"A ɴᴀᴍᴇ ɪꜱ ᴀ ᴄʟᴏᴀᴋ ᴏꜰ ʟᴇᴛᴛᴇʀꜱ ᴛʜʀᴏᴡɴ ᴜᴘᴏɴ ᴀ ᴍᴀɴ. Iᴛ ᴍᴇᴀɴꜱ ɴᴏᴛʜɪɴɢ."
— The Transcendent One, Planescape: Torment
Someone or something is given a fancy name taken from mythology, religious lore, or history, laden with implications for the educated audience — but never turns out to actually have a Meaningful Name. Maybe the writer just needed an Awesome McCoolname for their plucky protagonist or a name to run away from really fast for their Big Bad and didn't bother about any specific connotations, or they hoped their MacGuffin would seem more important with a sufficiently cabbalistic name — in any case, it turns out that no one's Jesus in Purgatory.
A subtrope of Faux Symbolism (applied to names). Can overlap with Religious and Mythological Theme Naming. Contrast Non-Indicative Name, Ironic Name (both of which are inaccurate about what the person/thing is like, not just meaningless.)
Be warned that the below examples may contain spoilers in the form of The Un-Reveal!
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Earth Maiden Arjuna has an archer heroine named after the Hindu hero of the Baghavad Gita, but the series is a Taoist tract and the heroine's journey is completely different to that of her mythical namesake.
- Everything biblical in Neon Genesis Evangelion. Word of God states that it was used because there are almost no Christians in Japan, so the imagery would seem exotic and foreign, like how westerners view ninjas, samurai, etc., etc.
- Lampshaded in Accel World, where many powerful Enemies are based on religious or mythological figures. After the protagonists defeat Inti (an Incan sun god), only for it to be replaced by Tezcatlipoca, a Super-Class Enemy Deity of Demise from Aztec mythology, the following exchange occurs.
Aster Vine: Enough of your lies, Cosmos! Inti is a god from Incan mythology! It doesn't make sense that an Aztec god would come out!
White Cosmos: Hee-hee, I suppose not. But, you see, Aster, hun. There's no real meaning to the names used in this world. The majority of proper names are things the system just scooped up and embedded somewhere. Even my name and yours, hmmm?
Comic Books
- Preacher: The trope is parodied when someone pointed out that Jesse Custer's name has "J.C." for initials and Jesse says it's a ridiculous idea. He insists on it even after he heals the sick, or rather, uses the Word of God to order a mentally-tortured man to forget about his ordeal (which Jesse was responsible for in the first place).
- Spider-Man: Kaine seems to have been given this name simply to allow him to have a power called "the Mark of Kaine" (burning his handprint on his victims’ faces) rather than for any Biblical connotations.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, Michelangelo. Some continuities say that pre-mutated Splinter was an ordinary pet rat owned by an art lover, which is where he got the names when he and the four young turtles were exposed to the mutagenic goop.
- X-Men: The series went through a phase in the Dark Age when a lot of new characters had Biblical or religious names, sometimes appropriately (Apocalypse, Nimrod), vaguely appropriately (Babel spires), or for no particular reason at all (Bishop, Gideon). Ahab would count, except that he's an obvious reference to Moby-Dick.
Film — Live-Action
- In Godmothered, Eleanor thinks Hugh Prince's name means that Mackenzie will fall in love with him. However, she never ends up in a relationship with him.
- In Moon, the four harvesters are named Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — the names of the four gospels. Screenwriter Nathan Parker insists that these were simply the first set of four names that came to mind, and that he could have just as easily named them John, Paul, George, and Ringo.
Literature
- Tam Lin in House of the Scorpion. Why is he named "Tam Lin"? Well, because he's Scottish... and because the author named him that.
- In the first Redwall book, the abbey is under attack by a large rat named Cluny. There is a Cluny Abbey
in France, although the author said he was unaware of the fact at the time.
- Temeraire: It's mentioned that young, hotshot Dragon Riders have an unfortunate tendency to give their hatchlings grandiose Roman names with far more style than substance. This becomes a Brick Joke when an egotistical young dragon names itself Caesar, much to Temeraire's contempt.
Sir Edward: There is something quite absurd about a two-ton Winchester named Imperatorius.
Live-Action TV
- Prison Break:
- "Scylla" has neither a "Charybdis" counterpart, nor does it share any other characteristics with the sea monster of the same name (aside from having six "heads").
- The fifth season went nuts with Odyssey Theme Naming, calling the Big Bad "Poseidon" and having Michael and company face off against a one-eyed terrorist who they called "Cyclops". And Michael was held in a Yemeni prison called "Ogygia" under the name "Kaniel Outis", in case there were still people who felt the writers might still have a shred of subtlety left.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons has the deity Bahamut, the Platinum Dragon. The mythological Bahamut is actually a fish/whale hybrid supporting a bull, which supports the world. Similarly, D&D also has a dragon goddess named Tiamat, who is Bahamut's opposite number. The name Tiamat hails from Mesopotamian mythology, where she is the personification of the Cosmic Ocean rather than anything dragon-related.
- Mage: The Awakening: Mages commonly adopt a "Shadow Name" to use in Magical Society. These often carry personal meaning, but the more cautious mages choose deliberately meaningless or outright misleading Shadow Names to throw off anyone who might be snooping into their private life.
Video Games
- ANNO: Mutationem: A character introduced at Harbor Town is called Proteus, named after the sea god from Greek mythology, but his only role is being an ordinary ferryman to lend a ride towards the Ship Level.
- In Baldur's Gate III, a Gith character (usual names are eg. Lae'zel, Vlaakith, Voss) named Orpheus is introduced to the lore. The character's story bears no similarities to the Greek myth of Orpheus.
- A lot of characters in the Boktai series are named after figures from Norse mythology, yet have absolutely nothing to do with said mythology and are in a Gunslingers... IN SPACE type setting that features vampires. Makes sense. The closest one to its namesake is Boktai 2's final boss Jormungand, who is a nightmarish Beast of the Apocalypse in the shape of an eldritch-looking serpent. There are a few exceptions to the Theme Naming but they generally end up fitting this trope as well (compare Django and Sabata to their Spaghetti Western namesakes, for instance, or the banshee Carmilla to the literary Carmilla.)
- Its Spiritual Successor, Lunar Knights, replaces the norse motif with one based on old victorian writers, with similar results, though they usually refer to a book they wrote that fits the character themselves — for instance, Bram Stoker becomes the vampiric Baron Stoker, while Charles Perrault, writer of The Puss in Boots, lends his name to an anthropomorphic cat. Why Lord Byron is now a Doomsday Device, though, is anyone's guess.
- Cave Story has minor NPCs named Cthulhu and Santa. The latter is an ordinary Mimiga who looks almost entirely unlike Santa Claus. Funnily enough though, when Cave Story+ added Holiday Modes, Santa is dressed like Santa Claus on Christmas and the Cthulhu actually look like their namesake on Halloween.
- Cult of the Lamb: Many major and minor characters are named after mythological demons, including those of the Ars Goetia. For most of them, the connection starts and ends there. Only a few like Marchosias bear any thematic links to their namesake.
- Dawn of War: The Blood Ravens don't have as well-defined a theme as other Space Marine chapters (who are space Vikings/Mongols/Romans/Renaissance Italians...), so their names can go from Greek myth (Endymion, Apollo Diomedes) to referencing the North (Davian Thule, Indrick Boreale), Abrahamic religion (Gabriel Angelos, Thaddeus), both (Jonah Orion) and sometimes, High Gothic (Martellus, Avitus).
- One of the bosses in Dragon Quest II is named Pazuzu and has the appearance of a monkey with bat wings. Mythological Pazuzu had a doglike face with abnormally bulging eyes, a scaly body, a snake-headed penis or tail, the talons of a bird and usually wings. And while popular culture potrays Pazuzu as a villain and could be evil in some old stories, in other stories he is a benevolent deity that works against the demoness Lamashtu and can be invoked to protect pregnant women and mothers.
- A lot of the monsters in the Final Fantasy series are given names of creatures and heroes from various different myths, but many seem like an excuse to give mooks an awesome name.
- Gilgamesh, in Sumerian mythology, was a great hero and king. The recurring Gilgamesh in Final Fantasy is a silly Minion with an F in Evil who is strongly based off of Musashibo Benkei, and didn't pick up any traits from Sumerian Gil until Final Fantasy Type-0.
- Shiva. In Hindu mythology, a male god of destruction. In FF, a sexy female 'ice queen'. Some theorise that this was punning off 'shiver'.
- The writers of Final Fantasy VI actually got asked a lot by nerds why they used the name Orthros, a Greek dog monster, for a purple octopus character. It was eventually revealed to have been inspired by a purple octopus toy called Orthros that Hironobu Sakaguchi had as a child. (The English localisation changed his name to Ultros, avoiding the embarrassment.)
- Bahamut, the King of the Dragons, is inspired by Dungeons & Dragons and became a common Japanese pop cultural portrayal. The mythological Bahamut is a fish/whale hybrid having nothing to do with dragons.
- In any given Fire Emblem game, there's often a few people with names taken from Mythology (e.g. Cain and Abel, Minerva, Percieval, etc.), who seem to have been named at random without much consideration.
- All the bosses in The House of the Dead series are named after the Major Arcana of the standard Tarot deck. Sometimes, the names very vaguely describe the enemy (e.g. the multi-headed hydra dubbed "Tower" is pretty tall and the batlike "Hanged Man" is suspended in the air), but they're mostly just there to be cool.
- Mega Man:
- Mega Man Zero had its Four Guardians named after mythological beasts — Harpuia from harpies (despite being male), Leviathan from the biblical monster of the same name, Fefnir from the norse dragon/dwarf Fafnir and Phantom from... phantoms. They have virtually nothing in common with their namesakes aside from elemental associations and the fact that Harpuia flies and Leviathan swims, though Phantom's name becomes very appropriate after he is Killed Off for Real and becomes a ghost inhabiting cyberspace.
- Mega Man ZX Advent: The four enemy Mega Men. They all have names taken from mythology; and while some of them do match up in terms of powers (Aeolus is the Wind Mega Man with electrical powers and the god of winds of Greek mythology; Thetis is the Ice Mega Man with ties to water and a Greek sea goddess), three of the four are opposite genders. For example, the male Shadow Mega Man Siarnaq is named after an Inuit goddess of ice. There is a bit more to the Theme Naming, however, in that three out of four — along with another pair of characters, Prometheus and Pandora — share their names with moons orbiting Saturn (Aeolus is the only exception, though he was known as Helios in the original Japanese version, which is a moon).
- METAL GEAR AC!D² names the Test Subjects (Golab, Harab Serap, Chagadiel) after four of the ten Kabbalist Qliphoth for no good reason.
- Many of the characters in Sacrifice have names from mythology, but none of them seem to have any meaningful connection with the relevant myth.
- StarCraft II: Valerian Mengsk, son of Emperor Arcturus Mengsk, surprisingly suffers neither a humiliating defeat nor an ignominious demise like the historical Emperor Valerian even after inheriting the throne.
- Tales Series:
- Tales of Symphonia has a lot of mythological names for things, particularly places given names from Norse mythology, most of which have little or no connection to the things they're named for. There are a couple of exceptions, though. This is because Tales of Symphonia is a distant prequel to Tales of Phantasia, which was far more directly inspired by Norse mythology.
- Tales of the Abyss carries it to a whole new extreme. Nearly all the towns' names, the "Qlipoth" underworld, and even the title — all drawn directly from the Qabalah in ways that make it clear there was absolutely no understanding of the original material.
- Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Humorously called out in-universe near the end of the game, where Malos learns his true name, Logos, and asks his creator what it means. The Architect replies "It has no meaning. All it represents is the ego of those who named you."
Web Comics
- El Goonish Shive has Immortals (who regularly wipe most of their memory anyway) randomly taking grand names from some or other mythology. As one of them said, there's nothing as funny as a hissy fit happening whenever two "Zeus"-es meet. Which is one of reasons why he prefers "Jerry". This makes his next incarnation's choice for a name something of a Ironic Brick Joke.
- The protagonist of Inverloch is named Acheron not after the river of death in Greek Mythology, but a town in Australia near the author's home.