Finally, someone brought up Movor and Rotor. I love the characters but man, those names aren't even *trying*.   

 

Has Gas Skunk been mentioned?

 

TF Prime Smokescreen. The name for the G1 character was appropriate because he actually made smokescreens. IIRC, the TF Prime version never did.

 

~L~

 

Wrong thread, that belongs in the best names!

 

I don't have a problem with MOST of the names in this thread.

They're alien names translated that predate their earth modes. Most of them are two words put together, even Camshaft and Bumblebee. So from my own take, something like Laseremperor or Shockshift is a perfectly valid name that fits the convention. It's two words crammed together.

Likewise, quasi Greek/Latin names appear to be more traditional, remnants of an older time.

My problems are with three fairly popular names:

Jazz. It makes no sense on Cybertron given how culturally specific it is unless it's just like Kup or Arcee, a phoenetic name that can't be translated.

Bumblebee. What's a bee to a Cybertronian? Unless maybe his name is "Bumble B" as in Beta.

Ironhide. Come on. Iron is probably a soft metal to Cybertronians. It's the equivalent of being Paperskin.

I feel like some thought to the names being imperfect translations would be interesting in future incarnations anyway. Maybe even have a nod to some of the characters' foreign language or alternate names.

 

Vroom: What happens when you let a 2 year old with a basic grasp on sound effects name the new Transformer in the design phase.

Blastcharge: You make your own jokes here, people.

 

Hey man. Don't diss on my equipment. I got an army of Vileda drones to brush those guys off.

 

But there are characters who don't have toys that have some pretty dumb names too...

In that example I think Bluestreak is the dumb name. He's based on slang that no one uses and doesn't even describe his character in any way shape or form. It's suppose to mean that he talks fast but that's Blurr not Bluestreak. And he's not even blue.

Calling him Silverstreak because he is a silver car actually makes a lot more sense.

There was also a BW Jetstorm and Armada Jetfire who don't actually transform into jets.

The name Topspin makes me think he would be either a helicopter or a drill tank, something that would actually have spinning parts... he's never been any such thing. Why the hell is he called Topspin if nothing spins?

I'd be here all night... they're all pretty dumb. Convoy by itself is kind of OK and some of the other Convoys work pretty well but then you have characters like "Big Convoy" What should we call this character? Well he's big and he's a Convoy, his name is Big Convoy. Really? It's like no actual thought was put into the name beyond that.

Yes he does... An oddly colored one but that is in fact a tarantula.

 

Some really great names here. Basically everyone I could come up with has already been mentioned. Unless we're going to include 3rd party (Grind Rod anyone?)

You know, I was skimming this thread, of course looking for fun names, but especially to see if anyone was incorrectly going to mention Bluestreak, and behold: you deliver.

What do you mean it doesn't describe his character? Blue streak means:
- to move very fast: Bluestreak is one of the fastest of the Ark modified cars.
- to talk fast and continuously: his bio describes him as continuously talking and pretty fast about completely nothing. (This due to his war trauma.)

So it absolutely describes his character. Sure, the cartoon did little with this (the occassional chatter not withstanding) and even the Marvel comic only touched very briefly on this, but it was his character and his abilities as described in both his toy bio and his Marvel universe bio.

It's actually one of the most perfect fitting names.

(Blurr is so over the top fast, moving and talking, that things blurr.)

Actually, he was blue. The pre-TF diaclone figure that Budiansky was shown to create a name and bio for, was blue. This blue version was the one Hasbro was going to use for their brand new Transformers series. This is why there's a blue version on the box and a blue version in the instructions.

Then something changed (or someone screwed up -- just like with Sunstreaker and Sideswipe) and they used the wrong figure (the silver/black variant) in the wrong colours (just silver).

 

~L~

 

As a Bay fan I must say many of the "original" names from AOE and TLK are awful as fuck. You could say a kid came up with these names and I'd buy it.

Behold:

• Berserker
• Dreadbot
• Stinger
• Two-Head
• Canopy
• Bulldog
• Lieutenant
• Trench
• Mohawk
• Junkheap
• KSI Boss
• Shadow Raider

What evil mother would name their child "Berserker" or "Dreadbot"?

Oh, and "Junkheap"? You might as well name him Shit.

 

Movie Hot Rod. (He only got that that name because that's the one that got pulled out of the hat when they tried to find something that sounded cooler than 'Sidekick'.)

The name I probably hate the most is Megatronus. We finally learned the name of the mysterious Fallen, and somehow they couldn't get more imaginative than another variant of Megatron. Lame.

 

Everytime people bring up "nameslaps", I point out that it's better than names like these.

 

Admittedly, “Nitro Zeus” made my eyes roll when I heard it mentioned for the first time.

 

Starscream, sound like Stars Cream!

 

A lot of these seem like “placeholders that went final”, which aligns with the efforts of the scripts on those movies.

 

ok.. would a better list would be the names that aren't dumb sounding?

I can't even think of many left out of this thread.

 

 

There’s also the sometimes unavoidable Star Cream misspelling, which, on the flip side, would make for a good ice cream flavor name.