Today I started Beast wars season one, ep 1. Havent seen any of the early BW since reruns were airing(however i own season 3). My question is, did the maximals and predacons even have names before they acquired their beast modes(outside megatron and optimus...although with the PRIMAL name, Im not so sure.) They seem to introduce themselves to each other even though they were clearly flying the ship together. EDIT, I know in Tigatrons case, he had some generic name, at least in the case of the dawn of futures past botcon set...
They presumably did, but renamed themselves for the sake of having the same names as the toys My personal belief for the in-fiction is that it's just some sort of standard procedure or tradition as an exploration crew that the Maximals rename themselves after reformatting for a new (to them) previosuly unexplored planet. Except for Primal, who as leader keeps his real name and title. For the Predacons, well, Megatron kept his, Terroraur could've been Terrorsoar or something, Scorponok, as we see him in DOFP, well, wadaya wanna bet he was always Scorponok? The other Preds could've simply renamed themselves for fun, like Waspinator is so a name Waspinator would think of. As for everyone else, Depthcharge was always Depthcharge, Rampage was named by Megatron, and Tarantulas was always Tarantulas, since Ravage identified him as such. I assume Quickstrike, Blackarachnia, etc had either generic designations or names before being reprogrammed.
"Livin' large is for species like me: Rhinox." Lol, they soooo had no idea what they were going to do with Rhinox when they first started the show.
Want to really break your brain? What if they were named due to Terran influences on Cybertronian culture, and were destined to go to Earth and fight the Beast Wars, both due to the Temporal cycle, and the prophecy of the Covenant of Primus? They didn't end up with those names because they wound up on earth, they got those names and wound up on earth because it had to happen.
Keep in mind that Megatron wasn't his 'real name' either. It was a name he took from the Covenant of Primus for obvious reasons. And this concept of "changing your name for no apparent reason" wasn't just restricted to the show, either. In the Botcon comics, you had "The Cub" and "The Hunter" who became Windrazor and Shokaract. Why didn't they just have these names to begin with? Primus only knows!
In Windrazor's case, wasn't Windrazor a fusion of two robots, "The Cub" and "The Veteran"? Or was Windrazor always The Cub and only merged with The Veteran later?
technically true, but then there's the point of the Veteran himself, who may or may not have been Swoop.
I know, but for the show it was the name he was best known by. (he had it before coming to Earth at any rate)
This is a little pet peeve of mine. There are a lot of TF names that just don't make sense prior to Earth contact, new altmodes, or upgrades. G1 is full of stuff like that, like Bumblebee, why would he be called Bumblebee before knowing what a Bumblebee is, you can make the argument that it's a translation, but why he use a translated name instead of the original? Then there are the pretenders Skullgrin, Iguanus and Bugly, whose names have nothing to do with their actual alt modes, but rather with their pretender shells, which by most continuities were a later upgrade. There is a bit of a tradition of changing names for upgrades, but this isn't Megatron to Galvatron, or Hot to Rodimus Prime. Would you change your name just because you got a new car?
A betetr comparrison would be if you underwent plastic surgery, which actually helps the whole name-change thing sound less silly. They're not driving new cars, they ARE new cars.
Perhaps his name on Cybertron was the name of some stinging creature on Cybertron? I guess he chose to take on the Bumblebee name for ease of communication with humans. Telling humans his name is *buzzclickwhirrclickclack* just wouldn't work. XD
If you merge Beast Wars with Marvel G1, Swoop's had 3 names. Divebomb, Swoop, the Veteran. Since he shares a mold with the Cybertron character and the name would suit his thief persona, could Rattrap have been called Ransack? Not the Insecticon. I like to think that Waspinator could have been Robotmasters Wingstun. Robotmasters is set in G1. They've shared a mold. They're similarly coloured. They've both served under Beast Wars Megatron. Maybe BW Megs deliberately recruited Wingstun for this reason, if it were true. I could totally imagine Wingstun speaking like Waspy. "Oh, why Universe hate Wingstun?" Tigatron's shared a couple of molds with Ravage. I like to imagine the Device Label version is his G1 self. He sounds like an older Maximal. Given that he's essentially a twin of Ravage, it would be cool to merge his past with the character Nightstalker. In the one off story, State Games, the 1st story to mention Megatron's gladiator past, Ravage and his twin Nightstalker are bodyguards to the Autobot Overlord. The later introduction of Sentinel Prime tends to render this story as out of continuity. Nightstalker dies but as this is obviously a seperate continuity, there's no reason he couldn't have existed in the main Marvel G1 verse. I could easily imagine Tigatron being a bodyguard to some high ranking council member or indeed to Sentinel Prime himself. Nightstalker is a cool name too befitting this solitary hunter. As for Terrorsaur, I'm not suggesting they're the same character but War Within Titanium Thrust really reminds me of Terrorsaur. Closer colour scheme to his animation model than the original Terrorsaur toy. It's not a million miles from the Skyblast model used for Cybertronian Terrorsaur. Slag it, Thrust and Terrorsaur are both cowardly braggards with aspirations above themselves. Maybe it's possible.
Eh. I treat Cybertronian names like I would the Dynobots. A made up word that sounds the same or similar to their Earth mode name/team. Pre-Earth Insecticons would become Infecticons (Deluxe) and Intercepticons (Basic). I believe Rattrap's pre-earth name was Rattletrap. And making up others.... Grindnox and Jhitor?
its as simple as this. they are machines; electronic devices...when a gadget is replaced with a new model it gets a new name. When transformers change into a new or different model it would make sense for them to have a new name as well. they are not people, they do not have birth certificates, drivers licenses, or credit cards. Their names are not as important to them as they are to us humans. im sure they are identified through other means (like electronic signatures or something) instead of names, so them creating a new name to go along with a new body actually sounds expected rather than out of the ordinary if you ask me
I'd say Bottom Out hits pretty close to the heart on this, though the discussion definitely moves beyond any actual intentions of the creative forces involved and far into the realm of "coping speculation" we fans create to make fiction more cohesive. Transformers tend to be portrayed as very adaptable to new situations both by their ability to turn into creatures/vehicles appropriate to an alien environment but also in their interactions with other races like humans or the season 3 aliens. The Autobots and Maximals were always mixing it up with the humans/proto-humans they encountered, and even the Decepticons/Predacons collaborated/manipulated them on occasions suggesting a general openness/fluidity by the race towards interaction with other species and their environments, even if only for selfish purposes. Going by the G1 origins, the Transformers were servants/slaves to the Quintessons, so being adaptable, compliant, and conformable would probably be something deep-seated in their programming. Taking this constant changeability/adaptability a step further, they might, as a general rule, tend to swap out names in much the same way they swap out alt. modes to reflect various internal and external changes (such as Bumblebee's change to Goldbug and Hot Rod's change to Rodimus Prime, back to Hot Rod, and then to simply Rodimus later on in the Botcon continuity). Going back to their origins, the notion of "slave names" comes to mind. The likelihood of this seems high when taking into account their adoption of a new language as must have happened in G1, even though it wasn't addressed in the fiction. For Beast Wars, though, presumably the characters were speaking Cybertronian since there wasn't another logical option. Of course, we could speculate all day about the philological character of the Cybertronian language, which could conceivably have some elaborate construction for personal proper nouns that allows for regular renaming while retaining some constant designating element that eliminates the confusion inherent in such a practice. Nevertheless, I would postulate that Transformers as a species are gifted linguists and would tend to pick up and use alien languages easily and frequently and consequently adopt names in those languages conversant to their interactions with the peoples and cultures that use those languages.
