Trope Namers

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"Hello. My Name Is Inigo Montoya. You Killed My Father. Prepare to Die."

—Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride

Various shows are popular or influential when it comes to tropes. One measure is how readily we name tropes from shows or other works.

This should not be done lightly and is not a badge of honor. Using trope namers lightly or as a badge of honor is Trope Namer Syndrome and leads to confusion, renames, and possible deletion of tropes.

A series usually gets to name a trope if it's so widely known for the trope (even outside the circle of nerds) it's basically an icon of it, or if it has a term for the situation that is simply Made of Win. Or if it happens to be the Trope Maker, too. Of course, we do kinda swing closer to the Geek side of things. But whaddaya expect? This is the Internet, after all!

Also, we at All The Tropes don't want tropes named directly after a trope namer, since the trope namer may always get its own page. If they are the Trope Namer, the trope name should reflect the difference, for example Rashomon Style. This is doubly true for characters, who must embody the trope so well that one could point to them and say "Yeah, kinda like him" and other tropers will immediately agree (without having to consult Google in the process).

Keep in mind, however, that calling a work "the Trope Namer" in the initial Trope Workshop write-up simply because you took the preliminary title from it (especially if you are naming the Trope after a character) is very presumptuous: chances are high that the troper Hive Mind will disagree about whether or not the work is widely known enough to qualify. Of course, such Trope proposals aren't technically named yet; the title may be subject to change in the Trope Workshop if someone else comes up with a better title. (For the purpose of actually finding a better title, see Naming a Trope.)

Sometimes we don't quite get it right the first time.

Renamed Tropes

Examples of Trope Namers are listed on these subpages:

Tropedia

Trope Namers

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