What did you name your Commander Shepard? Wait. Let me guess. Your Shepard — assuming you went with something other than the default name — has one of the names in the image above, right?
Statistically speaking, those are the most popular names for Commander Shepard in Mass Effect 3 according to BioWare. Well, they’re the most frequent names aside from “John” and “Jane”, the default names that Shepard comes with — which also, incidentally, are kind of boring names (sorry, John and Janes of the world!)
But yeah. Most of you guys didn’t really give Shepard very interesting names at all, judging from this infographic BioWare made:
My guess is that if Mass Effect 3 had been released in 2014, we’d have a hell of a lot of Khaleesi, Katniss or Arya Shepards.
I’ve named my Shepard “Ash”, for what it’s worth. Not a popular name, but since he’s a paragon soldier bro-Shepard, he’s still awfully generic. 🙁
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54 responses to “Y’all Sucked At Naming Commander Shepard”
I’m assuming these are the first names of the players and they’re pretty common first names as well, so that would make sense. I was Dan Sheperd and my name is Dan. XD
I played a femshep on my second play through. Guess what? Named it after Mrs Quiz.
“Y’all suck at naming a character that is designed to feel like a representation of you and thus you are likely to not only name it after yourself but also make it look a little like yourself, you sucky people.”
So, I guess if any one sucks at naming Sheperd, it’s really our parents. 😛
yeah i did the same thing :P…
Actually i tend to do that with a lot of RPGs…
I’m not whipped, i swear!!!
I left it default. I ain’t got time naming my character when the universe is in danger from Reapers!
I’m making the assumption that most of these names were from uninspiring mainstream gamers jumping onto the bandwagon (like that rapper for no reason) and just rushed through the character creation process (which is why the majority are soldiers) gave their ‘character’ a generic name just so that they can start the shoot banging right away. I wonder how different these statistics would be if they didn’t include people quitting on the game within the first hour when they realise it’s not all about shoot bangs.
Anyways, I went with my old standby. Commander Vyra Shepard.
Well we do know the old saying about when you assume things….
There’s a little bit of truth behind it?
I regularly name any female character I play sarah or alice purely because I like those names.
I don’t remember the name, but I missed the part where you could customise their face and had default shephard the whole game, was gutted when went to mates and he was all scarred up and BJ Blaskowicz looking…
I named mine things like “sheep shepard” and “bad shepard”. So THERE.
I named mine Aldous.
Om nom nom, delicious bait, I confess to eating it whole :'(
I played a male and named him princess……..I just thought it gave him the excuse he needed to become an over compensating super soldier.
Sounds like a nickname he got during first week of basic training that stuck, though. 😛
I played 2 first. fell in love with it, then went back and played ME 1, ME 2 and then ME 3 . I called mine Lazarus Shepard.
Named my Shepard “titty”… actually worked better in Fallout 3, when you’d see the name in context, remember LOL’ing when read “there is an reward out for anyone who can find titty” in F3
Named the male one Dax…
then played a female one called Cybil…
My mostly-paragon sentinel femshep was called Lysistrata.
Obviously she didn’t sleep with Kaidan.
My Sheps were Grummm and Grummmina… never got around to finishing that series.
Well of course the top names are going to be generic, they’re the only ones multiple people are going to try. There’s a much higher chance of two people picking Alice or Steve than there is of two people picking Loth’gar.
Also when you’re not from a country that speaks English but you’re locked into an English last name you’re pool of English first names to match with is going to be pretty shallow. That’d explain why in Spanish countries Alex/Alice are the top names.
Lastly it’s a RPG so the choice should be somewhat in character and there’s no celebrity and/or bogan parent backstory option. It makes sense to pick a realistic name like Kate or Alice over something like Quilt Shepard or Crystallz Shepard.
The real question is how many players chose to use the default name and what percentage of players used names on this list. If 75% of them were Sarah and Jack that’d be so odd you’d think the game had something subliminal pushing people to those options, but if like 1% of them were Sarah and Jack and they were still the two most common names it just says that Mass Effect players were almost impossibly varied when it comes to naming characters.
[Edit: For the record I went with the default look and name. Not because I’m not creative but because I feel the games play better when I’m more about nudging an existing characters morality rather than creating my own. Unless an RPG is 100% free-form I feel like it’s weird to rename characters like Cloud or Link.]
Totally naming my next Shep ‘Quilt”, by the way. 😀
And your next Shep is going to grow up to hate you. =P
Celebrity and/or bogan backstory….
Pure gold my friend. 🙂
I named my femShep Amy just cause I like the name. I think my broShep was named John, but I can’t really remember since I never really played him after ME1.
I’m proud of my fellow gamer at this point, much better than seeing common baby names these days being a cluster of misspelled bogan rubbish.
Would you of been happier if the winners were Krystal and Jaymes?
Jaxxxon Shepard
I named my FemShep Alobrial.
I normally base my RPG names on Elendil, usually with an elven flair if I get the chance (because after reading five or so 12-book sagas in which the elves were referred to as “edhel” or something similar makes Elendil sound more Elvish than Numenorean). Didn’t feel right in a sci-fi setting, tho, so after twenty minutes of considering and discarding names, I left it as the default. There’s a reason I have a set base for my names – I suck at naming characters.
Elendil (the name) IS “elvish” (Quenya).
Wow… TIL. I should have stuck with my duck theory – if it looks like elvish and sounds like elvish… it probably is.
First ever (mixed): Kermi
Second (Paragon): Matthew
Third (Renegade Femship): Kip
Fourth (insanity attempt): Left it at the default of Jane.
Fifth (Paragon Femship): Amy
I only carried forward Matthew and Kip to ME2 (though I finished it multiple times as both both with and without DLC), and I’ve only done one playthrough of ME3 as Matthew. I’m waiting til I get around to buying all the DLC for ME3 before I do more playthroughs.
Mine (F) was Aurora. I also had a male renegade named Duke because I made his face very Nukem-like.
I named mine Malcolm
if im going to captain a space ship why wouldn’t i chose the best captain for the job
I named my Suq Madiq Shepard
John and Jenny.
Which betrays something about my TV viewing habits >.>
Disco Fran Shepard.
Bringing disco to every corner of the galaxy.
Letrico Shepard, the dumbest name ever but the hero of the galaxy.
Why not just name him/her “Commander”? That’s what everyone refers to him/her as.
I named him “Book”, ’cause I’m so witty.
Chocolato.
Tried to name mine Bartholomew, but the character limit wouldn’t let me. Ended up some mangled abbreviation thereof.
Also, why are they bringing this up now? Is this some kind of publicity thing for Mass Effect 4?
My MaleShep’s was named Antwan and my FemShep was named Aaliyah
Although the name was irrelevant because it’s never shows up in game text
“Default” is an excellent first name for all occasions.
I called mine Sheep.
My broShep was Jim, but my femShep was Marla. I may have watched Fight Club shortly before naming her though.
You can all thank your lucky stars that the galaxy was saved by Cybill Shepard
One of my friends called him German… German Shepard.
I thought Shepard’s first name was “Commander”?
Also, how awkward would it be for the crew if Shepard had the same name as them. “Off the ship Vega, we already have a James.”
Mine was Kiyomi Shepard, a hero and a hottie 😉
I used Arwen (because I forgot that the name I intended to use was actually Arianwen) and Dyfyr (because she was blond).
I named my character Dick Sheperd, because he is a renegade.
Cmon, Jack Shepard is pretty good 🙂
I named mine German.
I’ll be honest, I named my first femshep “Sarah”; although I got a little more adventurous and named my second one “Skylar” though!……. Yeah I am not very good at coming up with names for characters. God help me if I ever play The Sims!