How to Nickname Your Badly-Named Neopet

     You’ve impulse-adopted from the Pound. A color and species you just couldn’t resist. You’ve always wanted that Candy Kougra, that Woodland Grundo, that Ice Xweetok, that Plushie Gelert. But you didn’t stop to consider just how terrible their name is. Who names a Neopet forest242 and doesn’t even capitalize it? Icy_Icy111 doesn’t fall into the non-capitalized trap, at least. But neopet1232616 isn’t even original. And 555555321313? Now that’s just sad.

     You look around at the Neopian Pound Neobard, and find it full of Neopets with great names. Four letters, real words, easily-pronounced and amazingly creative names. Nobody—no body--wants a ‘pet with a bunch of numbers, underscores, or random letters. In fact, when you create a board to show off your new find, people seem to pity you. Some other users even saw that exact ‘pet in the Pound and didn’t adopt it because its name was so bad.

     You’re discouraged. You’re tempted to toss your new Neopet back where they came from and let someone else deal with such an awful name. You would rather have ‘pets whose names you can actually pronounce, without a bunch of randomized letters and numbers attached. Hold on! Don’t abandon hope yet! You can come up with a super-cute nickname for the ‘pet in front of you. If you can just find a good nickname, everybody wins; the ‘pet gets a great home with you, and you get the color/species combo you’ve always wanted.

     All three ‘pets named above are real ‘pets that your author, Quizzer, has adopted over the years. She loves each and every one of them, and she’ll show you how to love your very own Badly Named ‘pet, too! She uses a few different techniques to find nicknames. Sometimes she’ll just take a word that’s already there and make it the nickname, or pull from the middle of the name, sometimes she’ll turn the name (or part of it) backwards, and sometimes she’ll turn numbers into letters to find a way to pronounce the nickname.

      1. Snag a Word

     This first technique is often employed by owners of Badly Named ‘pets. Their ‘pet will often have a real word in the name already, like Icy_Icy111, our Ice Xweetok example. Because she’s an Ice pet, our choice is simple. We’ll just call her Icy! It fits with her Ice coat, after all. This is a very easy way to find a nickname for a Badly Named pet, but it’s not a very interesting way to come up with a nickname, nor does it produce very original results. Plus, not all Badly Named ‘pets have a full word in their name. That’s why this guide doesn’t stop there! We still have three other nicknaming methods to examine.

     But we do have one good thing from naming Icy a real word: it gives us insight into her character. We can easily make her a tough-love sort of Xweetok, with a cold demeanor and a tongue that shoots icy insults. We learn a lot from her just by learning her name!

      2. Take From the Middle

     Sometimes, naming your Badly Named ‘pet after a word just isn’t all that fun--so instead, let’s take a look at the middle of their name. We’ll use forest242 for this example, a lovely little Woodland Grundo. forest242 is lucky enough to have a real word in her name, so we could easily call her Forest. But that’s a very obvious name and not all that cute. So let’s drop all the numbers, first of all, and then drop the F and the T in “forest.” This leaves us with Ores, a very short, pronounceable nickname (orr-ess) that’s cute to boot! Ores is much easier to work with than her full name, forest242.

     You’re now free to love Ores as a four-letter beauty. It’s easy to forget all those numbers when you gaze into those soulful Grundo eyes.

      3. Turn it Around

     Poor neopet1232616. He may be a Plushie Gelert, but his name leaves much, much, much to be desired. Nobody wants to call their Neopet “Neopet,” and pulling from the middle--maybe Eop? Pet?--doesn’t really work. So instead we’ll take a portion of his name and flip it backwards. “Neopet” becomes “Tepeon,” from which we can derive the nickname “Tep.” It’s short, it’s pithy, it’s easy to remember. We’ll keep it!

     The moment Tep gets a nickname, his personality really blossoms. Where before we had a Neopet literally named Neopet, we now have a plush with a great nickname!

      4. Number-to-Letter Conversion

     Let’s move on to our toughest one. Everyone loves Candy Kougras--they’ve been wildly popular since their release, and that adorable rainbow face is sure to keep them popular for many years. But 555555321313 is an unforgivable name. Shame on whoever created this poor ‘pet and cursed her to life as a number! The only way 555555321313 could even possibly work out is if she were a Robot ‘pet. But she’s Candy, and there’s absolutely no way you want to risk your luck zapping a Candy ‘pet at the Lab Ray. That means we need to find a better nickname for her, stat.

     We have only numbers to work with this time. There’s no way to pull out a nickname from the center of a word, or turn the name backwards to find a nickname. The only thing left to do...is turn some numbers into letters! Like the 1337 (“leet”) speakers of old, we need to assign letters to numbers and see if we can find something to nickname poor 555555321313.

     Surprisingly, 555555321313’s name is easy to change into letters. If we say that:

     5 = S

     3 = E

     2 = Z

     1 = I

     We can say that 555555321313 becomes SSSSSSEZIEIE. Okay, so that’s still messy. But if we use what we learned a while back about pulling nicknames from the center of names, we can pick out something we can actually pronounce: Sezie.

     Sezie?! Suddenly, now that we can pronounce her name, we see opportunities, we see customizations, maybe we even see a character design for a comic or Neopian Times story. We have successfully fallen in love with a ‘pet who hadn’t a single letter in her name when we started.

     Now, there are only 10 digits to work with--0 through 9--which means that ‘pets with numbers in the name will only have 10 different letters to work with. Have a helpful guide!

     0 = O

     1 = I

     2 = Z

     3 = E

     4 = A

     5 = S

     6 = G

     7 = T

     8 = B

     9 = P

     These are not the only interpretations of digits into numbers, so feel free to make your own or look it up!

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     Not every Neopet you come across has a great name. They’re not all pronounceable, or inspired, and some don’t even contain letters at all. But now you’ve been given the techniques you need to find a great nickname for any Badly Named ‘pet! Find any ‘pet from the Pound and you can give it a nickname.

     What does this mean? For me, it means I’m able to fall in love with any Neopet, no matter their name. I can give them a nickname and find inspiration for stories, artwork, character development…. The whole world opens up for me when I nickname a Badly Named ‘pet. You might find yourself discovering something similar. You may discover that assigning a cute nickname lets you love a ‘pet you otherwise could never have brought yourself to look twice at.

     So what does it mean for you? Will you go out and adopt a Badly Named Neopet? Will you give a chance to a ‘pet nobody else wants?

     I hope so. And Badly Named Neopets everywhere hope so, too.