What's in a Name?

Question: Having never reached God-level play, I am curious as to how your characters that became gods chose their divine names and titles. Is there a process to it?

Officially, no, there's no required process for choosing a godly name; the players chose their own monikers based on what they felt they embodied as deities or how they wanted humanity to see and know them. Some simply gave themselves descriptive names in their native tongues based on what they do and are - "Folkwardr" in Norse simply means "people-protector", while "Jioni" means "night" and "Sowiljr" means "sun god". Others chose names that were more like titles that described them, including Yoloxochitl, whose name translates roughly to "flower-heart", and Zwazo Fou Fou, whose appellation literally means "crazy, crazy bird". Still others chose to take on names already extant in mythology and make them their own; Terminus took his name from the Roman god of boundaries in order to reenvision it as the name of a god of final extremities and chances, which involved him actually subsuming that god's identity and pissing off most of the Roman pantheon, while Vala's name is just a name-form of the Norse title voelva, meaning "wand-carrier" or witch.

Basically, once they were Legend 8 and getting close to godhood, we told the players to start thinking about what they wanted to be referred to and how they wanted to appear as gods, and they spent as much or little time on it as they wanted to. Some came up with their names on their own, perusing dictionaries or online name lists, occasionally coming to us for etymological help. Some presented it as a plot point, like Terminus, while others had in-game impetus to get moving on it (Sowiljr was already being regarded as a god by several populations of mortals by the time he was Legend 8, and narrowly avoided spending eternity as "Geffr" because his well-meaning pantheon-mates just started Norse-icizing his name to make talking about him easier). Some went through several revisions and changes to the name they wanted, while others knew what they were going for from the beginning and never wavered.

Basically, it's one of those places that players can really go wild with creativity, and we didn't feel there was a need to put a system on it (though, as Geoff discovered and hastily rectified, if you don't choose an appropriate godly name quickly enough, your pantheon may choose one for you). The extra titles are an additional layer of fun, because they let Scions refer to their actual exploits - Eztli being referred to as "Miactli" recalls her status as "mother" to the many ghost children that populate her death-realm, while "Ungeheuerlichgurtelschildkroete", a German mouthful meaning "terrible turtle-monster-protector", refers to Folkwardr's somewhat terrifying exploits in the Germanic forests.

And being referred to by many names is fun, especially for players getting to see their impact on the world as gods for the first time. So we encourage as many reasonable titles as a player wants their god to have, and we let them have full free rein to decide what those titles should be. We occasionally provided help finding things or tracing linguistic origins, but for the most part they did all that on their own, usually in the downtime between games.

If you guys are around, players, do you have any god-naming tips, now that you've been through the process once or twice?