy Newandyke is the real name of Mr. Orange in Reservoir Dogs..

Aug-17-2006 09:35

my detective name is Algernon Baker. I write(not published yet), and he's a detective in one of the books I've written. I like the character quite a bit, so chose that for a name.

Aug-17-2006 10:02

My first detective (back when the world was flat and detectives had no footwear) was based on my real name. My second detective was Som Tam, which is a Thai spicy green papaya salad. I stopped playing for a long time, but Som Tam is still around. When I started again, I chose Srei Chlat, which simply means "clever woman" in Khmer language.